presentation skills research paper

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Body language and movement, verbal delivery.

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Effective presentation skills

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Robert Dolan, Effective presentation skills, FEMS Microbiology Letters , Volume 364, Issue 24, December 2017, fnx235, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fnx235

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Most PhD's will have a presentation component during the interview process, as well as presenting their work at conferences. This article will provide guidance on how to develop relevant content and effectively deliver it to your audience.

Most organizations list communication skills as one of their most critical issues…and presentation skills are a large component of communications. Presentation skills are crucial to almost every aspect of academic/business life, from meetings, interviews and conferences to trade shows and job fairs. Often times, leadership and presentation skills go hand in hand. NACE Survey 2016 - Ability to communicate verbally (internally and externally) ranked 4.63/5.0 and was the #1 skill employers want. The information provided in this article is designed to provide tips and strategies for delivering an effective presentation, and one that aligns the speaker with the audience.

What type of speaker are you?

Facts and fears of public speaking.

Your blueprint for delivery.

Avoider —You do everything possible to escape from having to get in front of an audience.

Resister —You may have to speak, but you never encourage it.

Accepter —You’ll give presentations but don’t seek those opportunities. Sometimes you feel good about a presentation you gave.

Seeker —Looks for opportunities to speak. Finds the anxiety a stimulant that fuels enthusiasm during a presentation.

Public speaking can create anxiety and fear in many people. Dale Carnegie has a free e-book that provides tips and advice on how to minimize these fears www.dalecarnegie.com/Free-eBook

People are caught between their fear and the fact that many employers expect them to demonstrate good verbal communication skills.

Most interviews by PhD’s have a presentation component.

Academic interviews always have a presentation component.

If your job doesn’t demand presentation skills, odds are that you’ll need them in your next job

Develop your blueprint for delivery:

Information by itself can be boring, unless it's unique or unusual. Conveying it through stories, gestures and analogies make it interesting. A large portion of the impact of communications rests on how you look and sound, not only on what you say. Having good presentation skills allows you to make the most out of your first impression, especially at conferences and job interviews. As you plan your presentation put yourself in the shoes of the audience.

Values …What is important to them?

Needs …What information do they want?

Constraints …Understand their level of knowledge on the subject and target them appropriately.

Demographics …Size of audience and location may influence the presentation. For example, a large auditorium may be more formal and less personal than a presentation to your team or lab mates in a less formal setting.

Structure—Introduction, Content and Conclusion

Body Language and Movement

Verbal Delivery

Introduction

Build rapport with audience (easier in a smaller less formal setting).

State preference for questions—during or after?

Set stage: provide agenda, objective and intended outcomes

Introduce yourself providing your name, role and function. Let the audience know the agenda, your objectives and set their expectations. Give them a reason to listen and make an explicit benefit statement, essentially what's in it for them. Finally, let them know how you will accomplish your objective by setting the agenda and providing an outline of what will be covered.

Deliver your message logically and structured.

Use appropriate anecdotes and examples.

Illustrate and emphasize key points by using color schemes or animations.

Establish credibility, possibly citing references or publications.

Structure your presentation to maximize delivery. Deliver the main idea and communicate to the audience what your intended outcome will be. Transition well through the subject matter and move through your presentation by using phrases such as; ‘now we will review…’ or ‘if there are no more questions, we will now move onto…’ Be flexible and on course. If needed, use examples not in the presentation to emphasize a point, but don’t get side tracked. Stay on course by using phrases such as ‘let's get back to…’ Occasionally, reiterate the benefits of the content and the main idea of your presentation.

Restate the main objective and key supporting points

For Q&A: ‘Who wants more details?’ (Not, ‘any questions?’)

Prompting for questions: ‘A question I often hear is…’

Summarize the main elements of your presentation as they relate to the original objective. If applicable, highlight a key point or crucial element for the audience to take away. Signal the end is near…‘to wrap up’ or ‘to sum up’. Clearly articulate the next steps, actions or practical recommendations. Thank the audience and solicit final questions.

Your non-verbal communications are key elements of your presentation. They are composed of open body posture, eye contact, facial expressions, hand gestures, posture and space between you and the audience.

Stand firmly and move deliberately. Do not sway or shift.

Move at appropriate times during presentation (e.g. move during transitions or to emphasize a point).

Stand where you can see everyone and do not block the visuals/screen.

Decide on a resting position for hands (should feel and look comfortable).

Gestures should be natural and follow what you are saying.

Hand movement can emphasize your point.

Make gestures strong and crisp…ok to use both arms/hands.

Keep hands away from face.

When pointing to the screen, do so deliberately. Do not wave and face the audience to speak

Look at audience's faces, not above their heads.

If an interview or business meeting…look at the decision makers as well as everyone else.

Look at faces for 3–5 seconds and then move on to the next person.

Do not look away from the audience for more than 10 seconds.

Looking at a person keeps them engaged.

Looking at their faces tells you how your delivery and topic is being received by the audience. The audience's body language may show interest, acceptance, openness, boredom, hostility, disapproval and neutrality. Read the audience and adjust where and if appropriate to keep them engaged. For example, if they seem bored inject an interesting anecdote or story to trigger more interest. If they appear to disapprove, ask for questions or comments to better understand how you might adjust your delivery and content if applicable.

Use active rather than passive verbs.

Avoid technical terms, unless you know the audience is familiar with them.

Always use your own words and phrases.

Cut out jargon/slang words.

Look at your audience and use vocal techniques to catch their attention. Consider changing your pace or volume, use a longer than normal pause between key points, and change the pitch or inflection of your voice if needed. Consider taking a drink of water to force yourself to pause or slowdown. View the audience as a group of individual people, so address them as if they were a single person.

Tips for reducing anxiety

If you experience nervousness before your presentation, as most people do, consider the following.

Be Organized —Knowing that your presentation and thoughts are well organized will give you confidence.

Visualize —Imagine delivering your presentation with enthusiasm and leaving the room knowing that you did a good job.

Practice —All successful speakers rehearse their presentations. Either do it alone, with your team, or video tape yourself and review your performance after. Another tip is to make contact before your talk. If possible, speak with the audience before your presentation begins; however, not always possible with a large audience. Walk up to them and thank them in advance for inviting you to speak today.

Movement —Speakers who stand in one spot may experience tension. In order to relax, move in a purposeful manner and use upper body gestures to make points.

Eye Contact —Make your presentation a one-on-one conversation. Build rapport by making it personal and personable. Use words such as ‘ we ’ , ‘ our ’, ‘ us ’ . Eye contact helps you relax because you become less isolated from the audience.

Personal appearance

Clothes should fit well, not too tight. Consider wearing more professional business-like attire. Find two to three colors that work well for you. Conservative colors, such as black, blue, gray and brown, seem to be the safest bet when presenting or meeting someone for the first time in a professional setting. Depending upon the audience, a sport coat and well-matched dress slacks are fine. Generally, try to avoid bright reds, oranges and whites, since these tend to draw attention away from your face. Avoid jewelry that sparkles, dangles or makes noise. Use subtle accessories to compliment your outfit.

Other resources: www.toastmasters.org https://www.skillsyouneed.com/present/presentation-tips.html

https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/evaluation/documents/effective-presentations-a-toolkit-for-engaging-an-audience

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• CAREER GUIDE
• 12 May 2021

Good presentation skills benefit careers — and science

• David Rubenson 0

David Rubenson is the director of the scientific-communications firm No Bad Slides ( nobadslides.com ) in Los Angeles, California.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

You have full access to this article via your institution.

A better presentation culture can save the audience and the larger scientific world valuable time and effort. Credit: Shutterstock

In my experience as a presentation coach for biomedical researchers, I have heard many complaints about talks they attend: too much detail, too many opaque visuals, too many slides, too rushed for questions and so on. Given the time scientists spend attending presentations, both in the pandemic’s virtual world and in the ‘face-to-face’ one, addressing these complaints would seem to be an important challenge.

I’m dispirited that being trained in presentation skills, or at least taking more time to prepare presentations, is often not a high priority for researchers or academic departments. Many scientists feel that time spent improving presentations detracts from research or clocking up the numbers that directly affect career advancement — such as articles published and the amount of grant funding secured. Add in the pressing, and sometimes overwhelming, bureaucratic burdens associated with working at a major biomedical research institute, and scientists can simply be too busy to think about changing the status quo.

Improving presentations can indeed be time-consuming. But there are compelling reasons for researchers to put this near the top of their to-do list.

You’re probably not as good a presenter as you think you are

Many scientists see problems in colleagues’ presentations, but not their own. Having given many lousy presentations, I know that it is all too easy to receive (and accept) plaudits; audiences want to be polite. However, this makes it difficult to get an accurate assessment of how well you have communicated your message.

Why your scientific presentation should not be adapted from a journal article

With few exceptions, biomedical research presentations are less effective than the speaker would believe. And with few exceptions, researchers have little appreciation of what makes for a good presentation. Formal training in presentation techniques (see ‘What do scientists need to learn?’) would help to alleviate these problems.

Improving a presentation can help you think about your own research

A well-designed presentation is not a ‘data dump’ or an exercise in advanced PowerPoint techniques. It is a coherent argument that can be understood by scientists in related fields. Designing a good presentation forces a researcher to step back from laboratory procedures and organize data into themes; it’s an effective way to consider your research in its entirety.

You might get insights from the audience

Overly detailed presentations typically fill a speaker’s time slot, leaving little opportunity for the audience to ask questions. A comprehensible and focused presentation should elicit probing questions and allow audience members to suggest how their tools and methods might apply to the speaker’s research question.

Many have suggested that multidisciplinary collaborations, such as with engineers and physical scientists, are essential for solving complex problems in biomedicine. Such innovative partnerships will emerge only if research is communicated clearly to a broad range of potential collaborators.

It might improve your grant writing

Many grant applications suffer from the same problem as scientific presentations — too much detail and a lack of clearly articulated themes. A well-designed presentation can be a great way to structure a compelling grant application: by working on one, you’re often able to improve the other.

It might help you speak to important, ‘less-expert’ audiences

As their career advances, it is not uncommon for scientists to increasingly have to address audiences outside their speciality. These might include department heads, deans, philanthropic foundations, individual donors, patient groups and the media. Communicating effectively with scientific colleagues is a prerequisite for reaching these audiences.

Collection: Conferences

Better presentations mean better science

An individual might not want to spend 5 hours improving their hour-long presentation, but 50 audience members might collectively waste 50 hours listening to that individual’s mediocre effort. This disparity shows that individual incentives aren’t always aligned with society’s scientific goals. An effective presentation can enhance the research and critical-thinking skills of the audience, in addition to what it does for the speaker.

What do scientists need to learn?

Formal training in scientific presentation techniques should differ significantly from programmes that stress the nuances of public speaking.

The first priority should be to master basic presentation concepts, including:

• How to build a concise scientific narrative.

• Understanding the limitations of slides and presentations.

• Understanding the audience’s time and attention-span limitations .

• Building a complementary, rather than repetitive, relationship between what the speaker says and what their slides show.

The training should then move to proper slide design, including:

• The need for each slide to have an overarching message.

• Using slide titles to help convey that message.

• Labelling graphs legibly.

• Deleting superfluous data and other information.

• Reducing those 100-word text slides to 40 words (or even less) without losing content.

• Using colour to highlight categories of information, rather than for decoration.

• Avoiding formats that have no visual message, such as data tables.

A well-crafted presentation with clearly drawn slides can turn even timid public speakers into effective science communicators.

Scientific leaders have a responsibility to provide formal training and to change incentives so that researchers spend more time improving presentations.

A dynamic presentation culture, in which every presentation is understood, fairly critiqued and useful for its audience, can only be good for science.

Nature 594 , S51-S52 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01281-8

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged .

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Open Access

Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

• Kristen M. Naegle

Published: December 2, 2021

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554
• Reader Comments

Citation: Naegle KM (2021) Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides. PLoS Comput Biol 17(12): e1009554. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554

Copyright: © 2021 Kristen M. Naegle. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The author has declared no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. A slide is a single page projected on a screen, usually built on the premise of a title, body, and figures or tables and includes both what is shown and what is spoken about that slide. Multiple slides are strung together to tell the larger story of the presentation. While there have been excellent 10 simple rules on giving entire presentations [ 1 , 2 ], there was an absence in the fine details of how to design a slide for optimal effect—such as the design elements that allow slides to convey meaningful information, to keep the audience engaged and informed, and to deliver the information intended and in the time frame allowed. As all research presentations seek to teach, effective slide design borrows from the same principles as effective teaching, including the consideration of cognitive processing your audience is relying on to organize, process, and retain information. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Each slide should have one central objective to deliver—the main idea or question [ 3 – 5 ]. Often, this means breaking complex ideas down into manageable pieces (see Fig 1 , where “background” information has been split into 2 key concepts). In another example, if you are presenting a complex computational approach in a large flow diagram, introduce it in smaller units, building it up until you finish with the entire diagram. The progressive buildup of complex information means that audiences are prepared to understand the whole picture, once you have dedicated time to each of the parts. You can accomplish the buildup of components in several ways—for example, using presentation software to cover/uncover information. Personally, I choose to create separate slides for each piece of information content I introduce—where the final slide has the entire diagram, and I use cropping or a cover on duplicated slides that come before to hide what I’m not yet ready to include. I use this method in order to ensure that each slide in my deck truly presents one specific idea (the new content) and the amount of the new information on that slide can be described in 1 minute (Rule 2), but it comes with the trade-off—a change to the format of one of the slides in the series often means changes to all slides.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

Top left: A background slide that describes the background material on a project from my lab. The slide was created using a PowerPoint Design Template, which had to be modified to increase default text sizes for this figure (i.e., the default text sizes are even worse than shown here). Bottom row: The 2 new slides that break up the content into 2 explicit ideas about the background, using a central graphic. In the first slide, the graphic is an explicit example of the SH2 domain of PI3-kinase interacting with a phosphorylation site (Y754) on the PDGFR to describe the important details of what an SH2 domain and phosphotyrosine ligand are and how they interact. I use that same graphic in the second slide to generalize all binding events and include redundant text to drive home the central message (a lot of possible interactions might occur in the human proteome, more than we can currently measure). Top right highlights which rules were used to move from the original slide to the new slide. Specific changes as highlighted by Rule 7 include increasing contrast by changing the background color, increasing font size, changing to sans serif fonts, and removing all capital text and underlining (using bold to draw attention). PDGFR, platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554.g001

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

When you present your slide in the talk, it should take 1 minute or less to discuss. This rule is really helpful for planning purposes—a 20-minute presentation should have somewhere around 20 slides. Also, frequently giving your audience new information to feast on helps keep them engaged. During practice, if you find yourself spending more than a minute on a slide, there’s too much for that one slide—it’s time to break up the content into multiple slides or even remove information that is not wholly central to the story you are trying to tell. Reduce, reduce, reduce, until you get to a single message, clearly described, which takes less than 1 minute to present.

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

When each slide conveys only one message, use the heading of that slide to write exactly the message you are trying to deliver. Instead of titling the slide “Results,” try “CTNND1 is central to metastasis” or “False-positive rates are highly sample specific.” Use this landmark signpost to ensure that all the content on that slide is related exactly to the heading and only the heading. Think of the slide heading as the introductory or concluding sentence of a paragraph and the slide content the rest of the paragraph that supports the main point of the paragraph. An audience member should be able to follow along with you in the “paragraph” and come to the same conclusion sentence as your header at the end of the slide.

Rule 4: Include only essential points

While you are speaking, audience members’ eyes and minds will be wandering over your slide. If you have a comment, detail, or figure on a slide, have a plan to explicitly identify and talk about it. If you don’t think it’s important enough to spend time on, then don’t have it on your slide. This is especially important when faculty are present. I often tell students that thesis committee members are like cats: If you put a shiny bauble in front of them, they’ll go after it. Be sure to only put the shiny baubles on slides that you want them to focus on. Putting together a thesis meeting for only faculty is really an exercise in herding cats (if you have cats, you know this is no easy feat). Clear and concise slide design will go a long way in helping you corral those easily distracted faculty members.

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

An exception to Rule 4 is to include proper citations or references to work on your slide. When adding citations, names of other researchers, or other types of credit, use a consistent style and method for adding this information to your slides. Your audience will then be able to easily partition this information from the other content. A common mistake people make is to think “I’ll add that reference later,” but I highly recommend you put the proper reference on the slide at the time you make it, before you forget where it came from. Finally, in certain kinds of presentations, credits can make it clear who did the work. For the faculty members heading labs, it is an effective way to connect your audience with the personnel in the lab who did the work, which is a great career booster for that person. For graduate students, it is an effective way to delineate your contribution to the work, especially in meetings where the goal is to establish your credentials for meeting the rigors of a PhD checkpoint.

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

As a rule, you should almost never have slides that only contain text. Build your slides around good visualizations. It is a visual presentation after all, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, on the flip side, don’t muddy the point of the slide by putting too many complex graphics on a single slide. A multipanel figure that you might include in a manuscript should often be broken into 1 panel per slide (see Rule 1 ). One way to ensure that you use the graphics effectively is to make a point to introduce the figure and its elements to the audience verbally, especially for data figures. For example, you might say the following: “This graph here shows the measured false-positive rate for an experiment and each point is a replicate of the experiment, the graph demonstrates …” If you have put too much on one slide to present in 1 minute (see Rule 2 ), then the complexity or number of the visualizations is too much for just one slide.

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

The type of slide elements, the number of them, and how you present them all impact the ability for the audience to intake, organize, and remember the content. For example, a frequent mistake in slide design is to include full sentences, but reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly), as a result of cognitive overload [ 4 ]. The visual channel is separate, allowing images/videos to be processed with auditory information without cognitive overload [ 6 ] (Rule 6). As presentations are an exercise in listening, and not reading, do what you can to optimize the ability of the audience to listen. Use words sparingly as “guide posts” to you and the audience about major points of the slide. In fact, you can add short text fragments, redundant with the verbal component of the presentation, which has been shown to improve retention [ 7 ] (see Fig 1 for an example of redundant text that avoids cognitive overload). Be careful in the selection of a slide template to minimize accidentally adding elements that the audience must process, but are unimportant. David JP Phillips argues (and effectively demonstrates in his TEDx talk [ 5 ]) that the human brain can easily interpret 6 elements and more than that requires a 500% increase in human cognition load—so keep the total number of elements on the slide to 6 or less. Finally, in addition to the use of short text, white space, and the effective use of graphics/images, you can improve ease of cognitive processing further by considering color choices and font type and size. Here are a few suggestions for improving the experience for your audience, highlighting the importance of these elements for some specific groups:

• Use high contrast colors and simple backgrounds with low to no color—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment.
• Use sans serif fonts and large font sizes (including figure legends), avoid italics, underlining (use bold font instead for emphasis), and all capital letters—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment [ 8 ].
• Use color combinations and palettes that can be understood by those with different forms of color blindness [ 9 ]. There are excellent tools available to identify colors to use and ways to simulate your presentation or figures as they might be seen by a person with color blindness (easily found by a web search).
• In this increasing world of virtual presentation tools, consider practicing your talk with a closed captioning system capture your words. Use this to identify how to improve your speaking pace, volume, and annunciation to improve understanding by all members of your audience, but especially those with a hearing impairment.

Rule 8: Design the slide so that a distracted person gets the main takeaway

It is very difficult to stay focused on a presentation, especially if it is long or if it is part of a longer series of talks at a conference. Audience members may get distracted by an important email, or they may start dreaming of lunch. So, it’s important to look at your slide and ask “If they heard nothing I said, will they understand the key concept of this slide?” The other rules are set up to help with this, including clarity of the single point of the slide (Rule 1), titling it with a major conclusion (Rule 3), and the use of figures (Rule 6) and short text redundant to your verbal description (Rule 7). However, with each slide, step back and ask whether its main conclusion is conveyed, even if someone didn’t hear your accompanying dialog. Importantly, ask if the information on the slide is at the right level of abstraction. For example, do you have too many details about the experiment, which hides the conclusion of the experiment (i.e., breaking Rule 1)? If you are worried about not having enough details, keep a slide at the end of your slide deck (after your conclusions and acknowledgments) with the more detailed information that you can refer to during a question and answer period.

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Well-designed slides that follow the first 8 rules are intended to help you deliver the message you intend and in the amount of time you intend to deliver it in. The best way to ensure that you nailed slide design for your presentation is to practice, typically a lot. The most important aspects of practicing a new presentation, with an eye toward slide design, are the following 2 key points: (1) practice to ensure that you hit, each time through, the most important points (for example, the text guide posts you left yourself and the title of the slide); and (2) practice to ensure that as you conclude the end of one slide, it leads directly to the next slide. Slide transitions, what you say as you end one slide and begin the next, are important to keeping the flow of the “story.” Practice is when I discover that the order of my presentation is poor or that I left myself too few guideposts to remember what was coming next. Additionally, during practice, the most frequent things I have to improve relate to Rule 2 (the slide takes too long to present, usually because I broke Rule 1, and I’m delivering too much information for one slide), Rule 4 (I have a nonessential detail on the slide), and Rule 5 (I forgot to give a key reference). The very best type of practice is in front of an audience (for example, your lab or peers), where, with fresh perspectives, they can help you identify places for improving slide content, design, and connections across the entirety of your talk.

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

The real presentation almost never goes as we planned in our heads or during our practice. Maybe the speaker before you went over time and now you need to adjust. Maybe the computer the organizer is having you use won’t show your video. Maybe your internet is poor on the day you are giving a virtual presentation at a conference. Technical problems are routinely part of the practice of sharing your work through presentations. Hence, you can design your slides to limit the impact certain kinds of technical disasters create and also prepare alternate approaches. Here are just a few examples of the preparation you can do that will take you a long way toward avoiding a complete fiasco:

• Save your presentation as a PDF—if the version of Keynote or PowerPoint on a host computer cause issues, you still have a functional copy that has a higher guarantee of compatibility.
• In using videos, create a backup slide with screen shots of key results. For example, if I have a video of cell migration, I’ll be sure to have a copy of the start and end of the video, in case the video doesn’t play. Even if the video worked, you can pause on this backup slide and take the time to highlight the key results in words if someone could not see or understand the video.
• Avoid animations, such as figures or text that flash/fly-in/etc. Surveys suggest that no one likes movement in presentations [ 3 , 4 ]. There is likely a cognitive underpinning to the almost universal distaste of pointless animations that relates to the idea proposed by Kosslyn and colleagues that animations are salient perceptual units that captures direct attention [ 4 ]. Although perceptual salience can be used to draw attention to and improve retention of specific points, if you use this approach for unnecessary/unimportant things (like animation of your bullet point text, fly-ins of figures, etc.), then you will distract your audience from the important content. Finally, animations cause additional processing burdens for people with visual impairments [ 10 ] and create opportunities for technical disasters if the software on the host system is not compatible with your planned animation.

Conclusions

These rules are just a start in creating more engaging presentations that increase audience retention of your material. However, there are wonderful resources on continuing on the journey of becoming an amazing public speaker, which includes understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind human perception and learning. For example, as highlighted in Rule 7, David JP Phillips has a wonderful TEDx talk on the subject [ 5 ], and “PowerPoint presentation flaws and failures: A psychological analysis,” by Kosslyn and colleagues is deeply detailed about a number of aspects of human cognition and presentation style [ 4 ]. There are many books on the topic, including the popular “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds [ 11 ]. Finally, although briefly touched on here, the visualization of data is an entire topic of its own that is worth perfecting for both written and oral presentations of work, with fantastic resources like Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” [ 12 ] or the article “Visualization of Biomedical Data” by O’Donoghue and colleagues [ 13 ].

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the countless presenters, colleagues, students, and mentors from which I have learned a great deal from on effective presentations. Also, a thank you to the wonderful resources published by organizations on how to increase inclusivity. A special thanks to Dr. Jason Papin and Dr. Michael Guertin on early feedback of this editorial.

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• 8. Creating a dyslexia friendly workplace. Dyslexia friendly style guide. nd. Available from: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide .
• 9. Cravit R. How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible. 2019. Available from: https://venngage.com/blog/color-blind-friendly-palette/ .
• 10. Making your conference presentation more accessible to blind and partially sighted people. n.d. Available from: https://vocaleyes.co.uk/services/resources/guidelines-for-making-your-conference-presentation-more-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-people/ .
• 11. Reynolds G. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. 2nd ed. New Riders Pub; 2011.
• 12. Tufte ER. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. 2nd ed. Graphics Press; 2001.

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• v.12(1); Fall 2013

Engaging the Audience: Developing Presentation Skills in Science Students

This article describes a graduate class in presentation skills (“PClass”) as a model for how a class with similar objectives, expectations and culture might be mounted for undergraduates. The required class is given for students in neuroscience and physiology programs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; I describe the class in the years I led it, from 2003–2012. The class structure centered on peer rehearsal, critiquing of PowerPoint, and chalk talks by the students; video-recording of student talks for later review by the student with the instructor; and presentation of polished talks in a formal setting. A different faculty visitor to the class each week gave the students a variety of perspectives. The students also gained insight into their own evolving skills by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of seminars given by visitors to the campus. A unique feature of the class was collaboration with a professional actor from the University’s Department of Dramatic Arts, who helped the students develop techniques for keeping the attention of an audience, for speaking with confidence, and for controlling nervousness. The undergraduate campus would be expected to lend itself to this sort of interdisciplinary faculty cooperation. In addition, students worked on becoming adept at designing and presenting posters, introducing speakers graciously and taking charge of the speaker’s question session, and speaking to a lay audience.

INTRODUCTION

In any university such as The University of North Carolina, in any given week, there are perhaps a dozen or more seminars on scientific topics. The seminar is an important part of the scientific research enterprise: the speaker typically delivers a broad, up-to-date overview of a topic, followed by new, unpublished, hot-off-the-press data. Researchers keep up with one another and students glimpse possible mentors for their future as postdocs.

Unfortunately, for too many of these seminars the audience will have lost the thread early on. Indeed, an amusing but pathetically accurate graph of audience attention versus time in a scientific talk shows audience attention falling over the first 20 minutes of the seminar, never to recover until the summary at the seminar’s end (see Kenney, 1982 ). For any seminar in which the audience’s interest has clearly been lost, a quick assessment of the number of faculty, postdocs and students present, who are politely waiting for the end, gives a sense of the lost productivity.

Numerous books and articles proffer advice on how to communicate scientific results in a way that will keep, rather than lose, audience attention (e.g., Kenney, 1982 ; Noonan, 1999 ; Alley, 2003 ; Anholt, 2005 ). Yet books do not seem to have solved the problem and it persists. An excellent iBio seminar by Susan McConnell, a Stanford neuroscientist ( http://www.ibioseminars.org/lectures/bio-techniques/susan-mcconnell.html ) attempts to educate speakers through a presentation – on presentations. She points out that many of the issues are actually well known: PowerPoint slides have driven speakers to speak much too quickly for the audience to follow; speakers want to show that their lab is productive and exciting so they cram all of the lab’s projects into their hour (which used to be 50 minutes), leaving the audience bored or exhausted; speakers do not take the time to design truly effective slides. Many speakers would seem to have no clue as to their effectiveness.

And no wonder: the training in audience engagement is not part of the typical education of a scientist. The rare speakers who can truly hold an audience in the palm of their hand have usually learned their skills through having been mentored at some point and then by rehearsing their talks, often with colleagues. They have taken the time to fashion an elegant set of slides rather than simply throwing together a talk from a series of figures imported from their own manuscripts or from the literature.

The irony is that so many scientific seminars (and indeed so many science classes) are so boring when the subjects are so inherently exciting! The scientists giving the talks find their work so compelling that they are willing to work for lower salaries than in other professions, and often to stay in the lab until the wee hours getting the data! Why the boring talks? The answer must lie in part in human nature – in the discrepancy between the world of the non-threatening lab, where thinking, observing and discussing predominate, and that of the stage, where the command of an audience is essentially a performing art. But being able to communicate what one is discovering in the lab inescapably means becoming as skilled in that art as in the technique of thinking through a problem.

Why don’t we make it a priority to give our science students skills in speaking, in exciting an audience, from the earliest point in their trajectory – as undergraduates? The rest of this article describes the efforts of myself and my colleagues to change this culture with a serious, intense class in presentation skills to graduate students, the “Presentation Class” (fondly called “PClass” by the students). We were convinced that our future scientists must be empowered to bring science alive for any audience they might have to address – for the specialists they would encounter at a meeting where they would be judged as they entered the profession, for the broad audience at their job talk when their future would be on the line, and especially for the lay audience, where the understanding of science by the electorate is of great importance. We wanted them to be able to communicate the excitement of research, and what it entails, to the stranger sitting beside them in a chance encounter, or to a life-long learning class at an institution, or to a TV or radio audience they might be selected to address. While this class was for graduate students, we argue that its fundamental approaches could and should be adapted to the undergraduate experience.

THE ORIGIN OF THE PCLASS IDEA: THE HARVARD NEUROBIOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF THE 1960s

The PClass had its roots in the culture of the Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School, the first department of its kind. Founded in 1966 by Steve Kuffler ( McMahan, 1990 ), an exceptional and perspicacious neurophysiologist, the department brought together those anatomists, biochemists and electrophysiologists whose interests focused on the nervous system – an early and highly successful multidisciplinary experiment.

Three members of the faculty in particular – Ed Furshpan, David Potter, and Ed Kravitz – initiated a culture of high expectations for departmental talks through their own example. Furshpan and Potter, and then Kravitz when he joined the department, had retreated to the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole to prepare their lectures for medical students on the new and exciting field of neurobiology. They rehearsed one another until the lectures were outstanding, learning each lecture so that it could be delivered without notes. Their efforts initiated a culture. If you were a member of the Neurobiology Department – faculty, postdoc or student – you were expected to plan your slides and blackboard drawings carefully, rehearse your lecture or seminar talk, and speak from memory. Many of the offspring of the department soon developed reputations as terrific speakers. They knew how to do it through rehearsals, collegial critiquing, and simply investing time.

Many of us who were privileged to be immersed in this culture attempted to take it with us when we left. It was not an easy job. In academic settings other than that of Harvard Neurobiology, rehearsing was often viewed as a waste of time of the speaker and the listener. I myself tried a number of different approaches when I joined the faculty of the Department of Physiology (now Cell Biology and Physiology) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNCCH). When a new Chair (James Anderson) arrived in 2002, and was clearly interested in supporting faculty experiments, I had formulated an audacious plan – and he supported it.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE CLASS

The evolution of the unc pclass.

Often faculty do not think it is important for students to take time away from the bench to work on developing their abilities to give talks. Sometimes this is with good reason, as working on PowerPoint animations in a presentation can be a seductive time sink. But just as often it is because the faculty member has not spent that time developing his or her own abilities so they do not understand what is involved in turning a student into a first-rate speaker.

Our wise Chair did understand this. He made it a priority to have the department’s students become outstanding speakers and agreed to my proposal that they be required to attend PClass every week of their first three graduate years to practice both oral and written communication and explore other professional skills. While this amount of time might have seemed outrageous, it was astonishingly successful in ways unimagined at its beginning, particularly in building collegiality amongst the students. Many students in this group became such confident speakers that they began winning awards. Through the peer mentoring in the class, they absorbed an instinctive collegiality that made it possible for them to give criticism with diplomacy and accept it without defensiveness.

The class began with the Physiology students, later adding students from the Neurobiology Curriculum. The size of the class in any year ranged from 12 to 24 students. With time, the three-year requirement was reduced to adapt to an umbrella-based admission system since the students did not join programs until their second year. The essential, successful elements of the class did not change, however, and the class continues at this writing in the hands of another faculty member. I describe the class during the decade that I was the “coach.”

Two rules and high expectations centered the class

Rule #1: Respect for the audience should guide every detail of preparation and delivery of the talk. We insisted that the students know if the audience was specialized in their area or more diverse. We insisted that they design slides carefully, reducing text and bullets to a minimum, making sure every line of text (including axes) could be seen from the back of the auditorium, and choosing contrasting colors, especially those that color-blind people can see. We told them how important it was to time their talks, and that speaking overtime conveys the worst disrespect for the audience. It says that the speaker’s fabulous talk is more important than the time of the captive audience.

Rule #2: Talks should be carefully prepared, practiced, critiqued and refined. For most speakers, engaging the interest of an audience for an hour is a learned skill. Conveying enthusiasm for the subject to the audience is essential; it requires overcoming nervousness and building the confidence derived from thoughtfully-prepared slides and choice of words, composed transitions and practice. The class was structured around rehearsals and feedback from peers, faculty visitors to the class, and myself. A student could earn a low grade only by not taking seriously the rehearsal of their own talk or the pre-class rehearsals of the talks of their peers.

Diplomatic peer critiquing was a key element

The class was (and continues to be) structured around peer, self, and faculty critiquing. Peer critiquing began even before class. I divided the class into “rehearsal pods” of three to four students. When a member of the pod was “on the spot” to give a talk in class that week, the other pod students rehearsed him or her beforehand. After the talk in class, there was a brief period for feedback from the students and visiting faculty member, followed by a moment when all of the students wrote more extensive comments for the student to review later. With time the students learned that “Good job” was a useless comment compared to “You went much too quickly through slide 3 for me to follow – perhaps you could make two slides at this point to slow yourself down,” or “Please always tell us the axes of each graph before you describe the results.”

At the undergraduate level, students often are assigned to present talks of various lengths to a class or in a lab. Why not begin even at this level with serious professional expectations of the talks, perhaps by assigning a buddy to rehearse the student beforehand and pointing out guidelines such as those found on the website of the Burroughs-Welcome Fund? ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/34887738/Communicating-Science-Giving-Talks-Second-Edition )

The PClass united faculty and students

So that my viewpoints (and, admittedly, prejudices) would not dominate the PClass, each week I invited a second faculty member to sit in, watch and question the presenters, and contribute their experience and advice to the group. The faculty generally were happy to make this very small time commitment of one session per semester. The students gained a more personal view of faculty members whom they might not have encountered in a class, and the faculty acquired more knowledge of, and respect for, the students in this different setting.

It was important for the students to feel that the questions from the visiting faculty were intended to help them prepare for what they might be asked in a talk setting, not those they might encounter in a qualifying exam! I warned each faculty member about this before class.

Beyond talk mechanics, discussions in the class were revealing of the students’ struggles as they tried to think about the research process at a more sophisticated level than they ever had before. I was happy to have a faculty colleague enter the fray. I sensed perplexity over a number of issues – for example, what constituted a hypothesis versus what was simply a plan. The visiting faculty member and I often found we were participating in a discussion of fundamental matters of research.

Food can help bonding and add an air of importance to an endeavor. At the end of the semester I hosted a reasonably fancy lunch (not pizza!) for the students and the twelve faculty visitors from that semester. Our continually-supportive Chair realized the benefits of this social time and funded the lunch.

Movies of the presentation provided vital feedback

An essential part of the class was having the students watch themselves in action. I recorded each presentation, then reviewed the movie with the student afterwards in detail (slide by slide, sometimes sentence by sentence). Chairman Anderson gave the class a budget that allowed me to purchase a video camera, chosen for its ability to record in low light, and a low-end MacBook. It was easy to lead the camera directly into the computer and use Apple’s iMovie software to record.

I then made a DVD for the student. Watching the movie together gave the student and me a chance to discuss his or her research in more detail as well as talk improvement. Robert Rosenberg at Earlham College is currently using the video-recording approach with his undergraduates (see below) and YouTube rather than DVDs.

Speaking skills take time to develop

It is rare that students perform at a high level when “thrown into the deep end” – that is, when required to fill 50 minutes or even 30 minutes with their first talk. So, in PClass, first-year students were tasked with giving a timed 5-minute (yes, 5-minute) talk on their first rotation with a maximum of five slides. They had to define four things: the big question, their more focused question, the approach and technique to be used, and plausible results. I encouraged them to present imagined observations or graphs as a way of thinking through the possibilities. For undergraduates beginning an independent project, a five-minute presentation, rehearsed and carefully prepared, would force them to plan their project before they began the work.

As the first-year students in PClass began to obtain experimental results, we increased the length of their talks to the standard 10 minutes of a meeting talk. At the end of the semester all of the students gave their now-polished, 10-minute talks to the members of the department in an auditorium. I rejected more informal rooms so that they could become familiar with the nerve-wracking elements of a formal setting: being on a stage with a huge screen; using the sometimes-testy technology of the lectern; controlling the lighting, microphones and sound levels; and knowing how to deal with the possible lurking disasters such as movies not playing. The students became quite confident and able to deal with trouble. In one instance the “help phone” on the side of the lectern rang in the middle of the student’s presentation and (impressing the audience) she answered it, dealt with the issue, then resumed her talk without missing a beat!

Then there was the dreaded question period to be mastered. In class, the time devoted to questions – from the other students, myself, and the visiting faculty member – was equal to the time for the presentation itself, since dealing with questions is often the most unnerving part of giving a talk. As well, the questions could help the presenters think more carefully about their projects.

Learning ALWAYS to repeat the question

We required the students to repeat the question, even though the room was small, and to give a brief, formal answer. Indeed we would stop them from answering until they had repeated or rephrased the question. So many speakers do not train themselves to repeat the question, which is all too often not heard by many in the audience. Thus the question period, supposedly a time for intellectual discourse, is lost on much of the audience as speaker and questioner have their private chat. Rephrasing the question also gives the speaker a moment to think and, most importantly, to make sure they actually understand what has been asked.

This small, important speaking skill would be so easy to implement for any talk at the undergraduate level. Thinking of it as rephrasing the question is perhaps the key so that the repetition leads somewhere. But this skill requires vigilance by the faculty member to stop the student from launching into the answer: I would wave my hands vigorously in the back of the room. In retaliation I received a present from the class ( Fig.1 )!

The PClass mantra, immortalized on a shirt presented to the ”coach.” Also immortalized is the coach’s admonition not to use red text on a blue background, as the text will not project well; further, color-blind persons will not be able to read it.

Learning the skills of the introducer

Students in the PClass also learned to be skilled introducers. At the formal talks they were to give a gracious, interesting, notes-free introduction of their fellow student, manage the microphone and audio level, preside over the questions, keep the talk and question period precisely on time, help solve any technical problems arising, and thank the audience at the end of the session. I instituted the “Student Introducer” plan when one faculty visitor to the class, a prominent faculty member who had won teaching awards, admitted that she was more nervous having to introduce a speaker than when giving a talk! Certainly being introducers (even in class in rehearsals) raised the students’ awareness of the duties of this important position. It also made them appreciate, and learn from, those faculty who carried out these responsibilities adroitly for visiting seminar speakers.

Critiquing the seminars of visiting speakers

As an important part of the class, the students criticized the department seminar of the week. When the class comprised only the physiology students, all students had attended (or should have attended) the same seminar. They were expected to form opinions on the slides and on the style of presentation as well as to follow the science. When we added neurobiology students, who had attended a different seminar that week, each group had to brief the other on the main point of their seminar. (This class requirement for discussion of the seminars had the additional benefit of increasing seminar attendance.)

With their awareness heightened by the expectations of the class, students began to notice the things that doom an audience to boredom: the speaker staring at the screen or computer the whole time instead of engaging the audience, fonts too small to be seen except from the front of the room, a blistering pace topped by introduction of new material in the last 10 minutes, imported graphs from the literature with unreadable axes, the speaker never repeating the question. This exercise also was comforting to new students who realized that getting lost in a seminar could be a shared experience and that it was not their fault but the fault of the speaker!

One week the class was paid a compliment by the speaker, a prominent faculty member from another department (someone who was well known to be an excellent speaker): “I know that the PClass is here so I am sort of nervous and have taken special care with this talk!”

Mastering the chalk talk

While students must be facile with PowerPoint nowadays, there are many settings that require equal skill at the white board. Often a job interview demands a “chalk talk” in which the candidate outlines plans for future research. Even if prepared slides are allowed, the questioning can bring up matters best explained on the board. And students choosing a teaching path certainly need board skills. Consequently, students of PClass worked on PowerPoint talks in the fall semester and chalk talks in the spring.

The challenges of speaking at the white board are many: learning how to write legibly, straight, and at a size appropriate for the room; how not to turn one’s back to the audience while writing; how to organize the talk on the board; how to use the colored markers cleverly so that one color is always associated with one idea or entity. Indeed even how to manage a set of markers of different colors in the hand takes practice. Any undergraduate having to explain something at a white board could certainly be encouraged to master these skills early on rather than simply allowed to write illegibly and without a plan.

Students wondered how to represent data in a chalk talk. My advice was: draw it. A graph? A current or voltage recording versus time? Learn to label the axes and draw the data accurately. It might give you even more insight to what you have observed.

Learning how to design, present, and even visit posters

Both the Physiology Department and Neurobiology Curriculum had an annual “Research Day” where the students in that program were supposed to prepare posters. While lab groups tend to focus on the design of posters, the actual presentation and visiting of posters tends to be a neglected skill. Typically the making of posters is such a last-minute, intense activity that there is no time to rehearse how to “go through” the poster with a visitor. Even in the design, students still seemed puzzled about how much text to display and in what font, whom to acknowledge, how much space to devote to the methods, etc. Several sessions of PClass were devoted to poster skills for the Research Days, where posters were judged.

Students prepared 2-minute and 8-minute run-throughs so they were ready for either, as requested by visitors or the judges. Students who did not have a poster were assigned to visit the posters of students who did. As usual, they were expected to complete a feedback sheet on how the poster and its delivery could be improved. An amusing article in the Journal of Cell Biology by “Dear Labby” was comforting and useful in this exercise. Labby responds to a student terrified by the ordeal of presenting a poster at a meeting for the first time, giving tips on how to deal with the different ways in which people visit posters ( http://www.ascb.org/files/0611dearlabby.pdf ).

At the undergraduate level, practicing the skills of poster design and presentation may depend on the resources available for poster printing. The Biology Department at Swarthmore College has a poster printer and makes good use of it for training students. In preparation for an Honors Thesis Poster Session, for example, students put up poster drafts for their peers and faculty to critique by leaving post-it feedback notes on the posters. The poster is then revised and printed again.

Engaging a lay audience

One goal of the class was to have the students be able to summarize their work for a lay person, jargon-free and without slides. We called this “The NPR speech,” imagining that Diane Rehm had called them from her radio show and asked about their research. We aimed for a brief, lively and understandable explanation of their research and its importance for the pretend radio audience.

The jargon-free assignment is not so easy! I called on students by surprise (because who knows when they will be asked to do this?) and video-recorded their effort for later review. The rest of the class was to be alert for any jargon in the brief speech. Understandably, these sessions often led to discussions about what was jargon and what was not.

A marvelous opportunity arose outside of the PClass structure for students who wished more experience in speaking to a lay audience. Two students were invited to prepare hour-long talks for a class in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute associated with Duke University. The audience for these talks is typically older, intelligent and educated, hungry to learn new things, and extremely diverse. The students who took on this challenge were amazed at the amount of time they had to spend preparing, even after they had been through the PClass. An hour-long talk about a scientific topic, jargon-free or at least jargon-explained, is truly new territory for a student. Both students received rave reviews from the audience and were thrilled that they had taken the challenge and triumphed.

CAPTURING AN AUDIENCE IS A DRAMATIC ART

An experiment with an actor at unc.

Although scientists hate to admit it, giving a good talk requires skills akin to acting. Students in drama programs are taught techniques for overcoming nervousness, for speaking loudly, slowly and confidently, and for generally engaging the attention of an audience. Why not make our students aware of these techniques?

I approached UNC’s Department of Dramatic Art where Jeffrey Meanza, the Associate Artistic Director of the Playmaker’s Repertory Company and a professional actor, became intrigued with the idea of coaching students who were giving scientific talks. We formed a collaboration with two parts: an acting class in one of the large rooms of the theater building, and a “Master Class,” where Meanza visited our classroom and critiqued student talks. Our efforts led to an article in a campus newspaper ( Shoaf, 2010 ) that inspired inquiries from other science departments about this unique collaboration.

In time I realized that the acting class was a great way to start the fall semester. Meanza involved the students in body exercises of all sorts, particularly those involving the voice and breathing; they were fun as well as useful, so that by the end of the class inhibitions had broken down. The students entered the acting class strangers and emerged sudden friends, united by their reaction to these non-scientific, playful exercises.

As the master of the Master Class, Meanza stopped a student’s talk after a slide or two to comment or give advice, similar to the tradition in a music Master Class. He helped them envision a better way to engage his interest and then had them try again. Acting tricks such as learning when to breathe or how to annunciate more clearly the long and difficult words of scientific jargon (try saying it several times with your tongue out!) instantly improved that portion of the presentation.

When the idea of the acting class was initially broached to the skeptical students, one student said, “We are scientists, not actors.” The faculty member visiting class that day took exception. “You are wrong,” she said. “You must be both if you want people to pay attention to your work.”

A PClass theater experiment at the University of Wisconsin

While versions of PClass undoubtedly exist at other universities, I know of only one other involving the drama department. At the University of Wisconsin, Donata Oertel (Department of Neuroscience) has collaborated with Patricia Boyette, a Professor of Acting at the institution, to work with the neuroscience graduate students on their talks. Exercises included having the students bring to class 6–8 lines of text, something the student thought was interesting and important, that they would then practice speaking. Oertel reported that the choices, in one case a poem written for the occasion, were amazingly varied. The chosen text enabled the students to quickly know one another better while it trained their speaking voice.

Oertel and I entered into these collaborations as an adventure, hoping to help the students learn strategies that would enable them to relax at the podium, overcome nervousness, project confidence, and better command audience attention. We were not sure what to expect. To our delight, as an unexpected benefit in both cases, the drama exercises made the students more comfortable with one another. We felt that the increased esprit de corps might have made it easier for them to give and accept criticism, a central goal of the PClass that we hope will persist in their scientific lives.

MEASURES OF PCLASS SUCCESS

The success of a presentation class is difficult to measure except anecdotally. Prize-winning is certainly one indication, although it is usually difficult to know whether the research itself or the presentation has factored more in the prize. To my knowledge there is currently no competition where each student prepares a talk on the same results so that only the presentation differs amongst the students. Perhaps there should be! Competition is an effective driving force for encouraging perfection and creativity.

Nevertheless, I was deeply pleased when PClass students started winning awards after the class had been in place for several years. One student was the only graduate student to win an award in a local presentation contest open to both postdocs and students. Five more students won awards for their posters and talks over the next four years. An alumna won two presentation awards as a postdoc at a different university. This past summer an alumna of the class, Sarah Street, was selected by the UNC medical students to give the 2012 Whitehead Lecture, an honor highly coveted by the medical faculty. And then there is Jennifer Morgan, who joined an earlier form of the class as an undergraduate in my lab and then, when she became faculty at the University of Texas Austin, mounted her own PClass based on the UNC model. This past summer Morgan received a University of Texas Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award, earning a hefty monetary prize.

CAN THE PCLASS WORK FOR UNDERGRADUATES?

My prejudiced answer to this question is that it is important to teach presentation skills to undergraduates who are seriously interested in pursing a scientific career. A full course such as the UNC PClass would clearly need the support of the department chair and other faculty. But the skills of PClass could be incorporated into regular classes as well. The essential factor is for both students and faculty to approach learning these skills seriously. The grading of a student would be expected to reflect their seriousness: how thoroughly they prepared their talk, their participation in rehearsing their peers as well as asking questions of the speaker and providing feedback in class, and their willingness to evaluate their own performance.

For example, at Earlham College Robert Rosenberg (who is familiar with UNC PClass methods from his time on the UNC faculty) has instituted rehearsed presentations, video-recording, and mandatory student self-evaluations in a class that he teaches in neuroscience. The class aims to build a neuroscience community at Earlham by targeting neuroscience majors from sophomores through seniors as well as students with other majors who have an interest in neuroscience. His students view their recorded talks on YouTube where he uploads the video files with an unlisted setting and gives the URL to the student.

At the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) in Maine in the past three summers, a lucky cadre of about 20 undergraduates and high school graduates heading to college have been able to take a PClass from Susan Fellner, a faculty member in physiology at UNC and MDIBL adjunct professor. As one of the faculty visitors to the UNC PClass, Fellner became determined to provide a PClass opportunity to the MDIBL students.

Fellner’s class was the only formal instruction at the MDIBL, where students are assigned to research labs for the summer. The class met each week and was modeled on the UNC PClass in several fundamental ways: the students were expected to critique the seminars of visitors to the MDIBL (and as a result, Fellner says, they paid much more attention to the seminars); the student talks were short, at 8 minutes, were timed, and were followed by a question period where the students had to repeat the question; Fellner made herself available for rehearsing; and the students were expected to critique one another in a respectful but helpful manner after each talk. Fellner reports that the pride the students took in their talks was obvious as they dressed up to present their talks at the Lab’s end-of-summer Student Research Day.

For her efforts Fellner received an award from the director and scientists at the Lab, who were struck by the obvious, enormous improvement in the talks and posters presented by students compared to those in years prior to her class. Fellner says that a common comment from faculty after Research Day was, “These kids are better than I am!”

When Jennifer Morgan (now an Assistant Scientist at the MBL) crafted her own PClass at the UT Austin, she and I shared effective techniques as our classes evolved at the separate institutions. While her class, like mine, was for graduate students, she reported, first of all that her students wished they had been able to take this class much earlier in their careers and, second, that after they had moved on to postdocs, they felt that the PClass was one of the most (or THE most) valuable classes they had in graduate school. I had heard the same comments from the UNC PClass alums.

In the neurobiology/physiology Presentation Class at UNC Chapel Hill we have endeavored to empower the students with the self confidence that would enable them to enjoy, rather than fear, the moment of standing before their colleagues to show their results and defend their ideas. We have aspired to foster collegiality by encouraging these nascent scientists to develop thoughtfulness and diplomacy when discussing ideas with peers or giving them feedback. In the process, we faculty have derived great pleasure from seeing the students evolve and flourish. Anecdotal evidence and the spread of the PClass concept to other institutions argue that this type of formal instruction is successful and should be a part of the training of future scientists. Indeed it is imperative if we want science to be more understood by the general public.

Serious students mature in their speaking skills through thoughtful observation of other presentations – those of peers or visiting seminar speakers – as well as through taking the time to prepare and rehearse their own talks. The growth in confidence and mastery that eventually results in a first-rate speaker is unlikely to come from simply reading books and articles, or even attending a oneday “how to” session on public speaking. Making a bench scientist into someone who can grab and hold the attention of an audience is a slow process. Why not begin this process at the undergraduate level?

Acknowledgments

I thank the colleagues who have taken the time to tell me about their versions of the UNC Presentation Class and to critique this manuscript: Susan Fellner, Jennifer Morgan, Donata Oertel and Bob Rosenberg. I also thank Kathleen Siwicki who provided information about poster critiquing at Swarthmore College. A special thanks to Jeffrey Meanza who entered this unusual collaboration with enthusiasm and won over the students’ with his charm, playful sense of humor, and useful advice.

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How to Make a Successful Research Presentation

Turning a research paper into a visual presentation is difficult; there are pitfalls, and navigating the path to a brief, informative presentation takes time and practice. As a TA for  GEO/WRI 201: Methods in Data Analysis & Scientific Writing this past fall, I saw how this process works from an instructor’s standpoint. I’ve presented my own research before, but helping others present theirs taught me a bit more about the process. Here are some tips I learned that may help you with your next research presentation:

More is more

In general, your presentation will always benefit from more practice, more feedback, and more revision. By practicing in front of friends, you can get comfortable with presenting your work while receiving feedback. It is hard to know how to revise your presentation if you never practice. If you are presenting to a general audience, getting feedback from someone outside of your discipline is crucial. Terms and ideas that seem intuitive to you may be completely foreign to someone else, and your well-crafted presentation could fall flat.

Less is more

Limit the scope of your presentation, the number of slides, and the text on each slide. In my experience, text works well for organizing slides, orienting the audience to key terms, and annotating important figures–not for explaining complex ideas. Having fewer slides is usually better as well. In general, about one slide per minute of presentation is an appropriate budget. Too many slides is usually a sign that your topic is too broad.

Limit the scope of your presentation

Don’t present your paper. Presentations are usually around 10 min long. You will not have time to explain all of the research you did in a semester (or a year!) in such a short span of time. Instead, focus on the highlight(s). Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

You will not have time to explain all of the research you did. Instead, focus on the highlights. Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

Craft a compelling research narrative

After identifying the focused research question, walk your audience through your research as if it were a story. Presentations with strong narrative arcs are clear, captivating, and compelling.

• Introduction (exposition — rising action)

Orient the audience and draw them in by demonstrating the relevance and importance of your research story with strong global motive. Provide them with the necessary vocabulary and background knowledge to understand the plot of your story. Introduce the key studies (characters) relevant in your story and build tension and conflict with scholarly and data motive. By the end of your introduction, your audience should clearly understand your research question and be dying to know how you resolve the tension built through motive.

• Methods (rising action)

The methods section should transition smoothly and logically from the introduction. Beware of presenting your methods in a boring, arc-killing, ‘this is what I did.’ Focus on the details that set your story apart from the stories other people have already told. Keep the audience interested by clearly motivating your decisions based on your original research question or the tension built in your introduction.

• Results (climax)

Less is usually more here. Only present results which are clearly related to the focused research question you are presenting. Make sure you explain the results clearly so that your audience understands what your research found. This is the peak of tension in your narrative arc, so don’t undercut it by quickly clicking through to your discussion.

• Discussion (falling action)

By now your audience should be dying for a satisfying resolution. Here is where you contextualize your results and begin resolving the tension between past research. Be thorough. If you have too many conflicts left unresolved, or you don’t have enough time to present all of the resolutions, you probably need to further narrow the scope of your presentation.

• Conclusion (denouement)

Return back to your initial research question and motive, resolving any final conflicts and tying up loose ends. Leave the audience with a clear resolution of your focus research question, and use unresolved tension to set up potential sequels (i.e. further research).

Use your medium to enhance the narrative

Visual presentations should be dominated by clear, intentional graphics. Subtle animation in key moments (usually during the results or discussion) can add drama to the narrative arc and make conflict resolutions more satisfying. You are narrating a story written in images, videos, cartoons, and graphs. While your paper is mostly text, with graphics to highlight crucial points, your slides should be the opposite. Adapting to the new medium may require you to create or acquire far more graphics than you included in your paper, but it is necessary to create an engaging presentation.

The most important thing you can do for your presentation is to practice and revise. Bother your friends, your roommates, TAs–anybody who will sit down and listen to your work. Beyond that, think about presentations you have found compelling and try to incorporate some of those elements into your own. Remember you want your work to be comprehensible; you aren’t creating experts in 10 minutes. Above all, try to stay passionate about what you did and why. You put the time in, so show your audience that it’s worth it.

For more insight into research presentations, check out these past PCUR posts written by Emma and Ellie .

— Alec Getraer, Natural Sciences Correspondent

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How to Prepare and Give a Scholarly Oral Presentation

• First Online: 01 January 2020

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Building an academic reputation is one of the most important functions of an academic faculty member, and one of the best ways to build a reputation is by giving scholarly presentations, particularly those that are oral presentations. Earning the reputation of someone who can give an excellent talk often results in invitations to give keynote addresses at regional and national conferences, which increases a faculty member’s visibility along with their area of research. Given the importance of oral presentations, it is surprising that few graduate or medical programs provide courses on how to give a talk. This is unfortunate because there are skills that can be learned and strategies that can be used to improve the ability to give an interesting, well-received oral presentation. To that end, the aim of this chapter is to provide faculty with best practices and tips on preparing and giving an academic oral presentation.

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Strategies for the Preparation and Delivery of Oral Presentation

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Gore-Felton, C. (2020). How to Prepare and Give a Scholarly Oral Presentation. In: Roberts, L. (eds) Roberts Academic Medicine Handbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31957-1_42

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How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation

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• Lucia Hartigan , registrar 1 ,
• Fionnuala Mone , fellow in maternal fetal medicine 1 ,
• Mary Higgins , consultant obstetrician 2
• 1 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
• 2 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin; Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medicine and Medical Sciences, University College Dublin
• luciahartigan{at}hotmail.com

The success of an oral presentation lies in the speaker’s ability to transmit information to the audience. Lucia Hartigan and colleagues describe what they have learnt about delivering an effective scientific oral presentation from their own experiences, and their mistakes

The objective of an oral presentation is to portray large amounts of often complex information in a clear, bite sized fashion. Although some of the success lies in the content, the rest lies in the speaker’s skills in transmitting the information to the audience. 1

Preparation

It is important to be as well prepared as possible. Look at the venue in person, and find out the time allowed for your presentation and for questions, and the size of the audience and their backgrounds, which will allow the presentation to be pitched at the appropriate level.

See what the ambience and temperature are like and check that the format of your presentation is compatible with the available computer. This is particularly important when embedding videos. Before you begin, look at the video on stand-by and make sure the lights are dimmed and the speakers are functioning.

For visual aids, Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Mac Keynote programmes are usual, although Prezi is increasing in popularity. Save the presentation on a USB stick, with email or cloud storage backup to avoid last minute disasters.

When preparing the presentation, start with an opening slide containing the title of the study, your name, and the date. Begin by addressing and thanking the audience and the organisation that has invited you to speak. Typically, the format includes background, study aims, methodology, results, strengths and weaknesses of the study, and conclusions.

If the study takes a lecturing format, consider including “any questions?” on a slide before you conclude, which will allow the audience to remember the take home messages. Ideally, the audience should remember three of the main points from the presentation. 2

Have a maximum of four short points per slide. If you can display something as a diagram, video, or a graph, use this instead of text and talk around it.

Animation is available in both Microsoft PowerPoint and the Apple Mac Keynote programme, and its use in presentations has been demonstrated to assist in the retention and recall of facts. 3 Do not overuse it, though, as it could make you appear unprofessional. If you show a video or diagram don’t just sit back—use a laser pointer to explain what is happening.

Rehearse your presentation in front of at least one person. Request feedback and amend accordingly. If possible, practise in the venue itself so things will not be unfamiliar on the day. If you appear comfortable, the audience will feel comfortable. Ask colleagues and seniors what questions they would ask and prepare responses to these questions.

It is important to dress appropriately, stand up straight, and project your voice towards the back of the room. Practise using a microphone, or any other presentation aids, in advance. If you don’t have your own presenting style, think of the style of inspirational scientific speakers you have seen and imitate it.

Try to present slides at the rate of around one slide a minute. If you talk too much, you will lose your audience’s attention. The slides or videos should be an adjunct to your presentation, so do not hide behind them, and be proud of the work you are presenting. You should avoid reading the wording on the slides, but instead talk around the content on them.

Maintain eye contact with the audience and remember to smile and pause after each comment, giving your nerves time to settle. Speak slowly and concisely, highlighting key points.

Do not assume that the audience is completely familiar with the topic you are passionate about, but don’t patronise them either. Use every presentation as an opportunity to teach, even your seniors. The information you are presenting may be new to them, but it is always important to know your audience’s background. You can then ensure you do not patronise world experts.

To maintain the audience’s attention, vary the tone and inflection of your voice. If appropriate, use humour, though you should run any comments or jokes past others beforehand and make sure they are culturally appropriate. Check every now and again that the audience is following and offer them the opportunity to ask questions.

Finishing up is the most important part, as this is when you send your take home message with the audience. Slow down, even though time is important at this stage. Conclude with the three key points from the study and leave the slide up for a further few seconds. Do not ramble on. Give the audience a chance to digest the presentation. Conclude by acknowledging those who assisted you in the study, and thank the audience and organisation. If you are presenting in North America, it is usual practice to conclude with an image of the team. If you wish to show references, insert a text box on the appropriate slide with the primary author, year, and paper, although this is not always required.

Answering questions can often feel like the most daunting part, but don’t look upon this as negative. Assume that the audience has listened and is interested in your research. Listen carefully, and if you are unsure about what someone is saying, ask for the question to be rephrased. Thank the audience member for asking the question and keep responses brief and concise. If you are unsure of the answer you can say that the questioner has raised an interesting point that you will have to investigate further. Have someone in the audience who will write down the questions for you, and remember that this is effectively free peer review.

Be proud of your achievements and try to do justice to the work that you and the rest of your group have done. You deserve to be up on that stage, so show off what you have achieved.

Competing interests: We have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: None.

• ↵ Rovira A, Auger C, Naidich TP. How to prepare an oral presentation and a conference. Radiologica 2013 ; 55 (suppl 1): 2 -7S. OpenUrl
• ↵ Bourne PE. Ten simple rules for making good oral presentations. PLos Comput Biol 2007 ; 3 : e77 . OpenUrl PubMed
• ↵ Naqvi SH, Mobasher F, Afzal MA, Umair M, Kohli AN, Bukhari MH. Effectiveness of teaching methods in a medical institute: perceptions of medical students to teaching aids. J Pak Med Assoc 2013 ; 63 : 859 -64. OpenUrl

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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Effective presentation skills

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Most PhD's will have a presentation component during the interview process, as well as presenting their work at conferences. This article will provide guidance on how to develop relevant content and effectively deliver it to your audience.

Keywords: effective; presentation; skills.

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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation of Your Research Paper

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Table of Contents

A research paper presentation is often used at conferences and in other settings where you have an opportunity to share your research, and get feedback from your colleagues. Although it may seem as simple as summarizing your research and sharing your knowledge, successful research paper PowerPoint presentation examples show us that there’s a little bit more than that involved.

In this article, we’ll highlight how to make a PowerPoint presentation from a research paper, and what to include (as well as what NOT to include). We’ll also touch on how to present a research paper at a conference.

Purpose of a Research Paper Presentation

The purpose of presenting your paper at a conference or forum is different from the purpose of conducting your research and writing up your paper. In this setting, you want to highlight your work instead of including every detail of your research. Likewise, a presentation is an excellent opportunity to get direct feedback from your colleagues in the field. But, perhaps the main reason for presenting your research is to spark interest in your work, and entice the audience to read your research paper.

So, yes, your presentation should summarize your work, but it needs to do so in a way that encourages your audience to seek out your work, and share their interest in your work with others. It’s not enough just to present your research dryly, to get information out there. More important is to encourage engagement with you, your research, and your work.

Tips for Creating Your Research Paper Presentation

In addition to basic PowerPoint presentation recommendations, which we’ll cover later in this article, think about the following when you’re putting together your research paper presentation:

• Know your audience : First and foremost, who are you presenting to? Students? Experts in your field? Potential funders? Non-experts? The truth is that your audience will probably have a bit of a mix of all of the above. So, make sure you keep that in mind as you prepare your presentation.

Know more about: Discover the Target Audience .

• Your audience is human : In other words, they may be tired, they might be wondering why they’re there, and they will, at some point, be tuning out. So, take steps to help them stay interested in your presentation. You can do that by utilizing effective visuals, summarize your conclusions early, and keep your research easy to understand.
• Running outline : It’s not IF your audience will drift off, or get lost…it’s WHEN. Keep a running outline, either within the presentation or via a handout. Use visual and verbal clues to highlight where you are in the presentation.
• Where does your research fit in? You should know of work related to your research, but you don’t have to cite every example. In addition, keep references in your presentation to the end, or in the handout. Your audience is there to hear about your work.
• Plan B : Anticipate possible questions for your presentation, and prepare slides that answer those specific questions in more detail, but have them at the END of your presentation. You can then jump to them, IF needed.

What Makes a PowerPoint Presentation Effective?

You’ve probably attended a presentation where the presenter reads off of their PowerPoint outline, word for word. Or where the presentation is busy, disorganized, or includes too much information. Here are some simple tips for creating an effective PowerPoint Presentation.

• Less is more: You want to give enough information to make your audience want to read your paper. So include details, but not too many, and avoid too many formulas and technical jargon.
• Clean and professional : Avoid excessive colors, distracting backgrounds, font changes, animations, and too many words. Instead of whole paragraphs, bullet points with just a few words to summarize and highlight are best.
• Know your real-estate : Each slide has a limited amount of space. Use it wisely. Typically one, no more than two points per slide. Balance each slide visually. Utilize illustrations when needed; not extraneously.
• Keep things visual : Remember, a PowerPoint presentation is a powerful tool to present things visually. Use visual graphs over tables and scientific illustrations over long text. Keep your visuals clean and professional, just like any text you include in your presentation.

Know more about our Scientific Illustrations Services .

Another key to an effective presentation is to practice, practice, and then practice some more. When you’re done with your PowerPoint, go through it with friends and colleagues to see if you need to add (or delete excessive) information. Double and triple check for typos and errors. Know the presentation inside and out, so when you’re in front of your audience, you’ll feel confident and comfortable.

How to Present a Research Paper

If your PowerPoint presentation is solid, and you’ve practiced your presentation, that’s half the battle. Follow the basic advice to keep your audience engaged and interested by making eye contact, encouraging questions, and presenting your information with enthusiasm.

We encourage you to read our articles on how to present a scientific journal article and tips on giving good scientific presentations .

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