Published on GEOG 885: Advanced Analytic Methods in Geospatial Intelligence (https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog885)

Home > GEOG 885 > Lesson 10: Team Project Presentations

Lesson 10: Team Project Presentations

Introduction

Introduction

Geography 885 includes a presentation in order to further develop communication skills. The provided rubric is used to evaluate team presentations; a different rubric is used to evaluate individual presentations. This rubric is used to evaluate the communication skills. This evaluation also helps us judge the extent to which the geospatial intelligence program achieves the outcomes.

Lesson Objectives

At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Interact with fellow students in the discussion forum.
  • Demonstrate your ability to apply the structured method.
  • Demonstrate your ability to present a complex geospatial analysis.

The Course Roadmap is intended to help you understand where we are in the overall learning process and to place our dual case study and project focus into context.

 Course Roadmap: see text description in link below for more information
Figure 1: Course Roadmap
Click for text description of Figure 1

The image above shows a basic outline of assignments for all lessons in the course. Students are currently on Lesson 10. 

  • Lesson 1: Introduction and Review
    Case Study & Project
  • Lesson 2: Structured Geospatial Analytic Method (SGAM)
    Project
  • Lesson 3: Structured Analytical Techniques
    Project
  • Lesson 4: SGAM - Question and Grounding
    Case Study & Project
  • Lesson 5: SGAM - Hypothesis and Evidence
    Case Study & Project
  • Lesson 6: Diagnostic Techniques
    Project
  • Lesson 7: SGAM - Fusion and Conclusions
    Case Study
  • Lesson 8: Challenge Exercise
    Project
  • Lesson 9: Work Period
    Project
  • Lesson 10: Presentation
    Project

Lesson 10 is one week in length. (See the Calendar in Canvas for specific due dates.) To finish this lesson, you must complete the activities listed below. You may find it useful to print this page out first so that you can follow along with the directions.

Steps to Completing Lesson 10
Step Activity Access/Directions
1 Work through Lesson 10. You are in the Lesson 10 online content now. The Overview page is previous to this page, and you are on the Checklist page right now.
2 Participate in the presentation. Your presentation will be approximately 40 minutes in length discussing the:
  • Problem you analyzed (approximately 10 minutes).
  • Conclusions of the geospatial analysis (approximately 10 minutes).
  • Analytic approach you used to explore the geospatial contexts and anticipate events in your work (approximately 20 minutes).
  • Each team member is required to present part of the presentation.
To participate in the session, please use the Zoom Room designated by your instructor. All team members are required to present part of the presentation.

We will schedule each team session for 2 hours to accommodate questions and discussions.
3 Submit Please submit your team presentation to the Canvas Team Project Presentation Drop Box, and send a copy of it to your instructor's Penn State email account.
4 Complete the course evaluation survey. To complete the course evaluation, please go to Canvas and look for the World Campus End of Course Survey in the appropriate weekly module.

Questions?

If you have any questions now or at any point during this week, please feel free to post them to the GEOG 885 - General Discussion Forum. (That forum can be accessed at any time in Canvas by clicking on the Modules tab. The General Discussion forum is listed under the Orientation Section.)

Briefing Instructions

Briefing Instructions

Powerpoint Presentation Format:   Teams will present their findings using the general outline provided below:
  1. Problem/Question. State your problem/question. Be certain your problem/question (1) speaks to a genuine dilemma with geographic implications, (2) yields a result that is not obvious, (3) suggests an answer complex enough to require research, and (4) must be answered using geospatial thinking, geospatial analysis, and maps or imagery.
     
  2. Bottom Line Up Front. Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) is a style where you put your conclusion first. This is done because the longer a piece of writing is, the less likely a reader is going to read to the end. Therefore, the first thing read should be the most important thing.
     
  3. Methodology. Provide a brief explanation of how you arrived at your research process. While methodology and method are often used as though they are synonyms, they are not. Methodology is the study of methods and deals with the philosophical considerations underlying the research process. A method is a specific technique for data collection or processing under those philosophical considerations. This is to say, methodology is how you came to select your method. The method describes the sequence of breaking down the problem into the elements necessary to make a judgment, how the elements are examined, and a conclusion rendered. The three broad categories of methods — qualitative, quantitative or mixed. 

    Qualitative descriptions are based on some quality or characteristic rather than on some measured value.
    Quantitative refers to a type of information or data that is based on quantities obtained using a quantifiable measurement process.
    Research that involves the mixing of quantitative and qualitative methods.
     
  4. Assumptions. List your assumptions. Assumptions are those things the analyst takes for granted in the work; these statements are understood to be true because of a reasonable belief and, therefore, do not need to be proven. While assumed, they must be explicitly stated at the beginning of the analysis.
     
  5. Multiple Hypotheses. Hypotheses are explanations to the question that are suggested by knowledge or observation but have not, yet, been proved or disproved. Multiple hypotheses are used because geospatial intelligence is like the investigations of a detective, whereby a coherent picture must be built up from an array of small and varied clues.
     
  6. Evaluation. Your evaluation is completed using the Analysis of Competing Hypothesis to confirm or disprove the hypotheses. This evaluation may include the use of qualitative and/or quantitative data as evidence in the analysis. 
     
  7. Findings. The principal outcomes of the analysis. Your findings are what the analysis suggested, revealed or indicated.
Bibliographic References. This is a list of references at the end of a work, whether cited or not. This list should include references about the general nature of the problem, the data,  and analytic problems using a similar method.

Rubric for Project Assessment

Rubric for Project Assessment

The presentation is evaluated along six dimensions. The first four are mainly concerned with oral communication skills and have to do respectively with the organization of the presentation, the mechanics (mainly quality of slides), the effectiveness of delivery, and how well the speaker relates to the audience. The fifth evaluates the presentation with respect to the technical content. The sixth dimension is concerned with the working skills as exhibited during the team presentation as a whole. Each of these dimensions is assigned a score of 1 through 4, these values representing increasing degrees of achievement in the particular dimension, as described in the table below in the rows corresponding to the various dimensions. The last column contains the actual scores assigned to this particular student's presentation along the five dimensions. The overall total score is assigned by simply adding together the scores corresponding to the six dimensions.

Presenter and Course

NAME OF PERSON BEING EVALUATED:

COURSE AND QUARTER OF EVALUATION:

Grading Rubric
Criteria 1 point 2 points 3 points 4 points Points
assigned
Organization Audience cannot understand presentation because of poor organization; introduction is undeveloped or irrelevant; relation to the rest of the team's presentation is unclear. Audience has difficulty following the presentation because of some abrupt jumps; some of the main points are unclear or not sufficiently stressed. Satisfactory organization; clear introduction; main points are well stated, even if some transitions are somewhat sudden; relation to the rest of the team's presentation is clear. Superb organization; builds on and provides support for the rest of the team's presentation; main points well stated and argued, with each leading to the next point of the talk.   
Comments:
Mechanics Slides seem to have been cut-and-pasted together haphazardly at the last minute; numerous mistakes; speaker not always sure what is coming next. Boring slides; no glaring mistakes, but no real effort made into creating truly effective slides. Generally good set of slides; conveys the main points well. Very creative slides; carefully thought out to bring out both the main points of this part of the presentation as well as the relation to the rest of the team presentation; maintains audience interest throughout.   
Comments:
Delivery Mumbles the words, audience members in the back can't hear anything; too many filler words; distracting gestures. Low voice, occasionally inaudible; some distracting filler words and gestures; articulation mostly, but not always, clear. Clear voice, generally effective delivery; minimal distracting gestures, etc., but somewhat monotone. Natural, confident delivery that does not just convey the message but enhances it; excellent use of volume, pace, etc.   
Comments:
Technical content The content was perfunctory and not stimulating to audience members; presented just in order to minimally satisfy the requirement. The content was weak in coverage but engaging at times; class members took away something interesting. Content was pretty thorough but lacked in some areas; audience members benefited from the presentation. Compelling, engaging content that covered the topic thoroughly, was interesting to class members, and taught them something.   
Comments:
GEOSPATIAL APPLICATION Inadequate use of geospatial thinking, geospatial analysis, and maps and/or imagery to answer the question. Incorporates some aspects of geospatial thinking and geospatial analysis, but needs improvement. Meets expectations with application of geospatial thinking and geospatial analysis, including the appropriate incorporation of maps, imagery, and other geospatial products. Exceeds expectations with regard to the application of geospatial thinking and geospatial analysis, including the appropriate incorporation of maps, imagery, and other geospatial products.   
Comments:
Total:

Evaluator and Date

EVALUATOR'S NAME:

DATE OF EVALUATION:

Summary

Summary

Today's intelligence mission is expanding in terms of complexity, consumers, technical detail, and scope. Effective Geospatial Intelligence support requires not only constantly updating and refreshing knowledge on world realities and events; it also requires knowledge of emerging collection tools, analytic methods, and ways to portray geospatial information.

The advances of GIS and other geospatial technologies notwithstanding, geospatial analysis is fundamentally a mental process. Of the problems that hinder accurate geospatial analysis, those inherent in human mental processes are among the most important and most difficult to address. Heuer found that people have no conscious experience of most of what happens in the human mind. Many functions associated with perception, memory, and information processing are conducted prior to and independently of any conscious direction. What appears spontaneously in consciousness is the result of thinking, not the process of thinking. Weaknesses and biases inherent in human thinking processes can be alleviated by conscious application of tools and techniques that should be in the analytical tradecraft toolkit of all geospatial intelligence analysts. We hope, in some small way, this course will help you to:

  • have a thorough grounding in the key principles and practices of geospatial intelligence analysis.
  • understand the analytic principles, the technical concepts that underlie them, and their application in real-world problems.

All of us involved on GEOG 885 hope you enjoyed the course, and we wish you every success in your future endeavors!


Source URL:https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog885/l11.html