Top Tips for Effective Oral Presentations
1)Know your main message
Each presentation should have one specific main message. The one thing you want your audience to walk away knowing. Know what that message is and create a story (your supporting evidence) around it.
2)Less text on slides
Everyone says it. What is the biggest presentation mistake? ‘A presentation with too much text on the Power Points (that the presenter then reads!)’. But people keep doing it. It you have too much text on your slides; you will look at it and read your presentation out. You won’t be able to help it. People can read in their head faster than you can read out loud. Less text, more images. Remember you don’t need to say everything. A presentation is an advertisement for your research. If they want to know everything they can talk to you or read your publications.
3)Look at people
There’s no cheating here. You cannot just stare at the back above everyone’s head, or quickly scan across the room. People can tell. It can seem scary to make eye contact, but actually once you do it tends to make you feel better and helps you present more clearly.
4)Think about your audience
Your presentation is for your audience, not for yourself. Think about what they will care about most. What do they know well? You don’t need to talk about it at length. What may they not of heard before? You need to make sure you explain in a way that will make them not only understand, but also care. If your message fits with what your audience cares about, it will be a success
5)Watch your timing
It is very common for people to think they can talk about more than they actually can in the time they have for a presentation. In general, each slide will take at least a minute (average…..not exact!). This means for a 10 minute presentation you probably don’t want more than 8-10 slides. Practice to see how long it really takes!
6)Take care with your graphs
Your graphs show your data, the most important part of your presentation. Take time and care to make your graphs clear. Scientists want to see what your data looks like. They want to understand it. Make sure all axes are labelled and the detail is visible from the back of the room. Don’t just use graphs from publications. Often these are too busy to be clear for a presentation. It will be more effective if you simplify graphs for a presentation, so that one main point is shown on them at a time. For very complicated data, using animations to build up the graph over time may be a good technique (if you do this be aware that it will take much longer to talk through than 1 minute!).
7)Develop your own presentation style
Your voice, pace, pause and body language are all part of your personal presentation style. It is important that you develop your own style and present in a way that feels comfortable and natural. Learn how to project your voice, and how to use a microphone effectively. Pay attention to your natural pace. Do you speed up when you are nervous? If so, remembering to pause at certain intervals will help your audience catch up. Make sure you don’t lock your knees and stay very stiff, but instead move naturally and use hand gestures naturally for emphasis. Recording yourself presenting and watching it is a good way to learn how to improve your presentation style.
8)Get them interested from the beginning
Many research talks start with lengthy reviews of the literature. In general this is quite boring. Although it is important to situate your research in the literature, what is most important is to make the audience know WHY your research is important. What is your research question and how will it move your field forward. Don’t cite a huge number of papers, just the critical ones that show why your research is so important.
9)Drive home your main message at the end
Conclusions are important. They are the last thing your audience hears. This is an ideal time to get your main message across. Make it short and snappy, and make sure they understand why your research is important!
10)Practice!
The only way to become a good presenter is to practice. Reflect on how you did and constantly work to improve.