Tutor: Hi Kim, Patrick. Now, I know you have some ideas that you want to check with me about your presentation. You only have 48 hours to go, so haven't you left it a bit late?

Kim: Oh, we know what we are going to say.

Patrick: And we have our pictures and diagrams ready

Kim: There's just a few things we want to ask.

Tutor: Okay, fire away. But remember I can't help you with the content, or give you any ideas for the presentation. It all has to be your own work. And remember, I'll be marking it as well, so I want to hear it for the first time when you do it on Thursday, not today.

Patrick: That's one of the things we wanted to ask you about. It's not completely clear to us how the marks will be divided. Is it all on the content? How important is the presentation? I mean how we do the talk ourselves, not how we have arranged the material.

Kim: And if Patrick presents his part badly - I'm sure you won't Patrick, but we can all make mistakes - do we get marked as individuals or as a team?

Tutor: Well, I can clear that up for you. Sixty percent of the marks are for your factual material. That is, how well you have done your research, how well you have organized it, and if your arguments are convincing. Twenty percent is for your delivery - how well you get the facts over to the audience. Your presentational skills if you like. Now for all of this, you get the same mark, so teamwork is essential. It is only the last twenty percent - your personal performance - that gets marked individually. So that's where one of you can lose marks without affecting the other.

Patrick: Okay, that's clear. Now the next question is, do we have to both be on the platform at the same time? I'm asking because some of the slides are quite complicated. I'd like to be with the projectionist and make sure that everything goes well during Kim's part of the presentation.

Tutor: Well, the guidelines are quite clear here. You both must be on the platform together. So you must do some rehersals with the projectionist or simplify the slides - maybe do both. But there's no room for manouver on that.

Kim: That's a tough one. But I reckon we can work something out. Now I've got another one. I know there's just meant to be students attending the presentation, but my parents are going to be in town, and they would really love to be there. It would mean a lot to me.

Tutor: That's not really for me to say. You will have to speak to the Principal. I'm not the one who is organizing this, so I can't make the rules. But if Mr Benson has no objection, I don't have any either. But remember that your presentation will be videoed so your parents will be able to see it afterward. Hmmm ... I can see another problem, and that is if your parents are there, some students might say this affected your performance, gave you an unfair advantage. Remember that your assessment here counts toward your final mark for the course, so we do not have a lot of flexibility. As I said, it's not my decision, but if it was, I'm sorry to say it would probably be 'no'.

Patrick: Just one more thing - how much time is there between presentations? I mean how long to get everything set up? We need quite a long time.

Tutor: It's meant to be six minutes. But we accept that some people will take more or less time, so it's quite flexible. in your case, it does not matter. I see from the list that you two are going first. So you have all morning to set things up if you want to. Which reminds me - here's the order of the presentations. You can take a look at it now, because I'm about to go to the hall and put it on the noticeboard. Tell the others that the order of presentations is fixed, so they can't come to me asking for a different position.

Kim: We can do that for you. We're going that way now.

Patrick: Yes, on our way to another rehersal!