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Answer 1

The Key elements of a successful group presentation are

The Introduction

In any venue, the key to a good presentation is an adequate introduction. Therefore, plan to spend a good deal of your time and energy thinking through, and presenting, the background to the paper, not the paper itself. There is a tendency to skimp on the introduction, especially when the work is not your own. This reduces the effectiveness of the presentation, in part because an uninformed audience will not have the information they need to be interested in learning about the work. Also, you may have to spend a lot of time backtracking when you start getting interrupted with the obvious logical questions that you failed to address at the start, either before you show the data, or worse, when you are trying to discuss the significance of the work. Start by identifying the general area, describe the immediate antecedents to the paper, describing specific observations, not just conclusions, and specify what question is being addressed in this particular paper. This may be accomplished in a couple of minutes, or (more commonly) may take 10 minutes, or even more, depending on how obvious (or arcane) the work to be discussed is(Kipping, 2000, pp. 4-12).

The System

Nobody ever cares about the whole Methods section unless they intend to repeat the work themselves. You should specify in generic terms what measurements were made (IP, fluorescence microscopy, Westerns, Northerns, etc.), what system was used, and you should describe briefly any really unusual reagents or methods. You should give only enough detail so that the data will make sense, no more. The level of detail depends on the interpretations that will come out of the work. The main exception is when you suspect a significant problem with the interpretation of the data that can only be appreciated by understanding a specific detail of the methods.

The Data

The most common mistake made in journal club is presenting every experiment in the paper. This is almost always a bad idea, and will be strongly discouraged. Controls, or experiments that are not central to supporting the conclusions, should be summarized, but not shown (e.g., "In figures 1 and 2, the sensitivity of the assay is established. Moving on to Figure 3…"). Controls that are an integral part of a significant experiment of course will be shown, and should be pointed out.. If the experiments are straightforward, they need not take a great deal of time to present, but explain them in enough detail to make sense to people who work in other areas, not just the specialists. Specify the variables tested and the controls. Offer an interpretation of each experiment as soon as you present it. If you believe the authors' interpretation, describe it. You don't want to get into a major philosophical discussion over each experiment as you present it.

The Conclusions

Before you go on to discuss the significance of the work, summarize again the conclusions drawn from the ...