How To Create A Scientific Presentation

1. Scientific Presentation 1

2. Today’s Agenda • Aims of Scientific Presentation • Scientific Presentation Skills • Planning a presentation • Making oral presentation • Handling questions 2

3. Aims of Scientific Presentation Importance of scientific presentation • Important means of communicating scientific information • A straight and interactive way to make your scientific outcomes understood • A basic skill for graduate research and your further research career 3

4. Aims of Scientific Presentation 4

5. Group discussion • What characterizes a good oral presentation • What characterizes a bad presentation

6. Aims of Scientific Presentation A good presentation … 6

7. Aims of Scientific Presentation A good presentation … • Audience can understand your work, be convinced and interested in your work, and inspired! • Content are well organized, clear, to the point • Good presentations reflect well on speaker! 7

8. Aims of Scientific Presentation A bad presentation … 8

9. Aims of Scientific Presentation A bad presentation … • Audience won’t see your work is great • Slides are neither understandable nor easy to see • Not good impression on speaker 9

10. Scientific Presentation Skills Workflow of Presentation Handle questions Plan presentation Make presentation 10

11. Scientific Presentation Skills • Planning a presentation • Thinking about the aim • Developing presentation structure • Preparing presentation slides • Making oral presentation • Structuring presentation • Conducting presentation • Handling questions • Answering questions • Acting as opponent 11

12. Planning a Presentation Thinking about the aim first Before preparing contents/slides of presentation, always think about what is the aim of your presentation 12

13. Planning a Presentation Ask yourself • What is the overall goal of my presentation? • To understand my research work • … • What is the title of my presentation? • Specific to my research work 13

14. Planning a Presentation Ask yourself • What are the main points /key messages I want to make to the audience? • 1, 2,3, … • I, II, III, … • a, b, c, … • To which details ? • Include enough detail to make presentation understandable • Not including so much details which fails to fit within the time assigned 14

15. Planning a Presentation Ask yourself • What do I want the audience to do after listening to my presentation? • Comments / advice / suggestions to my research • Who, where, and when am I making the presentation? • Who is the audience? How many people will there be in the audience? • What are the benefits to the audience of my speech? • What do the audience know of the subject? • How does this change my approach? • What aspects will they be interested in? • Where will the presentation take place? Equipment do you need like laptop, data storage, whiteboard, projector, laser pointer, etc? • What time am I presenting? How long will be my speech? • … 15

16. Planning a Presentation Thinking about the aim 16

17. Planning a Presentation Developing presentation structure • What to say • In what order 17

18. Planning a Presentation Developing presentation structure • Title • Outline • Introduction/background • Arguments/motivations • Aim and objectives • Approach • Results • Conclusions • Future work 18

19. Group discussion • What characterizes good presentation slides • How will you prepare presentation slides

20. Planning a Presentation Preparing presentation slides Principles of slide design • Convey key information • Contain appropriate level of details • Be clear, concise, readable and understandable • Be interesting and avoid boring • Avoid over stimulation 20

21. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (1) • Layout • Try to use a consistent layout on all (or most) of your slides to make your presentations easier to understand • Placing heading at the same position • Use bullets and font sizes in a consistent way • Placing figures in relation to text in a consistent way 21

22. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (2) • Font size • Be noted that you are close to the projector while your audience is far from the screen - make sure the audience sitting at the rear can read clearly • Font should never be smaller than 18 points; If the font size has reached less than 18 point, try to • Remove some of the text • Split up the text and put it on separate slides 22

23. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (3) • Use headings • Each slide has a short heading showing to which part of the presentation it belongs • Help audience to keep track of what aspect you are talking about at a particular moment 23

24. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (4) • Use short expressions • Do not put all the text, code, or explanation directly onto the slides • Use short expressions rather than sentences, but not be cryptic • Always explain shortened phrases on the slides 24

25. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (5) • Highlight/emphasis • If having a lot of text on a slide is unavoidable (e.g. showing quotes), highlight important words or concepts using color, boldface or underlining • Help audience to grasp the meaning quickly 25

26. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (6) • Use bullets well organized • Organize the levels of • Hierarchy do you think • You need to express • Your point • Use indentation and • Keep consistent across all slide • Decrease font size • With nested level of list 26

27. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (7) • Know slide boundaries • Audience cannot read text that runs off the side of the slides 27

28. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (8) • Color and contracts guidelines • White background, black text is clearest • Can use other dark text color • But be careful – do not be distracting • Make sure to not use light-on-white or white-on-light • Do not using glaring colors • If not an art major, do not have to get fancy 28

29. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (9) • Numbering slides • Put a small slide number in the lower right hand corner of each slide • The number should be small and sufficiently close to the edge of the slide not be confused with the contents • Any one asking questions after your presentation can refer to the slide number in the question 29

30. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (10) • Use visuals • Graphs, charts, maps, drawings, models, • Images, photos, video, films, etc Forms of visual 30

31. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (10) • Use visuals • To illustrate points easier to understand in visual form but difficult in a verbal form - reinforce ideas and facilitate interpretation • To focus the audience’s attention, involve and motivate the audience Why use visualisation techniques 31

32. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (10) • Use visuals • Graphs can also be enemy • Simplify graph and make audience easy to catch • Explain it - Pick a line, any line Use graphs properly 32

33. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (11) • Equations • Do you really need all those equations? • If you don’t need them, do not use them; complex equations make audience lost • If you do need them, keep it simple; give a plain-text description of it. Do not get into too much details 33

34. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (12) • Results • Do not show lots of results • Give a simple description/summary of it. Do not get into too much details • Graphs are helpful 34

35. Planning a Presentation Guidelines for making slides – (13) • Notes/manuscripts • Write down what you are going to say will • help practicing • Avoid losing points • Mainly used for practicing before presentation rather than during presentation 35

36. Planning a Presentation 36

37. Making Oral Presentation Structuring your presentation – (1) • A typical presentation has three parts • The beginning (Introduction) • The middle (body) • The end (conclusion) 37

38. Making Oral Presentation Structuring your presentation – (2) • The Beginning • Get the audience’s attention or signal the beginning • Greet audience • Introduce yourself 38

39. Making Oral Presentation Structuring your presentation – (3) • The Beginning (cont’d) • Give title and introduce subject • Give your objectives (purpose, aim, goal) • Announce your outline • Make a transition between the introduction and the body 39

40. Making Oral Presentation Structuring your presentation – (4) • The Middle • Sequencing your ideas • Keeping audience’s attention • Signposting or signaling where you are • Linking ideas, sections/making transitions 40

41. Making Oral Presentation Structuring your presentation – (5) • The End • Brief summary of what you have talked • A short conclusion • Thanks to audience for listening • A invitation to ask questions, make comments or open a discussion 41

42. Group discussion • What skills are important in making presentation?

43. Making Oral Presentation Guideline for conducting presentation – (1) • Your attitude • Are you interested and confident about your topic? • If no, get another one • If you, act like it • If you are not excited, you cannot expect audience to be. • Do not talk down to audience • You know more than them about this topic • They know more than you about other stuff • Practice makes perfect • Rehearse in front of other people and seek feedback 43

44. Making Oral Presentation Guideline for conducting presentation – (2) • Creating interest and establishing a relationship with audience • Arouse listeners’ interest from the beginning. E.g., In the introduction show how your subject affects or may affect their lives • Other techniques are: • Give an unusual fact or statistic • Use words like you, we, us, our • Illustrate with a real life story • Ask audience to do something, e.g. “raise your hand if you know” • Ask audience direct or rhetorical questions • Speaker should be lively and enthusiastic • Use a variety of media sources 44

45. Making Oral Presentation Guideline for conducting presentation – (3) • Talk to the audience and avoid dead man talking • Avoid talking to the floor, to the wall or to the screen • Avoid hiding behind the podium • Avoid back to the audience • Avoid staring at anyone • Avoid hand/face motionless 45

46. Making Oral Presentation Guideline for conducting presentation – (4) • Show the slides properly • Avoid showing a slide for just one or two second before going on to the next slide • Audience are new to your talk, give people sufficient time to grasp the information 46

47. Making Oral Presentation Guideline for conducting presentation – (5) • Explain things • Do not expect the audience to find out things for themselves by reading the slide • Avoid reading word by word from slides, and do not treat slides as part of manuscripts • Make your presentation more explanatory and clearly explain each slide what it shows • Give more explanations on visuals like graphs, tables, etc 47

48. Making Oral Presentation Guideline for conducting presentation – (5) • Explain things • Being precise in what you say helps the audience understand it quickly • Being concise is to use the briefest possible way of expressing you message, without losing any clarity 48

49. Making Oral Presentation Guideline for conducting presentation – (6) • Body language • Eye contact, facial expressions, posture, movements, gestures. • A nature part of communication • to clarify meaning; it is very visual • to vent nervousness • to maintain interest • to emphasize and regulate 49

50. Making Oral Presentation Guideline for conducting presentation – (6) • Body language (Cont’d) • Constant eye contact to keep audiences’ attention • Natural and friendly facial expressions and smile! • Posture: stand straight but relaxed • Movement and gesture: to indicate a change of focus, keep audience’s attention • Positive body language 50