The Brown Bag is a regular academic group meeting among doctoral students to practice presentation skills, obtain feedback from peers, and refine research gradually. The Brown Bag could benefit both the presenters and the attendees since the presenters can practice explaining their research to a broad audience, while the attendees can engage in academic discussion and practice in comprehending and appreciating research ideas that are outside of their area of expertise.
To routinize the Brown Bag Serials in a sustainable way, we propose a few general rules for the Brown Bag.
Schedule and Planning
i). Each doctoral student is expected to present at least once in an academic year. The presenter list is scheduled at the beginning of each semester.
ii). Each brown bag talk will have 1 or 2 presenter(s) and will last one hour: 20 min presentation, and the rest for Q&A. This would help students to prepare conference presentations.
iii). Students in the fourth and fifth year can request a 90-min time slot, with 40-min presentation and the rest Q&A.
Attendance and Attention:
i). All MIS students are expected to attend Brown Bag every scheduled time, as it is a self-organized academic gathering amount peer students. No exceptions can be made unless being approved by the coordinator at least 1 day before.
ii). Attendees are expected to refrain from using laptops, tablets, cell phones, and other electronic gadgets that are distracting.
Responsibilities:
(1) For the presenters
i). The presenter has full freedom in deciding the content of the presentation. Nevertheless, we encourage presenters to use Brown Bag Presentation as a rehearsal of conference/job talk presentations. We encourage presenters to clarify the goal of their presentation, which can help the audiences to provide constructive feedback.
ii). Presenters have full freedom to invite whomever they want: coauthors, friends, doctoral students from other universities etc. Please note that each presenter is expected to invite at least 1 MIS faculty member to join the meeting to provide professional suggestions.
(2) For the Attendees
i). Student audiences are encouraged to ask critical questions as well as providing constructive suggestions. The feedbacks are expected to be friendly, constructive, and brief.
ii). Besides the feedback in the Q&A session, audiences are also encouraged to provide written-form feedback for the presenter on the strengthens and weaknesses, as well as references and suggestions from other MIS (or non-MIS) students or faculty.