Do S and Dont S for a Presentation

DO’S AND DONT’S FOR PRESENTATIONS

Prof. Jon D. Laman, Dept. Immunology Erasmus MC Rotterdam November 2010

In preparation of your presentation, take a look at the self-evaluation forms for presentations (green folder in the library on the 8th floor). It provides a good basic structure to analyse your presentation and for self-evaluation afterwards. There are two targets to take into account: yourself, and the audience, and the goals of the talk differ for these two targets.

CONTROL THE ENVIRONMENT

Consider what to wearand choose wisely.
Take a good look at the venue where you will be giving your presentation, well ahead of time.
Before your presentation, make sure you know how the computer, beamer, pointer and microphone work. Make sure people in the back will be able to hear you.
Check entrance to the stage and the stand. Make sure that people are able to see your face, even behind a stand with an open laptop.
Make sure you have a free pathway without any obstacles, so you can move as needed and be actively moving.
Decide whether you want to stand on the left or right side of the screen: do not cross your pointer-arm for your body.
Make sure to know how the lights work to control the light as required. Obviously a pitch dark room will put your audience to sleep. If necessary you could ask a colleague to control the light on your indication, for example when you have fluorescence images.

KEEP YOUR AUDIENCE IN MIND

Rule number one of didactics: connect to the pre-existing knowledge of the audience

So with a very mixed audience keep your own goals in mind: is it acceptable that for the more difficult parts of my presentation 20% of the audience will not be able to understand the details, but will be able to understand the more general lines of my story. Give your audience multiple chances to get back into the story, even if parts are too difficult.

You know every detail and all the background of what you are presenting, but for the audience a lot or even everything is new. They need time to digest.
Short term memory has around 7 slots, after which a summary, categorization, reflection, or repetition is necessary.
Talk SLOW. If it feels too slow for your, it will probably be just right for your audience.
For advanced speakers: try to make eye contact with people in different locations in the room. Looking at people directly (re)activates them.

STRUCTURE

A presentation consists of what, why, how, what is found, conclusion and future perspectives.
Shortly summarize what state of the art in the field is. Many speakers forget to give a short overview of the current knowledge (with key references), and the important gaps in our knowledge, so that the importance and actuality of the subject and the research questions are unclear.
Talk 30 to 40 minutes at most.
Restrict your message to a few concrete points.
Help the audience to get oriented in your presentation: start with an overview of the structure of your presentation (talk outline) and get back to it every once in a while.
Your outline should not contain more than 5 points, and should not be noted as Intro, M+M, Results, Discussion, since this has no added value.
Put down a clear hypothesis (so no question mark or ‘may’ and ‘could’), and formulate the resulting research questions. Reconnect to the original hypothesis and research questions at the end of your talk. This prevents the presentation coming across as a random walk.
The experimental methods should be summarized in one or only a few slides under the heading of ‘experimental design’ or ‘study design’ (so not M+M), for instance with flow chart and techniques.
When unknown to the audience, explain the techniques and principles briefly and systematically.
Repeat the important points of your presentation in different words. This paraphrasing gives audience additional opportunity to digest register.
Try to make clear why your work is important for your audience.
End with the most important conclusions and future directions.
Future directions should not be: test more patients, repeat experiments. But instead: what are the most important future actions and experiments and predict ‘where will the gold be’.

PRESENTATION

Presentation consists of two halves - not in time, but in importance:

the talk itself, and the discussion

So keep the second half in mind and distribute your energy. Allow yourself a mini-break, but make sure you are not refractory when the first question comes.

Stand up while presenting, do not sit down.
Talk clearly, in short sentences, with your face to the audience, even when you’re pointing out something on the screen.
Be mobile (but not agitated-restless) and use the floor. You can easily walk up to the screen and point or emphasize something with both hands. Walk one or more steps to someone asking a question.
Do not apologize for the quality of images, your experiment or something else. You chose beforehand what you were going the present,so canstand for it.
Use your hands to clarify and emphasize things. Keeping hands in your pockets for longer than a bit does not come across very well.
Do not laugh out of insecurity.
An (unpleasant) rule: females with higher pitched voices are taken less serious than with lower voices.
Play around with questions to introduce new slides and items: So what about …? How did we go about addressing this?
Use a cup of water, not a bottle, and TAKE TIME to drink. These are not only your small breaksat logical points in the presentation, but also for the audience. So for example, outline your hypothesis and research questions and let the audience digest and consider this while you are drinking.
Do not hold the cup too long as a comforting item during either the presentation or discussion.
Make a careful distinction for yourself between: your Data, Interpretation, Inference and Speculation.
During the discussion, consider to do a couple of steps towards person asking a question. Keep in mind that the discussion should not become a one on one, but should be heard by entire audience.
In the discussion part, do the question-triage/analysis: JDL explains this one on one (approximately 20 minutes).

USE OF PPT

Use a white background, and Erasmus MC format with single line of squares on top and bottom of slides, and Erasmus signature logo lower right.
Where useful, let go off the normal format (omit background graphics), if you need space for figure or microphotography.
Consider the space used for information on a slide as percentage of the total available space.
Use a slide or slide item for every part of your presentation. Talking without visual support decreases the attention quickly. Go easy on animations.
The audience automatically wants to read everything on your slide. Use a maximum of 8 lines per slide. Do not use full sentences but keywords and bullet points. Get rid of every letter and point you don’t need, allowing for easy reading.
List ALL the items you want to mention, for example with a single keyword. In this way you don’t have to rely on your memory.
Always make slides in English.
Give your sheets and slides a good title, this is crucial. Title should give bottom line of the slide, so that even when an audience member was briefly distracted, he can still recoup the essentials.
Check your sheets and slides for grammar and typos.
Avoid too many sheets with graphs and tables; show representative experiments.
Always point with a pointer, stick or even a pen on an overhead projector, but never with a finger.
If necessary, add a slide with definitions.
Summarize the information of a slide: “Basic message of this slide is…”.
Focus the attention on part of the information: “I would like you to focus here on…”. And only list information that is relevant, obviously.
Try to start and end series of photomicrographs with a good, attractive picture: esthetically attractive, well enlarged, screen filling.
Consider to have extra copy of your slide outlining your findings in a model, or as a listing, after your final slide. It helps to kickstart and focus the discussion.
Bring extra slides that may be useful in the discussion.