Giving a formal presentation
Formal Presentations
Presentations give you the opportunity to share and
receive feedback on your ideas and research findings. This page offers
basic guidelines for organizing, designing, and delivering formal
presentations. It also provides links for further discussion and examples.
But before you get started…
Know your audience. As
an engineer, you will deliver formal presentations to different audiences who
have varying levels of technical knowledge: undergraduates, graduate students,
professors, university administrators, and supervisors and colleagues in
industry. Anticipate what your audience already knows about your topic. If you
are unsure how to address your audience, imagine having a conversation about
your topic with a member of the audience. You would employ different diction
and sentence structures to discuss your work with a fellow engineering student
than you would to explain it to a marketing student, wouldn’t you? Ideally, you
address audience members on a field of shared knowledge and then lead them to
greater understanding.
Organizing the Presentation
Most presentations have three distinct sections:
Introduction, Middle, and Conclusion.
1. Draft the Introduction.
Think like a journalist: the introduction should
explain the “who, what, when, where, and why” of your research. The
Middle will explain the “how.” Your title slide will convey much of this
information. Fig. 1 shows a title slide that includes the “who, what, and
where.” Make sure you attend to font size and color contrast so that your
names are visible. Also, spell out the names of your university and department
even though they may be obvious. If you receive external funding for your
research, your title slide should identify the source of your support. At this
stage, consider your Introduction as a rough draft. You will revise it later.
2. Concentrate on the Middle
and Conclusion.
Imagine
yourself at the end of your presentation. What exactly do you want the audience
to learn, or take away? Engineering communicators recommend that you
focus on 3-5 points per presentation (Doumont, 2009). Yet at a busy
conference, most of us can realistically remember only the main point of each
speaker (Alley, 2003, 153.). Prioritize your points in order of
importance. Make sure all the information you include in the Middle of
your presentation contributes to your most important point; too many
unnecessary details will veil the important information. Select the most
persuasive visual data to use as supporting evidence.
3. Organize your argument
and support.
First, avoid your computer (Grant, 2010). Instead,
write down your points on note cards and organize the cards, so you can see the
entire structure at a glance and make changes quickly. If you begin this work
on presentation software, you risk wasting time on slide design details. This
process will also help to remove unnecessary information that does not support
your main points. It will be earlier to throw away a notecard that you
scribbled on than to delete a slide that took you an hour to perfect.
Repetition helps you to emphasize important
information. If you want the audience to remember a point, allude to it early,
present the information as clearly as possible, and repeat your point in the
conclusion.
4. Finally, return to your
Introduction.
Review all the material in your draft, including your
title. Make sure your Introduction explains why your work is
important—and why we should pay attention to you. Also explain the larger
context of your work (or the “big picture”) for the least technically
knowledgeable member of the audience; that person could have the most power or
money to help you. If your presentation will last longer than 5 minutes,
provide an overview slide to outline the contents. You can use the overview to
explain your scope: what you will discuss and what you will not.
Designing the Slides
As an undergraduate, you will normally use PowerPoint for your slide designs, but you should know its limitations. Remember three principles:1. Slides should support your message, not act as a substitute. If you watch the talks on Ted.com you will notice that the focus is on the speaker, not the slides. Watch Dr. Kristina M. Johnson (Fig. 2), an engineer and the former Under Secretary for Energy, discuss the Clean Energy Economy for 20 minutes at the Institute of International and European Affairs. We do not need slides to understand what she is saying.
2. Visual presentations and written reports speak different languages. In other words, don’t simply cut-and-paste words and illustrations from your reports onto the slides. Consider how your presentation audience differs from your reader, and how you can use the language of visual presentation to advantage. Fig. 3 shows another slide from the student presentation featured above in Fig. 1. Here, the authors show at a glance how decision-making factors (in blue) match their more specific goals in designing the production facility.
3. Keep the slides simple. The more complex your material, the easier you should make the presentation for the reader. As Doumont puts it, “maximize signal-to-noise ratio” (2010). Neuroscientist Stephen Kosslyn observes that “audience members can only typically handle four ‘perceptual units’ (a word, phrase or picture) at a time” (Grant, 2010). Avoid long bullet lists, complex flow charts, and tables full of fine detail. Pay attention to the size of words and images. Alley recommends keeping the font side no smaller than 18 points (2003, 116). What if you need to show the fine detail? Make a handout.
Practicing the Delivery
Public speakers, politicians, and professional actors get nervous before stepping onto a stage, so why shouldn’t you? Arguably, some degree of “nervousness” works to your advantage in that it keeps you alert and energizes your performance. Still, learning to channel that energy takes time and practice. The delivery could make or break a presentation, so start planning it early. Prepare your delivery as follows:
1.
Create note cards.
2.
Practice in front of friends
3.
Visit the location if possible
4.
Remember
5. Anticipate
questions and challenges
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