importance of oral presentation in research methodology

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How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation

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Peer review
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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How to Make an Oral Presentation
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Steps to Plan Your Presentation

Instructor teach a class full of students on How to Make an Oral Presentation

Delivering an effective oral presentation is an essential skill for sharing your research findings with an audience. Tailoring your presentation to your audience, preparing for technical issues, and engaging your listeners with clear, concise content are crucial for the success of your research project. This guide provides comprehensive advice on how to prepare, what to include, and common pitfalls to avoid, ensuring your presentation is impactful and memorable.

For further assistance, contact the Office of Undergraduate Research for individual consultations.

What You Need To Know

Purpose

The purpose of an oral presentation is to share your research with an audience, typically through PowerPoint or Prezi. It is typically a synopsis of your research. If you've conducted a study, you will probably address the following topics:

Background research on your topic (with citations to past studies)
The rationale for your study (how does your study address a gap in the literature?)
Hypotheses/research questions
Methodology
Results (graphs are more interesting than tables or words)
Conclusions (for example, the implications or applications of your research, limitations, future research directions, a concise summary of your main findings, concluding thoughts)
References and Acknowledgements (such as grant support, a faculty advisor if he/she is not an author on the presentation, assistance from others who are not listed as authors)

If your scholarship is in a different form (e.g., a film analysis, a presentation of a creative work), the structure will likely be a little different, but in all cases, it should be clear to the audience what the main goals of your research are, why it's important to do this work, and what you found in your research.

Preparation

First, make sure you know how much time you have; it is common for oral presentations at conferences to exceed the time limit. Prepare a presentation that is a little shorter than the allotted time to allow for questions and other comments.
Think about your audience: Will they understand technical terms, jargon, and acronyms? Will they be mostly undergraduates or professors in the field? You should tailor your presentation to your expected audience.
Think carefully about your central message. What do you want the audience to know by the end of your presentation? Most people will only remember a few take-home points from your carefully constructed presentation (if that!). There's no point in getting bogged down in minutia that the audience can't really process anyway.
The most important parts are the beginning (to draw the audience in) and the ending (to wrap up, to inspire). Put some thought into how to make these parts of your presentation have impact.
Think about your speaking style; can you speak loudly and clearly? Can you modulate your voice appropriately, or do you tend to sound monotone when you give presentations? Consider working on your public speaking skills if it's needed; consider joining Legacy Owls Toastmasters Club for this purpose and check out Toastmasters International public speaking tips .

Plan for the Unexpected

Will the conference provide computers or do you bring your own laptop?
Will there be internet available?
How reliable is the internet?
Will there be speakers or a way to use audio (if necessary)?
Back up your presentation in at least two places (e.g., flash drive, Dropbox, email it to yourself).
When you prepare a presentation on a Mac and then use a PC (or vice versa), be aware that sometimes things look different.
Bring a printed copy in case the technology fails, or have a tablet/laptop with you.
Find the room early, and check out the technology so you’re familiar with it.

What to Avoid

It is usually not required that you use visuals for your presentation, but a PowerPoint or Prezi can often help the audience follow along with your research.

If you use PowerPoint or Prezi:

Avoid the temptation to put too much text on your slides; the audience can get bored or overwhelmed and might not be able to clearly see all the words if you've used a small font (less than 20-pt is considered "small").
Avoid font types that are hard to read or look unprofessional.
Avoid putting words on a busy powerpoint background that makes the words hard to read.
Avoid using font color that doesn't contrast with the background (in other words, your audience can't read gray text on a black background).
Avoid tables and graphs that have too much information - you can recreate those tables and graphs with just the most important information instead.

Also, consider your verbal and physical presentation:

Avoid reading your slides to the audience.
Avoid reading from prepared notes; the audience will maintain interest better if you can speak extemporaneously directly to them. It's also hard to make eye contact with the audience if you are reading.
Avoid distracting behaviors or verbal tics (“um,” “like,” “uh”).
Dress appropriately for the occasion.
Consider your body language (e.g., arms crossed can come across as you not wanting to be there).

Ways to Stand Out

Embrace a "Presentation Zen" style: simple (not simplistic), clean, and powerful.
Have interesting, high-resolution images on your slides.
You could connect your research to recent events (perhaps asking the audience to summarize the recent event).
You could ask specific questions throughout the presentation.
You could poll the audience on a topic relevant to your presentation (perhaps even using a free resource such as Socrative or Poll Everywhere ).
You could insert a powerful quote into your presentation (perhaps at the beginning or end).
You can show a short video to illustrate something important about your topic.
The point is not to be gimmicky; the point is to keep your audience interested and engaged (especially when the audience has been listening to oral presentations all day and might be tired). Be aware, though, that different disciplines have different conventions regarding what is and is not appropriate for an oral presentation; be sure to ask your research advisor for advice first.
Showing enthusiasm for their work
Being energetic
Using emphasis on certain words
Using hand gestures to keep the audience engaged

Handling Audience Questions

Be sure to leave some time at the end.
If a questioner is soft-spoken, repeat the question so everyone hears.
Avoid long, meandering answers.
Don’t make something up if you don’t know an answer. Offer to look it up and get back to the person, and be open to someone in the audience knowing the answer.
Give positive reinforcement to questioners (smiling, nodding, “that’s a good question”).
If someone is attacking you or otherwise being rude, remember that this usually comes from someone who wants to show off or appear smart in front of everyone The other audience members will recognize the rudeness and be on your side! Stay calm, answer as best you can, and acknowledge it when he/she makes a good point (smiling and nodding can disarm an attacker).
People will often talk to you right afterwards; try to avoid running out right after your presentation if you can help it.
Audience members may email for a copy of your presentation or to ask further questions; be sure to follow up with them.

Conclusions

If you have been accepted to present your research at a conference, congratulations! This is a great honor, and you should be proud of this accomplishment. If you would like an individual consultation with someone from the Office of Undergraduate Research about your presentation, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected] .

Other online resources to check out include:

Presentation Tips (Prepare, Design, Deliver)
18 Tips for Killer Presentations

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Presentations: Oral Presentations

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Oral Presentations Purpose

An Oral Research Presentation is meant to showcase your research findings. A successful oral research presentation should: communicate the importance of your research; clearly state your findings and the analysis of those findings; prompt discussion between researcher and audience. Below you will find information on how to create and give a successful oral presentation.

Creating an Effective Presentation

Who has a harder job the speaker? Or, the audience?

Most people think speaker has the hardest job during an oral presentation, because they are having to stand up in a room full of people and give a presentation. However, if the speaker is not engaging and if the material is way outside of the audiences knowledge level, the audience can have a difficult job as well. Below you will find some tips on how to be an effective presenter and how to engage with your audience.

Organization of a Presentation

Introduction/Beginning

How are you going to begin? How are you going to get the attention of your audience? You need to take the time and think about how you are going to get started!

Here are some ways you could start:

Ask the audience a question
make a statement
show them something

No matter how you start your presentation it needs to relate to your research and capture the audiences attention.

Preview what you are going to discuss . Audiences do not like to be manipulated or tricked. Tell the audience exactly what you are going to discuss, this will help them follow along. *Do not say you are going to cover three points and then try to cover 8 points.

At the end of your introduction, the audience should feel like they know exactly what you are going to discuss and exactly how you are going to get there.

Body/Middle

Conclusion/End

Delivery and Communication

Eye Contact

Making eye contact is a great way to engage with your audience. Eye contact should be no longer than 2-3 seconds per person. Eye contact for much longer than that can begin to make the audience member feel uncomfortable.

Smiling lets attendees know you are happy to be there and that you are excited to talk with them about your project.

We all know that body language says a lot, so here are some things you should remember when giving your presentation.

Stand with both feet on the floor, not with one foot crossed over the other.
Do not stand with your hands in your pockets, or with your arms crossed.
Stand tall with confidence and own your space (remember you are the expert).

Abbreviated Notes

Having a written set of notes or key points that you want to address can help prevent you from reading the poster.

Speak Clearly

Sometimes when we get nervous we begin to talk fast and blur our words. It is important that you make sure every word is distinct and clear. A great way to practice your speech is to say tongue twisters.

Ten tiny tots tottered toward the shore

Literally literary. Literally literary. Literally literary.

Sally soon saw that she should sew some sheets.

Avoid Fillers

Occasionally we pick up fillers that we are not aware of, such as um, like, well, etc. One way to get rid of fillers is to have a friend listen to your speech and every time you say a "filler" have that friend tap you on the arm or say your name. This will bring the filler to light, then you can practice avoiding that filler.

Manage Anxiety

Many people get nervous when they are about to speak to a crowd of people. Below are ways that you can manage your anxiety levels.

Practice, Practice, Practice - the more prepared you are the less nervous you will be.
Recognize that anxiety is just a big shot of adrenalin.
Take deep breaths before your presentation to calm you down.

Components of an Oral Research Presentation

Introduction

The introduction section of your oral presentation should consist of 3 main parts.

Part 1: Existing facts

In order to give audience members the "full picture", you first need to provide them with information about past research. What facts already exist? What is already known about your research area?

Part 2: Shortcomings

Once you have highlighted past research and existing facts. You now need to address what is left to be known, or what shortcomings exist within the current information. This should set the groundwork for your experiment. Keep in mind, how does your research fill these gaps or help address these questions?

Part 3: Purpose or Hypothesis

After you have addressed past/current research and have identified shortcomings/gaps, it is now time to address your research. During this portion of the introduction you need to tell viewers why you are conducting your research experiement/study, and what you hope to accomplish by doing so.

In this section you should share with your audience how you went about collecting and analyzing your data

Should include:

Participants: Who or what was in the study?
Materials/ measurements: what did you measure?
Procedures: How did you do the study?
Data-analysis: What analysis were conducted?

This section contains FACTS – with no opinion, commentary or interpretation. Graphs, charts and images can be used to display data in a clear and organized way.

Keep in mind when making figures:

Make sure axis, treatments, and data sets are clearly labeled
Strive for simplicity, especially in figure titles.
Know when to use what kind of graph
Be careful with colors.

Interpretation and commentary takes place here. This section should give a clear summary of your findings.

You should:

Address the positive and negative aspects of you research
Discuss how and if your research question was answered.
Highlight the novel and important findings
Speculate on what could be occurring in your system

Future Research

State your goals
Include information about why you believe research should go in the direction you are proposing
Discuss briefly how you plan to implement the research goals, if you chose to do so.

Why include References?

It allows viewers to locate the material that you used, and can help viewers expand their knowledge of your research topic.
Indicates that you have conducted a thorough review of the literature and conducted your research from an informed perspective.
Guards you against intellectual theft. Ideas are considered intellectual property failure to cite someone's ideas can have serious consequences.

Acknowledgements

This section is used to thank the people, programs and funding agencies that allowed you to perform your research.

Questions

Allow for about 2-3 minutes at the end of your presentation for questions.

It is important to be prepared.

Know why you conducted the study
Be prepared to answer questions about why you chose a specific methodology

If you DO NOT know the answer to a question

Visual Aids

PowerPoints and other visual aids can be used to support what you are presenting about.

Power Point Slides and other visual aids can help support your presentation, however there are some things you should consider:

Do not overdo it . One big mistake that presenters make is they have a slide for every single item they want to say. One way you can avoid this is by writing your presentation in Word first, instead of making a Power Point Presentation. By doing this you can type exactly what you want to say, and once your presentation is complete, you can create Power Point slides that help support your presentation.

Formula for number of visual aids : Length of presentation divided by 2 plus 1

example: 12 minute presentation should have no more than 7 slides.

Does it add interest?
Does it prove?
Does it clarify?
Do not read the text . Most people can read, and if they have the option of reading material themselves versus listen to you read it, they are going to read it themselves and then your voice becomes an annoyance. Also, when you are reading the text you are probably not engaging with the audience.
No more than 4-6 lines on a slide and no more than 4-6 words in a line.
People should be able to read your slide in 6 seconds.
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Delivering Impactful Scientific Oral Presentations

1 Department of Surgery, Stanford University, Stanford, California

Scientific oral presentations are a cornerstone of an academic surgeon’s career. Oral presentations constitute a critical conduit for research dissemination and personal branding and are a public reflection of the research team and department. However, oral presentation skills are absent from most medical education curricula and typically relegated to individual mentors, iterative self-learning, or innate talent.

We share recommendations on delivering impactful scientific oral presentations and maximizing unique opportunities to deepen research impact, broaden connections, and build a personal brand. We highlight specific challenges of facing a scientific conference audience inundated with information and practical recommendations to overcome these challenges.

Manage citations:

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How to deliver an oral presentation

Georgina wellstead.

a Lister Hospital, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust

Katharine Whitehurst

b Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital

Buket Gundogan

c University College London

d Guy's St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK

Delivering an oral presentation in conferences and meetings can seem daunting. However, if delivered effectively, it can be an invaluable opportunity to showcase your work in front of peers as well as receive feedback on your project. In this “How to” article, we demonstrate how one can plan and successfully deliver an engaging oral presentation.

Giving an oral presentation at a scientific conference is an almost inevitable task at some point during your medical career. The prospect of presenting your original work to colleagues and peers, however, may be intimidating, and it can be difficult to know how to approach it. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that although daunting, an oral presentation is one of the best ways to get your work out there, and so should be looked upon as an exciting and invaluable opportunity.

Slide content

Although things may vary slightly depending on the type of research you are presenting, the typical structure is as follows:

Opening slide (title of study, authors, institutions, and date)
Methodology
Discussion (including strengths and weaknesses of the study)

Conclusions

Picking out only the most important findings to include in your presentation is key and will keep it concise and easy to follow. This in turn will keep your viewers engaged, and more likely to understand and remember your presentation.

Psychological analysis of PowerPoint presentations, finds that 8 psychological principles are often violated 1 . One of these was the limited capacity of working memory, which can hold 4 units of information at any 1 time in most circumstances. Hence, too many points or concepts on a slide could be detrimental to the presenter’s desire to give information.

You can also help keep your audience engaged with images, which you can talk around, rather than lots of text. Video can also be useful, for example, a surgical procedure. However, be warned that IT can let you down when you need it most and you need to have a backup plan if the video fails. It’s worth coming to the venue early and testing it and resolving issues beforehand with the AV support staff if speaking at a conference.

Slide design and layout

It is important not to clutter your slides with too much text or too many pictures. An easy way to do this is by using the 5×5 rule. This means using no more than 5 bullet points per slide, with no more than 5 words per bullet point. It is also good to break up the text-heavy slides with ones including diagrams or graphs. This can also help to convey your results in a more visual and easy-to-understand way.

It is best to keep the slide design simple, as busy backgrounds and loud color schemes are distracting. Ensure that you use a uniform font and stick to the same color scheme throughout. As a general rule, a light-colored background with dark-colored text is easier to read than light-colored text on a dark-colored background. If you can use an image instead of text, this is even better.

A systematic review study of expert opinion papers demonstrates several key recommendations on how to effectively deliver medical research presentations 2 . These include:

Keeping your slides simple
Knowing your audience (pitching to the right level)
Making eye contact
Rehearsing the presentation
Do not read from the slides
Limiting the number of lines per slide
Sticking to the allotted time

You should practice your presentation before the conference, making sure that you stick to the allocated time given to you. Oral presentations are usually short (around 8–10 min maximum), and it is, therefore, easy to go under or over time if you have not rehearsed. Aiming to spend around 1 minute per slide is usually a good guide. It is useful to present to your colleagues and seniors, allowing them to ask you questions afterwards so that you can be prepared for the sort of questions you may get asked at the conference. Knowing your research inside out and reading around the subject is advisable, as there may be experts watching you at the conference with more challenging questions! Make sure you re-read your paper the day before, or on the day of the conference to refresh your memory.

It is useful to bring along handouts of your presentation for those who may be interested. Rather than printing out miniature versions of your power point slides, it is better to condense your findings into a brief word document. Not only will this be easier to read, but you will also save a lot of paper by doing this!

Delivering the presentation

Having rehearsed your presentation beforehand, the most important thing to do when you get to the conference is to keep calm and be confident. Remember that you know your own research better than anyone else in the room! Be sure to take some deep breaths and speak at an appropriate pace and volume, making good eye contact with your viewers. If there is a microphone, don’t keep turning away from it as the audience will get frustrated if your voice keeps cutting in and out. Gesturing and using pointers when appropriate can be a really useful tool, and will enable you to emphasize your important findings.

Presenting tips

Do not hide behind the computer. Come out to the center or side and present there.
Maintain eye contact with the audience, especially the judges.
Remember to pause every so often.
Don’t clutter your presentation with verbal noise such as “umm,” “like,” or “so.” You will look more slick if you avoid this.
Rhetorical questions once in a while can be useful in maintaining the audience’s attention.

When reaching the end of your presentation, you should slow down in order to clearly convey your key points. Using phases such as “in summary” and “to conclude” often prompts those who have drifted off slightly during your presentation start paying attention again, so it is a critical time to make sure that your work is understood and remembered. Leaving up your conclusions/summary slide for a short while after stopping speaking will give the audience time to digest the information. Conclude by acknowledging any fellow authors or assistants before thanking the audience for their attention and inviting any questions (as long as you have left sufficient time).

If asked a question, firstly thank the audience member, then repeat what they have asked to the rest of the listeners in case they didn’t hear the first time. Keep your answers short and succinct, and if unsure say that the questioner has raised a good point and that you will have to look into it further. Having someone else in the audience write down the question is useful for this.

The key points to remember when preparing for an oral presentation are:

Keep your slides simple and concise using the 5×5 rule and images.
When appropriate; rehearse timings; prepare answers to questions; speak slowly and use gestures/ pointers where appropriate; make eye contact with the audience; emphasize your key points at the end; make acknowledgments and thank the audience; invite questions and be confident but not arrogant.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no financial conflict of interest with regard to the content of this report.

Sponsorships or competing interests that may be relevant to content are disclosed at the end of this article.

Published online 8 June 2017

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Oral Presentation Structure

Finally, presentations normally include interaction in the form of questions and answers. This is a great opportunity to provide whatever additional information the audience desires. For fear of omitting something important, most speakers try to say too much in their presentations. A better approach is to be selective in the presentation itself and to allow enough time for questions and answers and, of course, to prepare well by anticipating the questions the audience might have.

As a consequence, and even more strongly than papers, presentations can usefully break the chronology typically used for reporting research. Instead of presenting everything that was done in the order in which it was done, a presentation should focus on getting a main message across in theorem-proof fashion — that is, by stating this message early and then presenting evidence to support it. Identifying this main message early in the preparation process is the key to being selective in your presentation. For example, when reporting on materials and methods, include only those details you think will help convince the audience of your main message — usually little, and sometimes nothing at all.

The opening

The context as such is best replaced by an attention getter , which is a way to both get everyone's attention fast and link the topic with what the audience already knows (this link provides a more audience-specific form of context).
The object of the document is here best called the preview because it outlines the body of the presentation. Still, the aim of this element is unchanged — namely, preparing the audience for the structure of the body.
The opening of a presentation can best state the presentation's main message , just before the preview. The main message is the one sentence you want your audience to remember, if they remember only one. It is your main conclusion, perhaps stated in slightly less technical detail than at the end of your presentation.

In other words, include the following five items in your opening: attention getter , need , task , main message , and preview .

Even if you think of your presentation's body as a tree, you will still deliver the body as a sequence in time — unavoidably, one of your main points will come first, one will come second, and so on. Organize your main points and subpoints into a logical sequence, and reveal this sequence and its logic to your audience with transitions between points and between subpoints. As a rule, place your strongest arguments first and last, and place any weaker arguments between these stronger ones.

The closing

After supporting your main message with evidence in the body, wrap up your oral presentation in three steps: a review , a conclusion , and a close . First, review the main points in your body to help the audience remember them and to prepare the audience for your conclusion. Next, conclude by restating your main message (in more detail now that the audience has heard the body) and complementing it with any other interpretations of your findings. Finally, close the presentation by indicating elegantly and unambiguously to your audience that these are your last words.

Starting and ending forcefully

Revealing your presentation's structure.

To be able to give their full attention to content, audience members need structure — in other words, they need a map of some sort (a table of contents, an object of the document, a preview), and they need to know at any time where they are on that map. A written document includes many visual clues to its structure: section headings, blank lines or indentations indicating paragraphs, and so on. In contrast, an oral presentation has few visual clues. Therefore, even when it is well structured, attendees may easily get lost because they do not see this structure. As a speaker, make sure you reveal your presentation's structure to the audience, with a preview , transitions , and a review .

The preview provides the audience with a map. As in a paper, it usefully comes at the end of the opening (not too early, that is) and outlines the body, not the entire presentation. In other words, it needs to include neither the introduction (which has already been delivered) nor the conclusion (which is obvious). In a presentation with slides, it can usefully show the structure of the body on screen. A slide alone is not enough, however: You must also verbally explain the logic of the body. In addition, the preview should be limited to the main points of the presentation; subpoints can be previewed, if needed, at the beginning of each main point.

Transitions are crucial elements for revealing a presentation's structure, yet they are often underestimated. As a speaker, you obviously know when you are moving from one main point of a presentation to another — but for attendees, these shifts are never obvious. Often, attendees are so involved with a presentation's content that they have no mental attention left to guess at its structure. Tell them where you are in the course of a presentation, while linking the points. One way to do so is to wrap up one point then announce the next by creating a need for it: "So, this is the microstructure we observe consistently in the absence of annealing. But how does it change if we anneal the sample at 450°C for an hour or more? That's my next point. Here is . . . "

Similarly, a review of the body plays an important double role. First, while a good body helps attendees understand the evidence, a review helps them remember it. Second, by recapitulating all the evidence, the review effectively prepares attendees for the conclusion. Accordingly, make time for a review: Resist the temptation to try to say too much, so that you are forced to rush — and to sacrifice the review — at the end.

Ideally, your preview, transitions, and review are well integrated into the presentation. As a counterexample, a preview that says, "First, I am going to talk about . . . , then I will say a few words about . . . and finally . . . " is self-centered and mechanical: It does not tell a story. Instead, include your audience (perhaps with a collective we ) and show the logic of your structure in view of your main message.

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Oral presentation, compiling a powerpoint.

Abstract : a short statement that describes a longer work.

Indicate the subject.
Describe the purpose of the investigation.
Briefly discuss the method used.
Make a statement about the result.

Oral presentations usually introduce a discussion of a topic or research paper. A good oral presentation is focused, concise, and interesting in order to trigger a discussion.

Be well prepared; write a detailed outline.
Introduce the subject.
Talk about the sources and the method.
Indicate if there are conflicting views about the subject (conflicting views trigger discussion).
Make a statement about your new results (if this is your research paper).
Use visual aids or handouts if appropriate.

An effective PowerPoint presentation is just an aid to the presentation, not the presentation itself .

Be brief and concise.
Focus on the subject.
Attract attention; indicate interesting details.
If possible, use relevant visual illustrations (pictures, maps, charts graphs, etc.).
Use bullet points or numbers to structure the text.
Make clear statements about the essence/results of the topic/research.
Don't write down the whole outline of your paper and nothing else.
Don't write long full sentences on the slides.
Don't use distracting colors, patterns, pictures, decorations on the slides.
Don't use too complicated charts, graphs; only those that are relatively easy to understand.
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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
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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.

View Article
PubMed/NCBI
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3. Teaching VUC for Making Better PowerPoint Presentations. n.d. Available from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/making-better-powerpoint-presentations/#baddeley .
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.

Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

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.

importance of oral presentation in research methodology

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

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

Annotated Bibliography
Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
Group Presentations
Dealing with Nervousness
Using Visual Aids
Grading Someone Else's Paper
Types of Structured Group Activities
Group Project Survival Skills
Leading a Class Discussion
Multiple Book Review Essay
Reviewing Collected Works
Writing a Case Analysis Paper
Writing a Case Study
About Informed Consent
Writing Field Notes
Writing a Policy Memo
Writing a Reflective Paper
Writing a Research Proposal
Generative AI and Writing
Acknowledgments

In the social and behavioral sciences, an oral presentation assignment involves an individual student or group of students verbally addressing an audience on a specific research-based topic, often utilizing slides to help audience members understand and retain what they both see and hear. The purpose is to inform, report, and explain the significance of research findings, and your critical analysis of those findings, within a specific period of time, often in the form of a reasoned and persuasive argument. Oral presentations are assigned to assess a student’s ability to organize and communicate relevant information effectively to a particular audience. Giving an oral presentation is considered an important learning skill because the ability to speak persuasively in front of an audience is transferable to most professional workplace settings.

Oral Presentations. Learning Co-Op. University of Wollongong, Australia; Oral Presentations. Undergraduate Research Office, Michigan State University; Oral Presentations. Presentations Research Guide, East Carolina University Libraries; Tsang, Art. “Enhancing Learners’ Awareness of Oral Presentation (Delivery) Skills in the Context of Self-regulated Learning.” Active Learning in Higher Education 21 (2020): 39-50.

Preparing for Your Oral Presentation

In some classes, writing the research paper is only part of what is required in reporting the results your work. Your professor may also require you to give an oral presentation about your study. Here are some things to think about before you are scheduled to give a presentation.

1. What should I say?

If your professor hasn't explicitly stated what the content of your presentation should focus on, think about what you want to achieve and what you consider to be the most important things that members of the audience should know about your research. Think about the following: Do I want to inform my audience, inspire them to think about my research, or convince them of a particular point of view? These questions will help frame how to approach your presentation topic.

2. Oral communication is different from written communication

Your audience has just one chance to hear your talk; they can't "re-read" your words if they get confused. Focus on being clear, particularly if the audience can't ask questions during the talk. There are two well-known ways to communicate your points effectively, often applied in combination. The first is the K.I.S.S. method [Keep It Simple Stupid]. Focus your presentation on getting two to three key points across. The second approach is to repeat key insights: tell them what you're going to tell them [forecast], tell them [explain], and then tell them what you just told them [summarize].

3. Think about your audience

Yes, you want to demonstrate to your professor that you have conducted a good study. But professors often ask students to give an oral presentation to practice the art of communicating and to learn to speak clearly and audibly about yourself and your research. Questions to think about include: What background knowledge do they have about my topic? Does the audience have any particular interests? How am I going to involve them in my presentation?

4. Create effective notes

If you don't have notes to refer to as you speak, you run the risk of forgetting something important. Also, having no notes increases the chance you'll lose your train of thought and begin relying on reading from the presentation slides. Think about the best ways to create notes that can be easily referred to as you speak. This is important! Nothing is more distracting to an audience than the speaker fumbling around with notes as they try to speak. It gives the impression of being disorganized and unprepared.

NOTE: A good strategy is to have a page of notes for each slide so that the act of referring to a new page helps remind you to move to the next slide. This also creates a natural pause that allows your audience to contemplate what you just presented.

Strategies for creating effective notes for yourself include the following:

Choose a large, readable font [at least 18 point in Ariel ]; avoid using fancy text fonts or cursive text.
Use bold text, underlining, or different-colored text to highlight elements of your speech that you want to emphasize. Don't over do it, though. Only highlight the most important elements of your presentation.
Leave adequate space on your notes to jot down additional thoughts or observations before and during your presentation. This is also helpful when writing down your thoughts in response to a question or to remember a multi-part question [remember to have a pen with you when you give your presentation].
Place a cue in the text of your notes to indicate when to move to the next slide, to click on a link, or to take some other action, such as, linking to a video. If appropriate, include a cue in your notes if there is a point during your presentation when you want the audience to refer to a handout.
Spell out challenging words phonetically and practice saying them ahead of time. This is particularly important for accurately pronouncing people’s names, technical or scientific terminology, words in a foreign language, or any unfamiliar words.

Creating and Using Overheads. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Kelly, Christine. Mastering the Art of Presenting. Inside Higher Education Career Advice; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations. Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Organizing the Content

In the process of organizing the content of your presentation, begin by thinking about what you want to achieve and how are you going to involve your audience in the presentation.

Brainstorm your topic and write a rough outline. Don’t get carried away—remember you have a limited amount of time for your presentation.
Organize your material and draft what you want to say [see below].
Summarize your draft into key points to write on your presentation slides and/or note cards and/or handout.
Prepare your visual aids.
Rehearse your presentation and practice getting the presentation completed within the time limit given by your professor. Ask a friend to listen and time you.

GENERAL OUTLINE

I. Introduction [may be written last]

Capture your listeners’ attention . Begin with a question, an amusing story, a provocative statement, a personal story, or anything that will engage your audience and make them think. For example, "As a first-gen student, my hardest adjustment to college was the amount of papers I had to write...."
State your purpose . For example, "I’m going to talk about..."; "This morning I want to explain…."
Present an outline of your talk . For example, “I will concentrate on the following points: First of all…Then…This will lead to…And finally…"

II. The Body

Present your main points one by one in a logical order .
Pause at the end of each point . Give people time to take notes, or time to think about what you are saying.
Make it clear when you move to another point . For example, “The next point is that...”; “Of course, we must not forget that...”; “However, it's important to realize that....”
Use clear examples to illustrate your points and/or key findings .
If appropriate, consider using visual aids to make your presentation more interesting [e.g., a map, chart, picture, link to a video, etc.].

III. The Conclusion

Leave your audience with a clear summary of everything that you have covered.
Summarize the main points again . For example, use phrases like: "So, in conclusion..."; "To recap the main issues...," "In summary, it is important to realize...."
Restate the purpose of your talk, and say that you have achieved your aim : "My intention was ..., and it should now be clear that...."
Don't let the talk just fizzle out . Make it obvious that you have reached the end of the presentation.
Thank the audience, and invite questions : "Thank you. Are there any questions?"

NOTE: When asking your audience if anyone has any questions, give people time to contemplate what you have said and to formulate a question. It may seem like an awkward pause to wait ten seconds or so for someone to raise their hand, but it's frustrating to have a question come to mind but be cutoff because the presenter rushed to end the talk.

ANOTHER NOTE: If your last slide includes any contact information or other important information, leave it up long enough to ensure audience members have time to write the information down. Nothing is more frustrating to an audience member than wanting to jot something down, but the presenter closes the slides immediately after finishing.

Creating and Using Overheads. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations. Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Delivering Your Presentation

When delivering your presentation, keep in mind the following points to help you remain focused and ensure that everything goes as planned.

Pay Attention to Language!

Keep it simple . The aim is to communicate, not to show off your vocabulary. Using complex words or phrases increases the chance of stumbling over a word and losing your train of thought.
Emphasize the key points . Make sure people realize which are the key points of your study. Repeat them using different phrasing to help the audience remember them.
Check the pronunciation of difficult, unusual, or foreign words beforehand . Keep it simple, but if you have to use unfamiliar words, write them out phonetically in your notes and practice saying them. This is particularly important when pronouncing proper names. Give the definition of words that are unusual or are being used in a particular context [e.g., "By using the term affective response, I am referring to..."].

Use Your Voice to Communicate Clearly

Speak loud enough for everyone in the room to hear you . Projecting your voice may feel uncomfortably loud at first, but if people can't hear you, they won't try to listen. However, moderate your voice if you are talking in front of a microphone.
Speak slowly and clearly . Don’t rush! Speaking fast makes it harder for people to understand you and signals being nervous.
Avoid the use of "fillers." Linguists refer to utterances such as um, ah, you know, and like as fillers. They occur most often during transitions from one idea to another and, if expressed too much, are distracting to an audience. The better you know your presentation, the better you can control these verbal tics.
Vary your voice quality . If you always use the same volume and pitch [for example, all loud, or all soft, or in a monotone] during your presentation, your audience will stop listening. Use a higher pitch and volume in your voice when you begin a new point or when emphasizing the transition to a new point.
Speakers with accents need to slow down [so do most others]. Non-native speakers often speak English faster than we slow-mouthed native speakers, usually because most non-English languages flow more quickly than English. Slowing down helps the audience to comprehend what you are saying.
Slow down for key points . These are also moments in your presentation to consider using body language, such as hand gestures or leaving the podium to point to a slide, to help emphasize key points.
Use pauses . Don't be afraid of short periods of silence. They give you a chance to gather your thoughts, and your audience an opportunity to think about what you've just said.

Also Use Your Body Language to Communicate!

Stand straight and comfortably . Do not slouch or shuffle about. If you appear bored or uninterested in what your talking about, the audience will emulate this as well. Wear something comfortable. This is not the time to wear an itchy wool sweater or new high heel shoes for the first time.
Hold your head up . Look around and make eye contact with people in the audience [or at least pretend to]. Do not just look at your professor or your notes the whole time! Looking up at your your audience brings them into the conversation. If you don't include the audience, they won't listen to you.
When you are talking to your friends, you naturally use your hands, your facial expression, and your body to add to your communication . Do it in your presentation as well. It will make things far more interesting for the audience.
Don't turn your back on the audience and don't fidget! Neither moving around nor standing still is wrong. Practice either to make yourself comfortable. Even when pointing to a slide, don't turn your back; stand at the side and turn your head towards the audience as you speak.
Keep your hands out of your pocket . This is a natural habit when speaking. One hand in your pocket gives the impression of being relaxed, but both hands in pockets looks too casual and should be avoided.

Interact with the Audience

Be aware of how your audience is reacting to your presentation . Are they interested or bored? If they look confused, stop and ask them [e.g., "Is anything I've covered so far unclear?"]. Stop and explain a point again if needed.
Check after highlighting key points to ask if the audience is still with you . "Does that make sense?"; "Is that clear?" Don't do this often during the presentation but, if the audience looks disengaged, interrupting your talk to ask a quick question can re-focus their attention even if no one answers.
Do not apologize for anything . If you believe something will be hard to read or understand, don't use it. If you apologize for feeling awkward and nervous, you'll only succeed in drawing attention to the fact you are feeling awkward and nervous and your audience will begin looking for this, rather than focusing on what you are saying.
Be open to questions . If someone asks a question in the middle of your talk, answer it. If it disrupts your train of thought momentarily, that's ok because your audience will understand. Questions show that the audience is listening with interest and, therefore, should not be regarded as an attack on you, but as a collaborative search for deeper understanding. However, don't engage in an extended conversation with an audience member or the rest of the audience will begin to feel left out. If an audience member persists, kindly tell them that the issue can be addressed after you've completed the rest of your presentation and note to them that their issue may be addressed later in your presentation [it may not be, but at least saying so allows you to move on].
Be ready to get the discussion going after your presentation . Professors often want a brief discussion to take place after a presentation. Just in case nobody has anything to say or no one asks any questions, be prepared to ask your audience some provocative questions or bring up key issues for discussion.

Amirian, Seyed Mohammad Reza and Elaheh Tavakoli. “Academic Oral Presentation Self-Efficacy: A Cross-Sectional Interdisciplinary Comparative Study.” Higher Education Research and Development 35 (December 2016): 1095-1110; Balistreri, William F. “Giving an Effective Presentation.” Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition 35 (July 2002): 1-4; Creating and Using Overheads. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Enfield, N. J. How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation . New York: Basic Books, 2017; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations. Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Speaking Tip

Your First Words are Your Most Important Words!

Your introduction should begin with something that grabs the attention of your audience, such as, an interesting statistic, a brief narrative or story, or a bold assertion, and then clearly tell the audience in a well-crafted sentence what you plan to accomplish in your presentation. Your introductory statement should be constructed so as to invite the audience to pay close attention to your message and to give the audience a clear sense of the direction in which you are about to take them.

Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015.

Another Speaking Tip

Talk to Your Audience, Don't Read to Them!

A presentation is not the same as reading a prepared speech or essay. If you read your presentation as if it were an essay, your audience will probably understand very little about what you say and will lose their concentration quickly. Use notes, cue cards, or presentation slides as prompts that highlight key points, and speak to your audience . Include everyone by looking at them and maintaining regular eye-contact [but don't stare or glare at people]. Limit reading text to quotes or to specific points you want to emphasize.

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How To Make an Oral Presentation of Your Research

You’ve been working on your research for months, and now that it’s finished, or almost there, you need to make an oral presentation. Perhaps you are applying to attend the ACC Meeting of the Minds undergraduate research conference. Maybe you would like to participate in the Undergraduate Research Symposium in the spring semester here at UVA. Here are some tips to help you bring order to the ideas swirling in your head—and communicate the key points about your research to an audience.

Timing. Find out how long your talk should be. As you decide what to present, keep in mind that a ten-minute talk is very different from a 45-minute lecture. If you only have ten minutes, you’ll need to focus on the most important points. With more time, you’ll still need to focus on those points, but you’ll be able to present additional supporting detail. Time yourself giving your talk, and make cuts if you need to. It is fine to end a bit early. Going overtime shows your lack of preparation.

Audience. Find out what sort of audience will listen to your talk. Specialists in your field will bring a different sort of understanding to your presentation from a general audience; you may be able to use certain technical terms without defining them, but always beware of jargon and acronyms. With a general audience, you need to ask yourself what educated people not in your field will know, define any terms that may be unfamiliar to them, and make an effort to explain the significance of your research in terms the listeners are likely to understand.

Content. Students often think they need to explain every single thing they know or be perceived as knowing too little. This is not true. Giving a talk is a great opportunity to think about the big picture rather than focusing on details. This can be hard if you are immersed in the specifics of your project.

Step back for a moment to before you became the expert on your particular topic. What piqued your interest? Why did you start asking the questions you asked? Now step into the future. When you look back on this research, what will you remember as the most interesting or compelling thing you learned? Were there surprises?

Now you are ready to ask yourself: What are the points I want to convey? What do I want the audience to learn? When audience members remember my talk the following day, what main point do I want them to remember?

introduce yourself;
present your research question and why it matters;
describe how you conducted your research,
explain what you found out and what it means; and
conclude with a summary of your main points.

Depending on your topic, you may need to provide background information so that the audience understands the significance of your inquiry. Be judicious in the amount of information you give, and do not let this discussion get you off track. Once you’ve provided sufficient background, bring the focus back to your research by reminding the audience of your research question.

Do not even think of opening PowerPoint until you have organized your ideas and decided on your main points. If you need guidance, see below for a sample oral presentation outline.

PowerPoint. You should treat PowerPoint as a useful tool. You can use it to incorporate images into your presentation , to emphasize important points , and to guide your audience in following your argument . You should not use it for anything else.

This means:

Don’t present too much information on the slides. The audience cannot read a long section of text and simultaneously listen to you speak about it. If you really must provide a long quotation, then highlight the words and phrases you want to emphasize, and read the quote out loud, slowly, so the audience can absorb it.

Do explain to your audience what each chart or graph indicates. Use charts and graphs to convey information clearly, not simply to show that you did the work.

Don’t spend extra time on making a fancy PowerPoint presentation with moving images and graphics unless they are vital for communicating your ideas.

Do be prepared to give your talk even if technology fails. If your charts don’t look quite right on the screen, or you forget your flash drive, or there’s a power outage, or half the audience can’t see the screen, you should still be able to make an effective presentation. (Bring a printout to speak from, just in case any of these disasters befalls you.)

Tone. It is best to approach your prepared talk as a somewhat formal occasion. Treat your audience—and your topic—with respect. Even if you know everyone in the room, introduce yourself. Don’t address audience members as “you guys.” Dress neatly. Most of all, share your enthusiasm for your subject.

Practice speaking slowly and clearly. If you want to emphasize an important point, repeat it. Practice speaking slowly and clearly.

You don’t need to read your talk, and in fact you should avoid doing so. But you should speak it out loud enough times that you know when there are points that tend to trip you up, where you might have a tendency to throw in something new and get off track, and whether some of your transitions are not smooth enough.

And, of course, time yourself. Make cuts if you need to.

Practice again.

Sample Oral Presentation Outline

Introduction Hello, my name is ____. I am a ___-year student at the University of Virginia majoring in ____. I’m going to talk to you today about my research on _____.

Context of research

I had the opportunity to join Professor ____’s lab, where the research focus is____.
This is research for my Distinguished Majors thesis….
I got interested in this area because ….

Research question and significance

I wanted to find out _______[insert your research question].
This is an important question because _____. OR This question interested me because ______.

Research methods/design

I thought the best way to answer this question would be by ______.
I chose this method because….

Research activity Here’s what I did: _______.

Results Here’s what I found out: ______.

Significance of results/where this research might lead

This result matters because….
Now that I’ve learned this, I see that some other questions to ask are….

Conclusion/Summary of main points I set out to answer ______ [research question] by _______ [research methods]. And I discovered that ______ [brief statement of results]. This was interesting because _____ [significance]/This will help us understand ____.<

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my advisor, Professor _____, for her guidance.…
My work was supported by a _____ award. OR I’d like to thank the ____ Family for their generosity.

Questions I would be happy to take your questions.

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Oral Presentations

Here, you’ll find information about preparing research-based oral and performance presentations. Oral presentations are often supplemented by some sort of slideshow (e.g., one created in Microsoft PowerPoint), because people tend to understand and retain what they both hear and see. Performance presentations and film/exhibit/demonstrations are broadly defined and include dance/music/theatre performances, fine art exhibitions, product/device demonstrations, and other similar creative products.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzIJFD-ddoI&feature=youtu.be

Special Instructions for UURAF 2025 Oral Presentations

UURAF 2025 will be a hybrid event consisting of oral, poster, performance, film and exhibit presentations. UURAF is a public event. Do not share confidential information in your abstract or presentation.

Presenters can expect to interact with judges and visitors through the chat function and dedicated discussion sessions on the event platform Symposium by ForagerOne. Please respond promptly to questions.

Due to space limitations, oral presentations will only be offered as a virtual option.

Online Only

Submit presentation materials to online event site by April 7
Create an oral presentation using standard presentation software
Create a voice-over for the presentation lasting 7 to 10 minutes; 12 minute maximum
Upload presentation with voice-over to YouTube as an unlisted video
Enable the closed captioning feature to promote accessibility and inclusivity
Add abstract and link for unlisted YouTube video to the UURAF event site by April 7
Participate in virtual discussions with visitors and judges, April 10 - 11.

Presentation Tips:

UURAF Presenter Guide from UURAF 2024
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How to add caption to YouTube videos
Attend one of our workshop s or peer advising for more assistance
View example presentations from UURAF 2023
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How to Prepare and Give a Scholarly Oral Presentation

First Online: 01 January 2013

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Cheryl Gore-Felton Ph.D. 2

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An important function of being an academic faculty member is building an academic reputation, and one of the best ways to build a reputation is by giving scholarly presentations, particularly those that are oral. Earning the reputation of someone who can give an excellent talk often results in being invited to give keynote addresses at regional and national conferences, which increases a faculty member’s visibility along with his or her 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 one’s 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

ELF Oral Presentations in a Multilingual Context: Intelligibility, Familiarity and Agency

Pashler H, McDaniel M, Rohrer D, Bjork R. Learning styles: concepts and evidence. Psychol Sci Publ Interest. 2009;9:105–19.

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Ericsson AK, Krampe RT, Tesch-Romer C. The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychol Rev. 1993;100:363–406.

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Seaward BL. Managing stress: principles and strategies for health and well-being. 7th ed. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC; 2012.

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Gore-Felton, C. (2013). How to Prepare and Give a Scholarly Oral Presentation. In: Roberts, L. (eds) The Academic Medicine Handbook. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5693-3_37

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Academic Development Centre

Oral presentations

Using oral presentations to assess learning

Introduction.

Oral presentations are a form of assessment that calls on students to use the spoken word to express their knowledge and understanding of a topic. It allows capture of not only the research that the students have done but also a range of cognitive and transferable skills.

Different types of oral presentations

A common format is in-class presentations on a prepared topic, often supported by visual aids in the form of PowerPoint slides or a Prezi, with a standard length that varies between 10 and 20 minutes. In-class presentations can be performed individually or in a small group and are generally followed by a brief question and answer session.

Oral presentations are often combined with other modes of assessment; for example oral presentation of a project report, oral presentation of a poster, commentary on a practical exercise, etc.

Also common is the use of PechaKucha, a fast-paced presentation format consisting of a fixed number of slides that are set to move on every twenty seconds (Hirst, 2016). The original version was of 20 slides resulting in a 6 minute and 40 second presentation, however, you can reduce this to 10 or 15 to suit group size or topic complexity and coverage. One of the advantages of this format is that you can fit a large number of presentations in a short period of time and everyone has the same rules. It is also a format that enables students to express their creativity through the appropriate use of images on their slides to support their narrative.

When deciding which format of oral presentation best allows your students to demonstrate the learning outcomes, it is also useful to consider which format closely relates to real world practice in your subject area.

What can oral presentations assess?

The key questions to consider include:

what will be assessed?
who will be assessing?

This form of assessment places the emphasis on students’ capacity to arrange and present information in a clear, coherent and effective way’ rather than on their capacity to find relevant information and sources. However, as noted above, it could be used to assess both.

Oral presentations, depending on the task set, can be particularly useful in assessing:

knowledge skills and critical analysis
applied problem-solving abilities
ability to research and prepare persuasive arguments
ability to generate and synthesise ideas
ability to communicate effectively
ability to present information clearly and concisely
ability to present information to an audience with appropriate use of visual and technical aids
time management
interpersonal and group skills.

When using this method you are likely to aim to assess a combination of the above to the extent specified by the learning outcomes. It is also important that all aspects being assessed are reflected in the marking criteria.

In the case of group presentation you might also assess:

level of contribution to the group
ability to contribute without dominating
ability to maintain a clear role within the group.

See also the ‘ Assessing group work Link opens in a new window ’ section for further guidance.

As with all of the methods described in this resource it is important to ensure that the students are clear about what they expected to do and understand the criteria that will be used to asses them. (See Ginkel et al, 2017 for a useful case study.)

Although the use of oral presentations is increasingly common in higher education some students might not be familiar with this form of assessment. It is important therefore to provide opportunities to discuss expectations and practice in a safe environment, for example by building short presentation activities with discussion and feedback into class time.

Individual or group

It is not uncommon to assess group presentations. If you are opting for this format:

will you assess outcome or process, or both?
how will you distribute tasks and allocate marks?
will group members contribute to the assessment by reporting group process?

Assessed oral presentations are often performed before a peer audience - either in-person or online. It is important to consider what role the peers will play and to ensure they are fully aware of expectations, ground rules and etiquette whether presentations take place online or on campus:

will the presentation be peer assessed? If so how will you ensure everyone has a deep understanding of the criteria?
will peers be required to interact during the presentation?
will peers be required to ask questions after the presentation?
what preparation will peers need to be able to perform their role?
how will the presence and behaviour of peers impact on the assessment?
how will you ensure equality of opportunities for students who are asked fewer/more/easier/harder questions by peers?

Hounsell and McCune (2001) note the importance of the physical setting and layout as one of the conditions which can impact on students’ performance; it is therefore advisable to offer students the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the space in which the presentations will take place and to agree layout of the space in advance.

Good practice

As a summary to the ideas above, Pickford and Brown (2006, p.65) list good practice, based on a number of case studies integrated in their text, which includes:

make explicit the purpose and assessment criteria
use the audience to contribute to the assessment process
record [audio / video] presentations for self-assessment and reflection (you may have to do this for QA purposes anyway)
keep presentations short
consider bringing in externals from commerce / industry (to add authenticity)
consider banning notes / audio visual aids (this may help if AI-generated/enhanced scripts run counter to intended learning outcomes)
encourage students to engage in formative practice with peers (including formative practice of giving feedback)
use a single presentation to assess synoptically; linking several parts / modules of the course
give immediate oral feedback
link back to the learning outcomes that the presentation is assessing; process or product.

Neumann in Havemann and Sherman (eds., 2017) provides a useful case study in chapter 19: Student Presentations at a Distance, and Grange & Enriquez in chapter 22: Moving from an Assessed Presentation during Class Time to a Video-based Assessment in a Spanish Culture Module.

Diversity & inclusion

Some students might feel more comfortable or be better able to express themselves orally than in writing, and vice versa . Others might have particular difficulties expressing themselves verbally, due for example to hearing or speech impediments, anxiety, personality, or language abilities. As with any other form of assessment it is important to be aware of elements that potentially put some students at a disadvantage and consider solutions that benefit all students.

Academic integrity

Oral presentations present relative low risk of academic misconduct if they are presented synchronously and in-class. Avoiding the use of a script can ensure that students are not simply reading out someone else’s text or an AI generated script, whilst the questions posed at the end can allow assessors to gauge the depth of understanding of the topic and structure presented. (Click here for further guidance on academic integrity .)

Recorded presentations (asynchronous) may be produced with help, and additional mechanisms to ensure that the work presented is their own work may be beneficial - such as a reflective account, or a live Q&A session. AI can create scripts, slides and presentations, copy real voices relatively convincingly, and create video avatars, these tools can enable students to create professional video content, and may make this sort of assessment more accessible. The desirability of such tools will depend upon what you are aiming to assess and how you will evaluate student performance.

Student and staff experience

Oral presentations provide a useful opportunity for students to practice skills which are required in the world of work. Through the process of preparing for an oral presentation, students can develop their ability to synthesise information and present to an audience. To improve authenticity the assessment might involve the use of an actual audience, realistic timeframes for preparation, collaboration between students and be situated in realistic contexts, which might include the use of AI tools.

As mentioned above it is important to remember that the stress of presenting information to a public audience might put some students at a disadvantage. Similarly non-native speakers might perceive language as an additional barrier. AI may reduce some of these challenges, but it will be important to ensure equal access to these tools to avoid disadvantaging students. Discussing criteria and expectations with your students, providing a clear structure, ensuring opportunities to practice and receive feedback will benefit all students.

Some disadvantages of oral presentations include:

anxiety - students might feel anxious about this type of assessment and this might impact on their performance
time - oral assessment can be time consuming both in terms of student preparation and performance
time - to develop skill in designing slides if they are required; we cannot assume knowledge of PowerPoint etc.
lack of anonymity and potential bias on the part of markers.

From a student perspective preparing for an oral presentation can be time consuming, especially if the presentation is supported by slides or a poster which also require careful design.

From a teacher’s point of view, presentations are generally assessed on the spot and feedback is immediate, which reduces marking time. It is therefore essential to have clearly defined marking criteria which help assessors to focus on the intended learning outcomes rather than simply on presentation style.

Useful resources

Joughin, G. (2010). A short guide to oral assessment . Leeds Metropolitan University/University of Wollongong http://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/2804/

Race, P. and Brown, S. (2007). The Lecturer’s Toolkit: a practical guide to teaching, learning and assessment. 2 nd edition. London, Routledge.

Annotated bibliography

Class participation

Concept maps

Essay variants: essays only with more focus

briefing / policy papers
research proposals
articles and reviews
essay plans

Film production

Laboratory notebooks and reports

Objective tests

short-answer
multiple choice questions

Patchwork assessment

Creative / artistic performance

learning logs
learning blogs

Simulations

Work-based assessment

Reference list

IMAGES

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Oral presentation skill: what it is and how to develop it
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VIDEO

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY (PRESENTATION)
Research Methodology Presentations
Presentation Research Methodology_Valiance
Presentation research methodology ZAM ZULFAQAR b062110309
MRM5013 Research Methodology Assessment 2 Presentation Research Methodology
Effective Presentation by Adnan Farooq

COMMENTS

How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation
Delivery. 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.
How to Make an Oral Presentation
Avoid distracting behaviors or verbal tics ("um," "like," "uh"). Dress appropriately for the occasion. Consider your body language (e.g., arms crossed can come across as you not wanting to be there). Ways to Stand Out. Embrace a "Presentation Zen" style: simple (not simplistic), clean, and powerful.
Oral Presentations
Oral Presentations Purpose. An Oral Research Presentation is meant to showcase your research findings. A successful oral research presentation should: communicate the importance of your research; clearly state your findings and the analysis of those findings; prompt discussion between researcher and audience. Below you will find information on ...
Guide to Oral Research Presentations
In general, all research presentations need some sort of visual aid. This is most often done using PowerPoint. Graphs, tables, photographs etc. of data help the listener sort through the material. Complex methods can be presented clearly through visuals. A list of conclusion statements helps the listener focus on the final statement.
Delivering Impactful Scientific Oral Presentations
Oral presentations constitute a critical conduit for research dissemination and personal branding and are a public reflection of the research team and department. However, oral presentation skills are absent from most medical education curricula and typically relegated to individual mentors, iterative self-learning, or innate talent.
How to deliver an oral presentation
An easy way to do this is by using the 5×5 rule. This means using no more than 5 bullet points per slide, with no more than 5 words per bullet point. It is also good to break up the text-heavy slides with ones including diagrams or graphs. This can also help to convey your results in a more visual and easy-to-understand way.
PDF Oral Presentations
Oral Presentations. Or. l Presen. ations1. PlanningOral presentations are one of the most common assignments i. college courses. Scholars, professionals, and students in all fields desire to disseminate the new knowledge they produce, and this is often accomplished by delivering oral presentations in class, at conferences, in public lectures, or i.
Talking the talk: tips for effective oral presentations in biomedical
In this Perspective, I share several personal thoughts and recommendations with early-career stage investigators for developing and delivering effective oral research presentations in the biomedical sciences. I begin by emphasizing the importance of this professional skill and describing numerous opportunities for gaining experience as well as sources of guidance and feedback. I then discuss ...
How to Prepare and Give a Scholarly Oral Presentation
To assist the audience, a speaker could start by saying, "Today, I am going to cover three main points.". Then, state what each point is by using transitional words such as "First," "Second," and "Finally.". For research focused presentations, the structure following the overview is similar to an academic paper.
PDF Tips for Conducting an Oral Presentation
Keep it Simple: It is important that you organize your presentation clearly and simply. Prioritize topics and allocate time accordingly; Stick to a few main points; Have a distinct pattern (e.g., cause and effect, chronological, problem/solution); Use transitions to move smoothly from one point to the next; Use examples, anecdotes, graphics ...
Oral Presentation Structure
Oral Presentation Structure. Like scientific papers, oral presentations at a conference or internal seminar are for sharing your research work with other scientists. They, too, must convince the ...
Presenting the Research Paper
A good oral presentation is focused, concise, and interesting in order to trigger a discussion. Be well prepared; write a detailed outline. Introduce the subject. Talk about the sources and the method. Indicate if there are conflicting views about the subject (conflicting views trigger discussion). Make a statement about your new results (if ...
Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides
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.
How to Make a Successful Research Presentation
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.
Giving an Oral Presentation
In the social and behavioral sciences, an oral presentation assignment involves an individual student or group of students verbally addressing an audience on a specific research-based topic, often utilizing slides to help audience members understand and retain what they both see and hear. The purpose is to inform, report, and explain the significance of research findings, and your critical ...
PDF Oral Presentations
on an oral presentation (Waller, 2012). Such a presentation can be used to outline the research problem, methodology undertaken, main findings, and recommenda-tions. It is a very effective tool to reinforce key elements of the research project. Like your written report, the oral presentation is an opportunity to sell your findings, and clear ...
Oral Presentation Tips
present your research question and why it matters; describe how you conducted your research, explain what you found out and what it means; and. conclude with a summary of your main points. Depending on your topic, you may need to provide background information so that the audience understands the significance of your inquiry.
PDF G O RAL P RESENTATION O R ESEARCH R ESULTS
presentations; 2) one 35 mm slide projector; 3) overhead projector; and 4) laser pointer. ﬂ This is a formal presentation you are expected to dress formally (suit and tie for men and equivalent dress for women). Formal dress is not always required in presentations, but dressing formally here will reinforce the importance of the presentation.
Methodology for Written and Oral Presentation of Research Results
presentation methodology for writing and presenting research results. This course's outline includes the following: (a) weekly schedule, (b) reading. assignments, (c) creation of the final ...
Oral Presentations
Oral Presentations. Online Only. Submit presentation materials to online event site by April 7. Create an oral presentation using standard presentation software. Create a voice-over for the presentation lasting 7 to 10 minutes; 12 minute maximum. Upload presentation with voice-over to YouTube as an unlisted video.
How to Prepare and Give a Scholarly Oral Presentation
Earning the reputation of someone who can give an excellent talk often results in being invited to give keynote addresses at regional and national conferences, which increases a faculty member's visibility along with his or her area of research. Given the importance of oral presentations, it is surprising that few graduate or medical programs ...
Oral presentations
Introduction. Oral presentations are a form of assessment that calls on students to use the spoken word to express their knowledge and understanding of a topic. It allows capture of not only the research that the students have done but also a range of cognitive and transferable skills. Different types of oral presentations.
Enhancing learners' awareness of oral presentation (delivery) skills in
Oral presentations, activities often assessed and also a means by which learning could take place, are commonplace in higher education. ... (2014) The importance of oral presentations for university students. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 5(19): 468-75. Google Scholar. ... Sage Research Methods Supercharging research opens in new ...

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How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation

Preparation

Steps to Plan Your Presentation

What You Need To Know

Presentations: Oral Presentations

Oral Presentations Purpose

Creating an Effective Presentation

Components of an Oral Research Presentation

Visual Aids

Delivering Impactful Scientific Oral Presentations

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How to deliver an oral presentation

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Conclusions

Slide design and layout

Delivering the presentation

Presenting tips

Conflicts of interest

Oral Presentation Structure

The opening

The closing

Starting and ending forcefully

Topic rooms within Scientific Communication

Visual Browse

Advanced Research Methods

Writing an Abstract

Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

Introduction

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

Rule 4: Include only essential points

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

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

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

Conclusions

Acknowledgments

How to Make a Successful Research Presentation

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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

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Oral Presentation Tips

How To Make an Oral Presentation of Your Research

Sample Oral Presentation Outline

Oral Presentations

Special Instructions for UURAF 2025 Oral Presentations

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How to Prepare and Give a Scholarly Oral Presentation

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Using oral presentations to assess learning

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