Tips and Tricks on How to Survive a Master Seminar
- Literature which I provide is just a suggestion. You do not need to use it.But you definitely should collect more. Use google. Use SSRN.com. Use RePEC. Use current material rather than old text books. Use newspaper articles sparingly.
- Paper. Please pay attention to the guidelines of the Fachbereich on how to format works around here. Find that document online and deviate as little as possible: you need those guidelines for your thesis anyway, so might as well apply them now.
- Structure of the paper. Please make sure that the paper has the formal structure of a literature review (e.g. introduction with main points of argument, literature to each point, methodology if needed, empirical findings, conclusion with your own thoughts). Start with an outline by using short sentences without much nice writing. In the paper, you can flesh out the wording. The introduction states why the topic is interesting and what the main issues are. Then, depending on the topic being theoretical/empirical/both, you detail those issues and introduce papers. Important ones deeper and with more detail; marginal ones with less detail. Argue why a paper is more important (write more) and summarize more quickly less relevant papers. Some marginal papers one might just stick into a footnote: Further approaches to XXX are Meier (2000), Miller (1998), and Jones (2004). The conclusion then recaps the highlights of the paper and covers your own assessment plus an outlook onto future work.
- All works need to be properly cited - I use a computer program to check that you do not cut and paste. Normally, do not cite verbatim unless it is very funny or special (Mark Twain!). Jackwerth (2000) finds that… All references need to be collected in the bibliography. Use a nice common way of presenting the bibliography, say from the Journal of Finance. Please use the spellcheck and pay attention to formatting.
- All figures and tables need a title, a header, labels on the axes, and a description in the text.
- The main presentation should have spellchecked slides (powerpoint or tex). I would also do that for the discussion. Name the files in a smart way: “Jackwerth Topic Bonds.pptx” or “Jackwerth Discussion of Meier.pdf” - then you find them quickly on the desktop. Be careful to time the presentations so that you do not overrun (I will signal with little time cards when you have 5 minutes to go, 1 minute, 0 minutes. Please do not ignore me when I am waving those cards). Use at least two minutes per slide, better would even be say 4 minutes for each slide. Prepare slides which you can skip if you run out of time. No outlines, please: they take time and normally, they are not needed. The grading of the main paper is 12.5% for the formalities (language, formatting, references, layout, readability, structure, logical flow), 25% for the content, and 12.5% for the presentation.
- Discussion should be polite but to the point. Do not summarize the paper at lengths. You can have a short summary of just the one/two highlights. Then launch into your assessment. I would put small details (typos, formatting issues, small mistakes) at the end onto a slide and just tell the audience that you will communicate that with the author. Do not present that stuff. Just send the discussion to the author afterwards. The grading of the discussion is 12.5% for the 2-3 page write-up of the discussion (content and formalities) and 12.5% for the presentation.
- Please participate in the discussion. I give 25% of the grade based on that. Here, participation is more important than getting it completely right: even a stupid question is fine - most likely the rest of the room is also wondering!
- I normally prepare grades over the weekend and file them with Ms. Herbst on Monday. Check your online grade report on Monday, please.
Good luck and I am looking forward to a great seminar.
All the best,
Jens Jackwerth