An Analysis of the Guru Lectures - Essay Example

?An analysis of Lecture and Lecture Introduction The report presents a comparative review of two lectures from the Guru Lectures series and recommends some improvement to the organizer of the Guru Lectures, e-skills community required to be incorporated in their forth coming series. This report will first critically review the Lecture No. 1 “Can IS save the Public Services” and then the Lecture No. 10, “Technology in the Prediction of Weather”. Second half of this report will draw a conclusion on the use of techniques and contents in both lectures. Finally, some recommendations will be presented towards the end of the report. 2. Can IS Save the Public Services a. Topic Overview The topic of the lecture was quite interesting and catches the attention of listener instantly. Moreover the facts and examples given during the course of presentation were closely connected to the public interest. Generic conclusions were drawn about various aspects of the public Information Systems towards the end of the lecture. The lecture was formatted as a combination of presentation with background audio of the presenter. The topic actually talks about the development of Information systems in public domain and the value they deliver to the public. The lecturer has also pointed out some important methods for decision maker to ensure attainment of perceived value from public Information Systems. b. Level and Amount of Information The topic of the presentation was generic in nature and therefore amount and level of information can be questioned. There were several aspects of the public information systems that could be discussed but were not covered in the presentation. This gives a feel of incompleteness and deficiency of the information on the given topic. The issue further highlighted the knowledge gape and lack of preparations. Even the lecturer did not clearly mention the scope of his presentation in the beginning. There logical development of the ideas was not of high standard and it seems that topic was beefed up with material from here and there to make a point. The speaker initially talked about the area where information systems are implemented in public sector but the list of these sectors was not comprehensive and only pointed out some major areas. Then speaker straightway jumped to the discussion on how these systems were outsourced and what problems were faced by the commissioning authority and the outsourced company. Here the speaker concluded that the bidding process is not a correct procedure for outsourcing information systems development in public sector. The bidders try to bid at lowest rate to win the bid, later he find it hard to fulfill the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and the either he quits or public could not get the value out of the system it was conceived with. This was followed by an appropriate example of a private firm EDS who suffered a more than12 billion lose on this account. An interesting comparison was drawn on how much the information system differs depending on the organizational structure of the department commissioning these systems. (Chris, 2010) c. Organization of Information There is enough room for improvement in the organization of information and we can note many inaccuracies in the presentation. On a slide with the title of “Can we look abroad for help” there was no discussion on external bidders for the development of information systems. Some slide looked a little crowded and packet. It was quite difficult for the audience to read the data at these slides and to focus on what the speaker was talking about. Moreover, reading text was not helpful in getting to the point what the lecturer was trying to deliver. Often reading the text at the slide resulted in mismatch of the point being talked about. d. Presentation Skills Beyond the contents of the lecture, the presentation and delivery of the contents was not professionally elevated. In the opening of the lecture there were few unrecognizable voices and audience could see the first slide of the presentation before Dr. Bristol Chris Tofts started to deliver his lecture. This creates a sort of frustration and confusion among the audience whether the presentation has started or not. Secondly, at the start of presentation no outline or sequence of the presentation was presented. The audience never knew how the presentation will proceed and discuss the topic of the presentation “Can IS save Public Services?” The speaker used the questioning technique quite frequently to keep the audience involved, although there was little and unorganized response from the audience. The speaker also used few light sentences to spread laughter and to get the attention back. Another good thing about the lecturer was its referencing. Books, articles and quotation were properly used and the audiences were told where the full article could be found. 3. Technology in the Prediction of the Weather a. Topic Overview Lecture No 10, “Technology in the Prediction of the Weather” was the second lecture chosen for the comparative study. Mr. Steve Foreman the Chief Met Officer at Aham Mallin, Infrastructure, UK was the speaker at the occasion. The topic has a vast interest zone in these days all over the world. People want to know how actually these weather and climate forecasts are made and how far technology plays a role at met office. Steve Foreman began the proceedings confidently when formally invited to deliver his presentation. b. Level and Amount of Information The information presented in the lecture was of very high standard. Although, the topic was quite vast but the information was professionally organize to answer all major question that may rise in the mind of the listener. The first quarter of the presentation was covered in introducing various roles and areas where met office was operating. The next quarter cover the technology part telling how exactly these forecasts were produced. The use of technology including the use of super computers and satellite data is elaborated in this section of the presentation. Useful comparisons were drawn to the highlight the strength and benefits the technological advancement has brought into the forecasts of met office. The forecast depends heavily on computing powers because the probabilistic data and the extraction of accurate results from multiple forecasts through the use of various models and statistical calculations requires heavy and fast processing powers. The third quarter of the presentation introduced the IT Department in met office. The section presented supercomputer being used along with infrastructure devices place providing 24/7 high availability to ensure forecasting services around the globe and across the borders. Various processing, storage and communication capabilities of the department were presented skillfully. The fourth and final quarter of the lecture presented the met office future vision and challenges. It includes the commissioning of state of the art IBM Supercomputer, the enhancement of storage capacity, enhancement of interactive web application, network services etc. (Foreman, 2011) c. Organization of Information There was a fine organization of information throughout the lecture and everything looked quite planned and well rehearsed. The presentation was implicitly divided into four sections and each section threw some light on the topic under consideration. The lecture was formatted rather traditionally and Steve initially talked about the history of met office in UK. The history covered all the major milestones of met office from its foundation in 1853 in very brief and well structured single slide. Steve introduced various occasion where met predictions played a role in saving the humanity locally as well as globally. d. Presentation Skills Steve Foreman style of delivery was confident and showed his grip and research on the subject. There were no diversion in the flow of presentation and the audiences were gradually and smoothly taken to the desired point of understanding and comprehension. The use of gesture by Steve was quite appropriate and added visual aid to the facts and data. The presentation was professionally structured to include graphics and data for better understanding of the topic. The use of animation in displaying these graphics helped the speaker to establish a close coordination between his speech and the presentation. The animation was perfectly done to achieve better visual effect and synchronization between the speaker and displayed information. Use of text callouts made the animation even more intelligible. The presentation was produced using special software (may be MS Producer) which presented the video and the presentation slides concurrently in separate panes and the listener feels comfortable to navigate within and beyond the presentation during lecture. There was too much light in the presentation room initially which was later on adjusted on audience prompt. 4. Conclusion There is a clear difference in the level of information and presentation of the two lectures. The first lecture was loosely organized and the presenter could not leave an impact over the audiences. The second lecture was beautifully organized and the information was technically sound and enlightening. Steve presented these information in a confident manner which definitely left an impact on the audiences. This underlines the importance of information organization, communication skills, authenticity and accuracy of the information being presented. Recommendations Following recommendations are formulated for the next series of the lecture in order to make them more effective and useful; a. The lecture should be started with one or two introductory slides in which the host should introduce the lecturer and the topic of the lecture along with the occasion or the date at which the lecture was delivered. b. A slide with the sequence of slides should be given at the beginning of the presentation to give an overview of the topics to be discussed in the presentation. c. The question answer session is required to be improved by providing a audience voice a better quality, because the questions raised by audience were very hard to be heard. This raises frustration among the listener of the video lecture. d. The presentation standards are required to be raised to impart audience a better understanding of lecture material. e. Better editing of the audio and video can improve the quality of lectures and audience will have a better listening experience. f. The level of information being presented should be cross checked by multiple domain experts to inculcate depth and authenticity. g. Presentation skills are required to be stressed even harder to ensure compliance. References Chirs Bristol Tofts 2010, “Can IS save the Public Services”, e-skills community, viewed 04 May, 2011, Foreman Steve 2011, “Technology in the Prediction of Weather”, e-skills community, viewed 05 May, Read More