Paper presentation is one of the most popular events at engineering college technical symposiums. In paper presentations, students give oral and visual presentations of engineering research they have done. Paper presentations may be followed by question and answer periods, where students respond to questions from an audience of their peers. Paper presentations may be the sole or primary focus of a symposium, or one among many symposium events.
Competitive events at technical symposiums may include quiz games, design challenges, and debugging challenges. Quiz games typically involve teams of students being given problems to solve, with the highest scoring team being declared the winner. Design challenges get teams to test their projects against one another, one example being a robotics contest where teams pit their machines against one another in a race around a track. Debugging challenges get individual students to work the bugs out of a faulty piece of code, with the first competitor to fix the code being declared the winner.
Business and marketing events at technical symposiums offer students the opportunity to present business and marketing ideas for engineering start-ups. These events are technical in the sense that students must present product ideas that conform to engineering standards, in addition to demonstrating their business and marketing plan. Business and marketing events can be popular with engineering students with an enterprising streak.
Project presentation is much like paper presentation, except the presentation is about a practical project rather than an academic paper. At project presentations, students may present building designs, software scripts, synthesized compounds or any other project the students may have worked on. Project presentations consist of oral and demonstrative components; the student explains his project, and presents blueprints or models.
Programming is a common event at technical symposiums. At a programming event, students might come together to debug a large piece of code, or write a program that performs a predetermined function. Programming events give students the opportunity to practice their coding skills and work together as a team to achieve a common goal. They are valuable as skill-development and team-building activities.