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Week 5: Presentations (Iteration 1: Sources)

September 22, 2025

Work to turn in
  • A file you'll use as the multimodal prop for your 5-minute presentation (e.g. PowerPoint, Google Slides, Prezi, slides.js, etc)
  • A link to your public-facing project-in-progress (website, GH repo, google sheet, etc)

Plan for the day:

  • Framing: Intro to workshop + peer review plan (~9:00-9:15)
  • Presentations: first half
    • presentation 1 (~9:15-9:40)
    • presentation 2 (~9:40-10:05)
    • presentation 3 (~10:05-10:30)
  • Break (10 minutes)
  • Presentations: second half
    • presentation 4 (~10:45-11:05)
    • presentation 5 (~11:05-11:30)
  • EXT: Work on peer letters
  • Homework for next time: peer review letters; reading about data + people

Framing: Intro to workshop + peer review plan

Welcome back, and welcome to our first day of presentations! I’m excited to hear more about how it’s been going, and especially for you all to hear how it’s been going for everyone else.

I also want to welcome the DSAM Practicum instructors! You already know Alison Langmead; we’re also joined by Aaron Brenner, from the University Libraries. Aaron, do you want to say a few words to introduce yourself?

They’re here not to pass judgment on you or your projects, but rather to get to know you and your projects, so they can support you even better if you take Practicum in the spring. Now, that may sometimes mean asking probing questions about why you’ve chosen your method or materials – but these are genuine questions, and all of us expect you to have interesting thoughts on those things, whether you’ve articulated them before or not.

So let’s think together into that almost-said! Let’s find the balance between the heart of your interests and the minimalist approach that asks, first, what you have, so we can figure out what you really need and what you can safely let go for now. Yes?

Peer review guidelines

About that peer review: you’ll each be responsible for writing back to two of your classmates. In those reviews, I’m NOT asking you to evaluate the success of the project; rather, I’m asking you to help synthesize some formative feedback, oriented toward next steps, assuming that everything is still a work in progress.

You may be wondering, "How am I supposed to offer feedback when I'm still figuring so much out myself?" Well, in part, by being a genuine audience for your classmates:

  • Help them see how their work is coming across to you: describe back to them what you see them doing, trying to do, or almost doing. (That last is often a good place to lean into.)

  • Draw them out to find the way forward. Help your partners see the next steps by asking follow-up questions about their sources or their process; by highlighting comparisons with other projects you’ve seen that might be good models (or useful foils); by suggesting tools, tutorials, or scholarship you think would be useful to bring in; and so on.

  • Above all, be generous. That doesn’t mean only singing praises, though by all means do so when it feels genuine! You can be generously critical, as long as you’re critically generous at the same time. Demonstrate your care and investment in each other’s success, knowing that there’s still more to do to get there.

We'll start with in-class conversation, but I'll ask everyone to also write notes to two classmates, which you can share as a reply to their forum post. If there's time in class, awesome! But there's a good chance this will end up being homework.

I’ve split presentations in two sets of five, with peer reviews crossing from one set to the the other. That way, you can pay extra attention to your assigned partner without having to worry that your own presentation is imminent.

Presentation order and peer-review partners
This person presents in slot and gets notes from and also from
Tunga 3 Yanni Namrata
Rose 2 Namrata Amrita
John 1 Amrita Yixuan
Scylla 4 Yixuan Li
Yuqing 5 Li Yanni
Yanni (next time) Tunga Rose
Namrata (next time) Rose John
Amrita (next time) John Scylla
Yixuan (next time) Scylla Yuqing
Li (next time) Yuqing Tunga

Presentations: first half

  • Tunga
  • Rose
  • John

Each presentation should last five minutes, and I’ll help you keep track of time. We should then have about 15 minutes for Q&A.

Break (10 minutes)

We should hit the break at around 10:20 today.

Presentations: second half

  • Scylla
  • Yuqing

EXT: Writing

If by some luck we have extra time at the end of class, let’s use it to begin your peer review letters.

Homework for next time

Peer review

There’s feedback for your classmates, if we didn’t get to it in class, and there’s a new topic for next week: data + people.

Your writing assignments, now sorted by writer rather than recipient
This person will write to and also to
Tunga Yanni Li
Rose Namrata Yanni
John Amrita Namrata
Scylla Yixuan Amrita
Yuqing Li Yixuan
Yanni Tunga Yuqing
Namrata Rose Tunga
Amrita John Rose
Yixuan Scylla John
Li Yuqing Scylla
  1. You've seen the presentation (though you may want to revisit it); now have a look through the public-facing version of the project. What do you notice? What do you wonder? What does it make you think of?
  2. Be a genuine and generous audience. To help your partner see their work through your eyes, summarize back to them what you see them doing, trying to do, or almost doing. (That last is often a good place for the author to lean into.)
  3. Make connections and ask questions: this may include questions or clarifications about the process; comparisons with your own projects or others you've seen; tools, materials, or scholarship you think would be useful to bring in; and so on.

Above all, be yourselves. Being generous doesn’t mean only singing praises, though by all means do so when it feels genuine! You can be generously critical, as long as you’re critically generous at the same time. Demonstrate your care and investment in each other’s success, knowing that there’s still more to do to get there. Together.

You can post these notes as replies to your partners' discussion forum posts containing the links to projects and presentation files.

For next week: Data + People

In addition to the peer review notes, in prep for week 6 please watch:

… and read the following:

Given the peer review process already underway, I'm thinking that I will take the lead on selecting passages and questions for next week. Unless we have any volunteers to be a first reader for one of these texts? (If so, we can write those down in the notes doc).
  • EXT for eager readers:
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