Virtual programming and presentations, such as webinars, are becoming more and more common in education and the workforce. But how many webinars have you been to that are boring, where you end up browsing the Internet? Graduate students need to be able to present their work and research digitally, as well as communicate the information effectively and quickly within the virtual programming tool.
The UNCG Graduate School and UNCG University Libraries will have a competition for face-to-face and online graduate students to determine who can give the most effective webinar or virtual presentation in 10 minutes. We will put out a call for proposals to all of the graduate programs and select students to compete. Over 1 week, the competition will run virtual webinar sessions of 4-5 students in each session, with 3-4 finalists selected based on a rubric. At the end of the week, we will have 1 virtual session of 3-4 students and declare a winner.
Contestants for 2024 are selected, with names and presentation titles coming soon! We'll have 10 UNCG graduate students competing in the preliminaries, with 3 selected to compete on February 23rd. Please sign up below to watch the finals!
The finals for 2024 are: Friday, February 23rd, 2024 at 2pm. This is open to the public - anyone who wants to attend! Contestants are already set.
Register here: https://go.uncg.edu/wwwfinals
Finalist W^3 Judges 2024:
Pam Brown, UNCG Kinesiology Program EdD Director
Amy Harris Houk, UNCG University Libraries, Assistant Dean of Teaching and Learning
Maura Heyn, UNCG Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Classical Studies
Finalist W^3 Judges 2023:
No competition in 2023
Finalist W^3 Judges 2022:
Greg Bell, UNCG Graduate School, Dean
Amy Harris Houk, UNCG University Libraries, Assistant Dean of Teaching and Learning
Finalist W^3 Judges 2021:
Karen Bull, UNCG Online, Dean
Kelly Burke, UNCG Graduate School, Dean
Michael Crumpton, UNCG University Libraries, Dean
Chandni Lal
Department: Psychology, Masters/1st
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Michael J. Kane
Title: Testing the Construct Validity of Mind-Blanking Probes
Parth Desai - FINALIST - 1st Place, People's Choice Award
Department: Nanoscience, PhD/4th
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Dennis LaJeunesse & Dr. Kristen Dellinger
Title: Evaluating immune cell based approach for breast cancer immunotherapy
Nooshin KianvashRad - FINALIST
Department: Nanoscience, PhD/2nd
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Dennis LaJeunesse
Title: Wrapping Up Fungal Infections: esPAN, a new nanomaterial for controlling pathogenic fungi
Tasmia Islam
Department: Nanoscience, PHD/3rd
Faculty Mentor: Eric Josephs
Title: The “Duckweed Dip”: Aquatic Spirodela polyrhiza Plants Can Efficiently Uptake Dissolved, DNA-Wrapped Carbon Nanotubes from Their Environment for Transient Gene Expression
Lindsay Jarvis - FINALIST - 2nd Place
Department: Psychology, MA Experimental Psychology, 3rd year in program,
Faculty Mentor: Stuart Marcovitch
Title: Differences in Nature Conversations Across Rural and Urban Children
Sindhu Yalavarthi
Department: Nanoscience, PhD/1st
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kerui Wu
Title: SMART_NV: Innovating Cancer Immunotherapy
Nabeela Farhat - FINALIST
Department: Geography, Environment, and Sustainability, PhD/5th
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Selima Sultana
Title: Immigrants and Inequality in Greensboro-High Point Metropolitan Area
All UNCG graduate students (including fully online and distance) can participate in this competition.
There are cash prizes for the winner and second place participants, as well as a People's Choice.
Prizes are first place ($300), second place ($200), and People's Choice ($100).
Preparing and delivering an effective webinar develops academic, presentation, and research communication skills, while emphasizing students' ability to explain their research effectively in language appropriate to a non-specialist audience.
At every level of the competition each competitor will be assessed on the two judging criteria listed below. Please note that each criterion is equally weighted and has an emphasis on audience.
Comprehension & Content: did the webinar design and presentation help the audience understand the research?
Engagement & Communication: did the webinar make the audience want to know more?
Rules:
A slide presentation is permitted, with no more than 10 slides.
Webinars are limited to 10 minutes maximum and competitors exceeding 10 minutes are disqualified.
Webinars are to be spoken word (e.g. no poems, raps or songs).
Webinars are considered to have commenced when a presenter starts the presentation through speech.
The decision of the adjudicating panel is final.
Additional Information:
The slides must contain the participant's name and department affiliation.
It is strongly recommended that you do not use an oversize slide. These are generally wider than the normal PowerPoint slide format and will appear with a white band at the top and bottom.