GUIDELINES FOR REFEREES

 

PRESENTATION -- GENERAL ISSUES

Was the presentation well organized or chaotic? 
Did it have a clear structure:

Was the presentation aimed at computer science junior/senior students?
Was the material presented accessible/understandable to such an audience/readership?
(The speaker should not assume any specialized background above core CSC courses.)

Did the speaker explain the issues sufficiently?
Were all the new terms (and acronyms) explained? 
Were there enough examples? Were the examples well chosen?
Were there enough details to satisfy the curiosity of the listeners/readers? 

Was there a logical sequence?
Was the discussion of details and general ideas well balanced?
Was there an undesired redundancy in the presentation?

Was the language grammatical and clear? 
Was the spelling correct?

Did the presentation project impression of professionalism?

PRESENTATION -- ORAL PRESENTATION ISSUES

Was the pace of the talk good?

Did the speaker use any visual aids? (Slides, PowerPoint, writing on board are all equally good.)
Did the slides contain good amount of text (Just a few lines per slide is recommended.)?
Was the pace of showing slides good? (Two minutes per slide is recommended.)
Could you both listen to the speaker with attention and read the slides or writing on the board?

Did the speaker look at the audience? 
How effective was the interaction between the speaker and the audience? 
Did the audience seem interested and ask questions or made comments?

 

PRESENTATION -- WRITTEN PRESENTATION ISSUES

Is the text divided into sections, subsections, ..., paragraphs? 
Are bulleted or numbered lists and charts used when appropriate? 
Did the paper include diagrams when appropriate?

How good was the writing? 
Were the sentences short and clear? 
Did every word  in a sentence contribute something essential? 
Did every paragraph clearly express a single idea?

It is expected that a written presentation contains more details than an oral presentation.

 

PRESENTATION -- ISSUES SPECIFIC TO THE WEB MEDIUM

Were the web pages readable? 
Was the font not too small (and not overly big)? 
Was there sufficient contrast between the font and the background? 
Were the documents formatted in a reasonably compact manner?

Did the pages load in a reasonable time?
Were the pages not overloaded with images, sounds and other fancy features?
Were images, if any, used effectively? 

Were the web pages well structures or chaotic? 
Was there some uniformity in the format of the pages and the linking structure?
Did the document contain links/bookmarks to refer the readers to the material which was explained earlier? 
Were the URL's and e-mail addresses in the document made into active links?

Were supporting documents and programs related to the project made available?

 

MERIT

How much new, substantial and useful knowledge was presented? Was the presentation informative?
Could you learn something new and substantial from this presentation?
Could an average computer science junior/senior student learn something new and substantial from this presentation?
Could you learn not only what the author has done but how? Would you be able to undertake now a task similar to that described in the presentation?

Are there sufficient descriptions of experiments which were not successful; sufficient discussion of ideas which turned out not implementable so that we could learn from these failures. (Failures in research should not be counted against the author, provided that the author and the readers can learn from them.)

How long ago did the author start this research? Is there an evidence of a systematic work and steady progress?

Weren't the slides, web pages, illustrations fancy/entertaining but without merit?

Was the scientific terminology used precisely?

Are there sufficient descriptions of experiments which were not successful; sufficient discussion of ideas which turned out not implementable so that we could learn from these failures. (Failures in research should not be counted against the author, provided that the author and the readers can learn from them.)