Development and application of Oral Communication Skills in the BS-CSE program

This page contains links to recordings of student presentations from CSE 601 and various capstone design courses. Links to MS Powerpoint slides (but no video recordings) of two additional student presentations, both from the new course on Information Security (CSE 551) are also included. Also near the end of this page is some information about how Eng. 181/183 are organized and the help that students get from those courses in developing their oral skills; but no videos of 181/183 presentations.

The links to video recordings also include information about the length of the presentation (in minutes) and the size of the file. The recordings are in .wmv format and require a tool such as Windows Media Player to play them. The sound volume on the recordings is somewhat low; you may have to turn up your speakers' volume a bit. The taping of the presentations was done by Tamera Cramer. Segments were spliced together by Neelam Soundarajan using Windows Movie Maker. Neither is an expert at these tasks! Please pass on any comments to Neelam (neelam@cse). Thanks!
(Note (12/17/'05): These videos have been moved off-line; see the notes file in this directory.)

• CSE 601: CSE 601 is a one credit course on Social, ethical, and professional issues in computing. All BS-CSE majors are required to take this course. CSE 601 requires students to make a presentation on one of a variety of topics such as current IT-related stories or technology trends etc. Students are required to research their topic, including such issues as ethical and professional concerns, and present their findings in an oral presentation, lasting typically about 8 to 10 minutes.
  (Note (12/17/'05): These videos have been moved off-line; see the notes file in this directory.)
  1. Presentation on Taeus Inc. (7 min; 20MB): This is a presentation on Taeus Incorporated, a company that works on intellectual property and other similar issues.
  2. Presentation on Online Education (8 min; 27MB): This is a presentation on trends in online education, the potential problems and possibilities.

• Capstone Design Courses: The program offers six different capstone design courses tailored to suit the technical interests of different students. The courses are CSE 682 (Computer Animation), 731 (Knowledge-Based Systems), 758 (Software Engineering Project), 762 (Advanced Operating Systems Lab), 772 (Information Systems Project), and 778 (VLSI Design). Each provides a culminating design experience in which students use the knowledge and skills they have gained throughout the curriculum in a team-based design and implementation project. Each BS-CSE major is required to take one of these courses as his or her capstone design course. (For further details, please see the capstone courses page.)

  Each capstone design course requires students to make one or more oral presentations. Most of these are team presentations with teams presenting their respective design projects. Since some of these presentations are relatively long, some of the clips here are just bits and pieces of the respective presentations and maybe a bit choppy. Also, due to technical problems/operator error, recordings of presentations in CSE 682 and 772 are not available. Sorry!
  (Note (12/17/'05): These videos have been moved off-line; see the notes file in this directory.)

  1. Engineering Advisor (11 min.; 35MB): This is a presentation from CSE 731. A student team presents its design and implementation of an expert system for advising freshmen students in their choice of an engineering major.
  2. E-Commerce Site (14 min.; 45MB): This is a presentation from CSE 758. A student team presents its design and implementation of an e-commerce site for toy erector sets.
  3. Web Services (8 min.; 31MB): This is the second half of a presentation from CSE 762. A student team makes a presentation about web services and answers several questions from the audience.
  4. Hyper threading (8 min.; 21MB): This is a presentation from CSE 778. Students in the Au '04 offering of this course had the option of making a presentation either about their project or about an interesting VLSI-related tool or technology that they had learned about on their own. This presentation is that of a student who chose the latter option. He talks about hyperthreading technology.

• Presentations from CSE 551: CSE 551 is a newly developed course focusing on issues related to information security. The course offers numerous opportunities for student presentations since the area is relatively new and there are many open issues that are both interesting and accessible to students who may be relatively new to the field. Note that these presentations were not taped, so only the slides from the presentations are available here.
  1. Secure BIOS (ppt) (pdf).
  2. Network Device Registration (ppt) (pdf).

• Development of oral skills in Engineering 181/183: In both Engineering 181 and 183, students are required to make oral presentations. These are team presentations and each member of the team is required to speak; the team, as a whole, then responds to audience questions. Instructors provide detailed guidelines (pdf) on how the presentations are to be organized, require students to submit drafts of their slides, provide feedback on the drafts, and provide feedback to students on various aspects of their final oral presentations; details are available (pdf). Honors students who take Engineering H191, 192, 193 in place of Engineering 181, 183, also make oral presentations and follow the same guidelines.
  Course materials -but not student work; sorry!- from Engineering 181/183 will be available during the site visit. Also, on Sunday afternoon, the team will be able to visit Hitchcock Hall 214/216, the main lab space used for Engineering 181/183, to get a better feel for these courses.