Seminar series - Instructions for Presenters

Seminars will be held in Lecture Room 3, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, (mostly) on Wednesdays, 1.10 - 1.50 pm.

The seminars should be between 25 and 30 minutes long, to allow 10 minutes question time. The chair of the session may have to stop seminars that go over time. A useful rule of them is that each overhead or powerpoint slide equates to about 1 minute.

Remember that the seminars are for the entire department to hear about your work, so they should not be too technical such that non-soils people should be able to understand. It maybe worthwhile to spend a few minutes explaining the background to your research for the benefit of all present.

Please provide a short abstract of your seminar one week prior to the seminar. Also please me a short introductory CV about yourself, so that you can be introduced at the beginning of the seminar.

Using the Computer in the Lecture Theatre

Each computer has a DVD-Rom drive, 250 MB zip drive, and a floppy disk. The operating system is Windows 2000 and they are installed with Microsoft Office XP (Word, Excel, Powerpoint & Access), Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Please note that you will not be able to install any new software yourselves - please see Nathan if you need to install software, as this is prevented by a password.

In particular, the seminars are form an integral part of the research training that the Department offers its postgraduate students, and hence it is considered very important that students attend as many seminars as possible, including those not directly related to their own research.

The PCs are on our local network, so if you need to get large files onto the PCs, you should share a directory on your own PC, and then use "my network places" on the lecture room PC to see your computer and copy the files across.

The machines automatically boot up under the default user called theatre. Do not attempt to login with any other username.

If you want to use network or internet facilities on these new PCs, please plug the the network cable that is inside the lectern into the port on the wall BEFORE you turn the PC on.

Please ensure that you shutdown the computer (i.e. turn it off) when you finish.

As always, if you plan to do some sort of presentation, I highly recommend that you try out the equipment in advance.

In addition, if you use a laptop, please note that connecting cables should be left in the lecture room.

• Getting feedback on the technical and "presentation" aspects of the presentation
• Gaining knowledge on other areas of research in the Department.
• The ability to critically analyse the work of others.
• Getting hints for their own presentations by observing the good points of others' presentations and the areas that need improvement.
• This provides important training for life after the PhD.

The following is extracted from The University of Sydney Postgraduate Research Students Handbook:

• The department has the responsibility to ensure that opportunities exist within the department or the faculty for interaction and development of profitable intellectual relationships amongst students and staff and that all students are encouraged to participate in appropriate departmental or faculty activities.
• The Supervisor has a responsibility to ensure that the candidate participates in the work of the department including presentations at departmental seminars.
• The student has a responsibility to participate in the opportunities offered by the department to be part of the intellectual community; the candidate must participate in such departmental activities as are required