Oral Presentation Guidelines

You have 10 minutes to give your presentation (to be fair to everyone, I will cut off the "long-winded" presentations) and all your members should participate.   You don't have a lot of time, so make each minute count!  Concentrate on the following topics (be sure to leave time for the last two items!):

1. What the problem is and why you are using simulation?  (It is very important that the audience understand what problem the problem is and why you used simulation.  Don't make general statements like "simulation is better than experimenting with the real system."  Give specific reasons, like why the cost of experimentation would be too expensive or create chaos.  Pictures and drawings of the real system are very helpful.)
2. What are the key features in your simulation model? (Don't get bogged down in details.  Keep this part an overview.  Show your Arena model (you may run it if you have time) and highlight the key features.  Keep the details to a minimum, since you can assume your audience is familiar with Arena.  Indicate how you got your input data.)
3. How did you verify/validate your model?  (Validation is important so the audience can believe your model corresponds to the real system.)
4. What are your results? (What kinds of experiments did you run and what were the outcomes. How did you choose whether to do a terminating simulation or steady-state. How did you select the number of replications (and possibly replication length and warmup period) -- this should be based on the statistical behavior of your simulation. Show numbers for your performance measures -- you can present confidence intervals to this audience.)
5. What are your conclusions? (At this point, draw conclusions and state what you recommended -- you need to be sure that your conclusions and recommendations are based on your simulation analysis!)

Some preparation guidelines:

Use PowerPoint and plan on a computer presentation..  Bring a disk to class early so we can load your presentation to the hard disk prior to class.

Make sure that you keep the number of slides to a minimum (you probably can't present more than eight to ten slides in the time you have).

Keep the amount of information on a slide minimal -- you shouldn't read your slides, and the slide content should provide a "summary" or "highlight" of what you are saying.

Don't fill your PowerPoint slides with lots of useless graphics and color -- they will distract, rather than enhance your presentation (red text on a dark background in a darkened room is almost unreadable).

Go over the presentation so that everyone knows what to say and do -- rehearse it.   Don't read your presentation to the audience!

Some humor is very effective, but don't go overboard.

If you rehearse it, you won't have to be concerned with time or what you will say.

        Here are common mistakes to avoid:
                Speak to the audience, NOT to the screen or just to the instructor
                Don't just reread the slides (you can assume your audience can read)
                Provide numerical results -- without the numerical results, who knows what was done
                Speak clearly -- avoid hummms, ahhhhhs, and lots of okays, okay, okay
                Use slides that show clearly in a darkened room
                Go over your Arena model and highlight key feature, but don't bore audience with details
                Give specifics -- avoid generalities like "simulation is easy to use"
                Don't depreciate what you have done -- show confidence
                Show some real interest in what you did.  Be enthusiastic about your work and the result!.