Towards the end of the course (about 2 - 3 sessions) selected students will do slide presentation on the policy experience of their countries (or countries in which they have experience). Details of the presentation are given below.

Who will present?

Any volunteers? If you want to do a presentation about your country experience, you should contact the instructors as soon as possible. If there are no or too few volunteers, we will nominate some of you. The number of students who will present will is about 4 to 8, and varies from year to year depending on time slots and number of volunteers. Everyone shall present if the total number of students is sufficiently small.

Grading for presentation

You will receive positive points if the presentation is good but negative points if poor. The points range from -50 to +50. Unless you do extremely poorly, you can generally expect positive points (only two students got negative points in the long history of this course, and they were unprepared and really bad). If you choose not to present, you will automatically get zero points for presentation (safe, but boring).

Presentation style

Use PowerPoint slides. The number of slides should not exceed 25 pages, including the cover page.

Quality, not quantity, of the presentation will be evaluated. Do not use excessively small fonts to squeeze too much information in one slide. Speak to the audience using your slides, and avoid reading monotonously out of your slides.

Send the completed slide file to instructors in advance (deadline: one day before the presentation - but we expect you to send us preliminary versions earlier for comment and revision). Reduce the memory size of copied photos and diagrams so the file will not be too heavy (if you don't know how, ask some friend who knows).

Exact time for presentation will  depend on how many students will present (2 or 3 students per each 90-minute session). Presentation will be followed by discussion. We will stop your presentation when the allotted time ends to allow sufficient time for interaction among students.

Topic and contents

The topic should be based on your experience or deep knowledge in the country of your expertise, and cover one of the following sectors: (i) macroeconomy; (ii) development planning; (iii) infrastructure; (iv) social policy or social service delivery; (v) industrial or agricultural strategy; (vi) science, technology and innovation; (vii) external policy (trade, FDI, currency, etc); (viii) financial policy; (ix) ODA and coping with donor community. If you wish to choose other topics, please talk to the instructors first.

Be well-focused and concrete. Discuss one particular policy action or program in the chosen sector, instead of describing a general problem in your country. Include tables and graphics to give concrete facts and data.

Do not describe just the problem, but analyze why it arises, who are the key players in this policy landscape, what are their interests, responsibility, authority, actions, etc. This course deals with HOW different governments solves or does not solve policy problems, not just WHAT the problem is. Include leadership, institutional, political, relational and administrative aspects of policy design and implementation.

Recommended  structure

1/ A cover page showing title, your name, student ID#, country, and affiliation (1 page).

2/ Overview of your chosen sector (here, sector refers to problem areas such as health, industry, planning, transport, etc), its current situation and issues (2-3 pages).

3/ In the main part, select one policy or project within this sector, and analyze how this policy is formulated and why it is effective or not effective. Identify the origin of policy initiative, main actors, their goals and incentives, how they interact, synergy and conflicts among stakeholders, what results they bring, etc. Refer to models, concepts or international experiences introduced in the class when applicable.

You may wish to consult the instructors as you prepare your slides to make sure your presentation meets our requirements.

Past student presentations are available for your reference. Please note that not all of them are perfect. You should try to do better than past students: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022