Research Meetings

#1

Source : Guidelines from Aviz

How it works

You can sign up for 4 different types of meetings:

  • Research critique (formerly pitch meeting)
  • Brainstorming
  • Research overview
  • Reading group

Each week, one person will choose a topic for discussion. They may either discuss in-progress work (research critique, brainstorming), recently accomplished work (research overview) or discuss one or two external publications (reading group). As a student you should have a slight preference for a research critique, as it is more likely to be useful to you.

All meetings must last from 30 to 60 minutes discussions included.

Attendance to research meetings is optional but recommended.

In case several volunteers are willing to present, priority will be given to students and to presentations of work in progress (research critique, brainstorming). In case there is no volunteer, we may conduct a reading group using the old format (i.e., people choose and discuss a paper collectively).

If you can’t decide between research critique and brainstorming, you may combine both but be aware that time will likely be too short to fit both. One thing you can do is to encourage people to ask questions and make critiques during your presentation, and add a final slide with brainstorming questions in case there is time left.

Research critique

The goal is to present ongoing research and get questions and comments you might typically get from reviewers.

When presenting your own in-progress research, discuss:

  1. Introduce the context, never take for granted that the audience knows anything about what you will be talking about.
  2. Main research question or contribution statement – What knowledge will be gained by the research community after doing this research?
  3. VERY brief overview of what’s known about the question so far
  4. How will you answer the question? Did you consider alternatives?
  5. What progress have you made so far? (make sure you have something to show)
  6. Do you have concerns or specific questions? Do you need a specific type of help?

The total duration of the research critique is up to 60 minutes, discussions included. We suggest you limit your presentation to about 10 minutes (minimum 5 minutes, maximum 20 minutes). Do a quick practice talk with yourself to estimate the time.

Expectations for presenters

  • The goal is to obtain feedback. Some of it will be critical, so try to avoid getting defensive. It’s better to get critical feedback now rather than from a reviewer.
  • Think through the project enough, so you can present for about 10 minutes and answer questions.
  • But don’t be so far along that you cannot incorporate suggested changes.
  • Having a very early prototype and/or pilot data is a good time for feedback. But be prepared to have to redo some things after getting feedback.

What is expected from attendees

  • It is a discussion, not a one-person presentation. Ask questions and participate.
  • Keep the discussion to the main question and at a high level. It is acceptable to critique the presenter’s choice of question but not their topic.
  • Point out both the strengths and weaknesses. This is neither an ego stroke nor a flogging.
  • You can interrupt, especially for clarifications, but try to save longer discussions for the end.

Brainstorming

The purpose of a brainstorming meeting is to use the collective creativity of the group to give you ideas on how to advance/extend/improve whatever VIS you’re currently developing or what kind of research question you’re trying to develop. In contrast to the research critique it is about giving new input rather than critiquing what is already there.

When presenting your own work for your brainstorming meeting:

  1. Define the problem: Describe a problem / question that the brainstorming session will address.
  2. Lay out the context and definitions: ask yourself what the team already know about the context of the problem / question and what else they need to know. Present this information it during the session.
  3. Run the brainstorming session. There are many ways in which this can be done and they have to be adjusted based on what you want to achieve. Some general advice:
  4. Brainstorming - Wikipedia
  5. https://www.wrike.com/blog/techniques-effective-brainstorming/
  6. http://www.usabilityfirst.com/usability-methods/facilitated-brainstorming/

Expectations for presenters

  1. be prepared, give people something to do, have a clear questions, run the meeting as professionally as you can
  2. do not dismiss ideas as not doable, be open to ideas even if they sound crazy to you

What is expected from attendees

  1. keep an open mind, don’t feel like you are not creative. Everyone has ideas!
  2. share and help the presenter

Research overview

The goal is to present what you have recently done, e.g., a paper recently submitted. Similar to brainstorming, the idea is not to critique someone’s work but to learn and be aware about what others are doing and maybe become involved yourself (if applicable).

When presenting your own work for your research overview meeting:

  1. Main research question – What fundamental problem(s) are you trying to solve with your research?
  2. How did you approach it, what steps did you take?
  3. What are the main results of your work?
  4. Potentially discuss future directions that you want to look into.

Expectations for presenters

  1. inform the team of what you have achieved/worked on
  2. be aware that not everyone is an expert on your project, explain it such that the whole team is on the same page

What is expected from attendees

  1. provide positive feedback
  2. suggest ideas for future work/research
  3. point out related work/areas the presenter may want to investigate
  4. share and help the presenter

Reading group

The goal is to discuss one or two publications by other researchers. This format is similar to our previous reading groups, except it starts with a short presentation, and there is no round table (discussions are shorter).

See MyBox Inria

In your presentation, discuss:

  1. Main research question – What knowledge was gained by the research community after doing this research?
  2. How is it relevant to the team’s interests?
  3. VERY brief overview of approaches to answering this or related questions by other papers
  4. How did the authors answer the question?
  5. Did their approach actually answer the question? Was there a better way?
  6. If two papers were selected, did they take a different approach? Do they have different conclusions?

The total duration of the reading group is 30 to 60 minutes, discussions included. We suggest you limit your presentation to about 10 minutes. Do a quick practice talk with yourself to estimate the time.

Expectations for presenters

  • The goal is to think critically about the main research question.
  • Discussion can focus on the paper’s value, methods, and the validity of the findings
  • Selecting two papers is appropriate if one is a direct follow-up to or contradicted by the other.

What is expected from attendees

  • It is a discussion, not a one-person presentation. Ask questions and participate.
  • If a paper will be discussed, you are expected to read it. That’s read, not skim!
  • If two papers are chosen, you are expected to read one and at least skim the other.
  • Keep the discussion to the main question and at a high level. It is acceptable to critique the presenter’s choice of question but not their topic.
  • Point out both the strengths and weaknesses. This is neither an ego stroke nor a flogging.
  • You can interrupt, especially for clarifications, but try to save longer discussions for the end.

Writing Workshop

The goal is to collect feedback from your colleagues about an on-going project during the early phases of writing. Participating can provide external motivation for writing the important parts of your paper. It will encourage you to start writing earlier and generally improves the quality of the final paper. It provides a global awareness of what your colleagues are doing.

How does it work?

Authors

  • Authors have to write some parts of the paper. We initially focus on the title, the abstract, the keywords, and the introduction of the paper (and figure 1 if it is relevant), but it could also be the experimental design section, related work, etc. Focus on parts where you would like an outside opinion.
  • If you don’t want people to see parts that are still very drafty, you can delete those pages from the pdf before sharing. Just make sure that the reference cited in the part you want to be reviewed are included in the pdf you distribute.
  • Indicate explicitly (as a comment directly on the pdf) which part of the paper should be reviewed. Unless agreed otherwise and in advance, be reasonable, and don’t ask people to read more than 1-2 pages.
  • Ideally, indicate also at what level you want feedback. If you’re still at the stage where you trying to figure out the story of your paper, there is no need that someone gives you feedback on low-level issues. If it’s getting close to the deadline, you may need feedback on clarity and wording.
  • Use the correct template for your venue from the beginning and put author names for writing workshops (don’t forget to remove them when you’re submitting to a conference with a (double) blind reviewing process).

Reviewers

  • Writing workshops should not take too much of your time. The idea is that it shouldn’t take you more than 1h-1.5h to prepare for the workshop. You should not spend more than about 15 minutes on a paper (unless you volunteered to proof-read an almost final submission).
  • How many submissions should you read?
    • The basic principle is: the more you submit, the more you review. This affects mostly permanents who tend to be on multiple submissions. At the same time, more experienced people tend to be faster when reviewing articles, so the overall time investment is likely similar.
    • It is rarely useful for everyone to read every submission. If the meeting is only about abstracts or if there are only 3 or 4 intros to read then that’s doable but otherwise, we use a spreadsheet where people can sign up.
      • The spreadsheet should be sent out 1 week before the meeting.
      • Authors fill a line indicating that they will send something.
      • The spreadsheet link should follow- Aviz writing workshop - Google Sheets

Some rules

  • A grad student or intern must ask the first question.
  • A permanent should approve the topic or papers each week.
  • If discussing a paper, send it out by Friday before the meeting.
  • You are welcome to swap with someone for scheduling reasons.
  • Ideally, a new participant is scheduled at the end of each research meeting.
  • The schedule may be paused or shifted for events, paper deadlines, practice talks, etc.
  • Keep discussions on topic. If need be, we will implement “the vuvuzela of irrelevance”.