Kelly indicates, “Thoroughly understand your topic of presentation. This avoids having to memorize words or phrases and allows for appropriate response to questions, which will, most likely arise. Photos are always good to give the audience a visualization of the site, equipment, or methods. Always state the importance/societal implications of the research.”
Mark suggests, “Don’t read from the slides! Know your information well enough that you don’t have to rely on the PowerPoint or notecards. If you use notecards, only use bullets. This way you will keep your audience engaged in what you are saying and you will not lose them as you go through your presentation. Also, it helps to relate your topic to a real life problem. This sparks interest and keep your audience interested.”
Anja has the following suggestions,
- Choose a consistent and professional background for your slides (don’t change it from one to another). In particular, do not put pictures as the background since it makes text hard to read
- Don’t put too much text on one slide. Simply put the main ideas and when you are presenting, you can elaborate. In particular, do not write out full sentences on a slide; you just want phrases
- Put pictures that accurately represent your study area and your methods so that people can visualize these better
- For the results, only put up data that show the main differences and in the discussion and conclusion, simply talk your most significant findings