How to Give a Research Presentation

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Preparing for and organizing the talk

  • Define one or two key take home messages that you want to audience to have:
This helps you focus on what is important
Your audience in general can only remember a couple of things and the rest will tend to be a blur
It helps you provide structure
  • Make an outline for the talk and submit it to me, or your advisor at least two weeks before the talk.
  • Practice it in front of peers
  • Don’t be defensive about criticism

A good talk must tell a story.

  • Provide a context- why is this important, why should the audience care!
  • Define the question that must be answered
  • Explain simple terms how you answered the questions
  • Present the data
  • Draw conclusions
  • Provide context

Some people don’t like this but I like to present an outline slide to people get the big picture right up front.

Know your audience

  • Having an understanding of what they know AND what they DON’T know
  • Think about the first year students and make sure that when you use jargon or new concepts that you spend the time to explain them clearly
Most of the audience is students and NOT faculty the talk should be geared towards EDUCATING the student and NOT impressing the faculty.
If you don’t explain it assume they won’t understand it

What to Include and NOT Include

  • DO NOT fall into the trap of filling time with loads of results
    • The audience doesn’t care how much time you put into getting a result, they care how important it is
    • Always indicate the significance of the results
    • Always show how they fit together with the rest of the

Striking a Balance

  • LESS is more-
  • Most review talks are not comprehensive reviews but rather a selective review
  • Most research talks should NOT be a comprehensive list of all experiments you do
  • Your reading should be extremely comprehensive but when you put the talk together pick and choose carefully what you want to present
  • Ask yourself if I leave this out will people still understand the talk- if yes then leave it out
  • Applies to word, slides, etc

Basic Procedures

  • Plan on using about 0.7 slides per minute of talk.
  • As you get more experienced you can use more particularly if the slides are of relatively low information content
  • 20-25% of time should introduction for those have never seen anything about the field
  • Define terms-minimize abbreviations
  • If you use abbreviations or reagents know what they are and how they work.
  • Avoid jargon, group slang.
  • If your talk has parts think about have several summary slides one for each part.

About slides

  • First concentrate on content
    • For each slide define the key take home message.
    • Think about how one slide leads into the next slide
  • Then concentrate on artistry; a beautiful presentation that says nothing is of little value.
    • Make sure that color choices, fonts and graphics are readily readable from back of room
    • Avoid gratuitous animation
  • When possible minimize the information on a given slide.
  • It is often better to use two slides with half as much information on each slide

Things to Remember When Delivering the Talk

  • Talk to the audience.
  • Think about looking at a single person in the eye as you talk.
  • Make an effort to talk slowly, and clearly
    • Hear each word
    • Take a breadth
  • Ask yourself if you are looking at the screen
  • Keep the laser pointer fixed in space as much as possible
    • When possible avoid shining it into the audience and blinding them!
  • Incorporate a bit of humor (even feeble self deprecating humor)- Don’t be glib.
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