jeudi 11 décembre 2014

Should I give an overview of my research program at the beginning or at the end of my job talk?


I am preparing to give a job talk for an on-campus interview for a tenure-track assistant professor position. In many of the job talks I have attended, candidates will spend 40 minutes talking in depth about a particular project, as well as spending 5-10 minutes on their research program, i.e. summarizing other projects they have completed and briefly describing questions they are interested in exploring in their future research.


Question: Is it better to give the the "research program" part of the talk before the in-depth project, or vice versa?


My personal inclination If I recall correctly, I have seen candidates do either of the two approaches. I am inclined towards talking about the "research program" first, then the in-depth project second. This is because there has been research showing that after 10 minutes, the people attending a lecture lose attention. (See John Medina's book Brain Rules) If I leave the "research program" to the end, I am afraid many people may have "fallen asleep" by then, but if I put it in the beginning, hopefully it is more likely to be remembered.





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