What is an Appropriately Technical Topic?

This is a question that is often asked by students. If a technical topic is appropriate for a Work-term Report, a summary of that topic will certainly be appropriate for a technical presentation. Other topics, however, are also acceptable.

Topics Based on Work-term Reports

A Work-term Report must be a comparison of two or more solutions to an engineering problem where the comparison is guided by requirements and criteria requiring quantitative engineering analysis. As such, any such topic is certainly appropriate as a technical presentation. Some suggestions are:

• The presentation should not be a simple presentation of the contents of the report, it should be a summary thereof, and
• Often the report will be too long to summarize in full; therefore, it is often appropriate to summarize the background and the engineering problem, list the requirements and criteria (including a discussion of the justification for these requirements and criteria), followed by a brief summary of all of the possible solutions that were examined, but then only focusing on that solution that was ultimately recommended.

Other Allowable Topics

A technical presentation cannot be a lecture attempting to teach a topic to the audience. For example,

• A lesson teaching a skill; for example, a lesson on how to program C++ or Java;
• An overview of any subject; for example, an overview the standards for implementing wireless local area networks by summarizing IEEE 802.11a, b, g, and n;
• A high-level comparison of LCD and plasma displays;
• The description of a popular hobby; for example, photography; or
• A topic that would be the subject matter of a course that is not in a technical discipline; for example, the literary differences between Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Similar topics that would be allowed are:

• A comparison of C++ and Java including a technical discussion of why the differences were introduced from a software engineering point-of-view;
• A technical description and comparison of the modulation techniques used in the various standards including direct-sequence spread spectrum, frequency-hopping spread spectrum, and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing;
• A detailed explanation and comparison of the physics and electronics used to generate LCD and plasma displays and how these affect these manifest themselves in the differences we see between these two technologies;
• A comparison of how colour is displayed on different types of monitors and how this will affect the interpretation and appearance of colour to the human eye; and
• A presentation on the application of context-free and context-sensitive grammars to natural and programming languages.

One question that is useful to ask: Could a student in another faculty who does not have the engineering science, judgment, or analytical skills that has been learned by the end of 2A give the same presentation and appear credible and competent? If the answer is yes, it is likely an inappropriate topic.

On the extreme side, one excellent technical presentation was given on the technical aspects of growing cannabis. The presenter did not at any time advocate illegal behaviour nor did he suggest that he himself was engaging in this activity (again, also illegal and therefore unprofessional). By keeping the scope of the presentation on the technical aspects of growing this plant, it was a suitable technical presentation. In comparison, however, a technical presentation on the assassination methods of the CIA or KGB would be unacceptable.