Helpful Presentation TipsFrom Jared Silvia and Betsy Gray

Simplifying Your

Research

• Assume your audience has only a high school level background in your field

• Avoid technical jargon

Simplifying Your Research, continued…

• Review basic principles on which your research is based

• Give lots of background

Want an easy test?

Give your presentation to a friend or roommate that is not studying in your

field…do they understand?

Summarizing Your Work!

• What is the main goal of your research/What question are you trying to answer?

• What is the significance of your research?

• Review any basic principles that are relevant to your research

Summarizing Your Work, continued…!

• Describe your results or preliminary data

• How to these results answer your main question?

• What are the next steps you will take from here?

Summarizing Your Work, continued…!

• What are your main

conclusions?

• Review the significance of your findings!

http://tao.atmos.washington.edu/lectures/wallace1098/CONCLUSIONS.gif

Using Power Point

• Powerful tool

• Allows Integration of Variety of Information

• Cannot stand alone - Visual Aid

FIRST RULE OF POWER POINT

• K.I.S.S. - Keep it Simple Stupid– Complicated Slides tune the audience out

The Epitome of How a Complicated Slide Can Make even the Greatest Information

Nothing More than Gobbly Goop • Gobbly Goop is an Gobbly Goop is an

amorphous entity amorphous entity whose sole motive in whose sole motive in existence is to existence is to confound the confound the audienceaudience

• As the goop grows the As the goop grows the reader is reader is overwhelmed into a overwhelmed into a comatose from which comatose from which extraction of cognitive extraction of cognitive thought is impossiblethought is impossible

• As the number of As the number of graphics displayed graphics displayed grows, Goop increases grows, Goop increases at an exponential rateat an exponential rate

Goop Effects on Understanding

y = -2x + 100

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Goop (mg)

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QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Second Rule

• Do not read your slides word for word

• The slide should be an outline for the audience

• Shorten slides that do not allow for elaboration

Third Rule

• Be professional

• The audience are not Kindergartners

• Creativity can be good and bad

Unprofessional

• Remember this is work that you are going to be proud of

• Make sure everyone knows you worked hard

Images

• Make sure that graphs and figures are easy to read

• Include all important information

• Should help the audience understand

Graphs

• Try to limit one graph per slide unless there is complementary purpose for multiple graphs

• Have adequate labels and titles

• Size is important

• Do not be afraid to improve graph quality, especially for scanned images

Example

• Ride satisfaction increase initially with time• Decreases after a maximum satisfaction rating at 3

minutes

Satisfaction of a Ride as a plot of Ride Duration

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Modification of Graphs

•Clarity is Important

Pictures

• Have a clear correlation to topic

• Captions if necessary

• Scale may be important 10 nm Iron OxideSpheres

Some Concluding Tips:

• Be Simple and Succinct!

• Practice, Practice, Practice!

• And don’t forget to relax!