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How to Create and Deliver a Research Presentation

Every research endeavor ends up with the communication of its findings. Graduate-level research culminates in a thesis defense , while many academic and scientific disciplines are published in peer-reviewed journals. In a business context, PowerPoint research presentation is the default format for reporting the findings to stakeholders.

Condensing months of work into a few slides can prove to be challenging. It requires particular skills to create and deliver a research presentation that promotes informed decisions and drives long-term projects forward.

Table of Contents

What is a Research Presentation

Key slides for creating a research presentation, tips when delivering a research presentation, how to present sources in a research presentation, recommended templates to create a research presentation.

A research presentation is the communication of research findings, typically delivered to an audience of peers, colleagues, students, or professionals. In the academe, it is meant to showcase the importance of the research paper , state the findings and the analysis of those findings, and seek feedback that could further the research.

The presentation of research becomes even more critical in the business world as the insights derived from it are the basis of strategic decisions of organizations. Information from this type of report can aid companies in maximizing the sales and profit of their business. Major projects such as research and development (R&D) in a new field, the launch of a new product or service, or even corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives will require the presentation of research findings to prove their feasibility.

Market research and technical research are examples of business-type research presentations you will commonly encounter.

In this article, we’ve compiled all the essential tips, including some examples and templates, to get you started with creating and delivering a stellar research presentation tailored specifically for the business context.

Various research suggests that the average attention span of adults during presentations is around 20 minutes, with a notable drop in an engagement at the 10-minute mark . Beyond that, you might see your audience doing other things.

How can you avoid such a mistake? The answer lies in the adage “keep it simple, stupid” or KISS. We don’t mean dumbing down your content but rather presenting it in a way that is easily digestible and accessible to your audience. One way you can do this is by organizing your research presentation using a clear structure.

Here are the slides you should prioritize when creating your research presentation PowerPoint.

1.  Title Page

The title page is the first thing your audience will see during your presentation, so put extra effort into it to make an impression. Of course, writing presentation titles and title pages will vary depending on the type of presentation you are to deliver. In the case of a research presentation, you want a formal and academic-sounding one. It should include:

• The full title of the report
• The date of the report
• The name of the researchers or department in charge of the report
• The name of the organization for which the presentation is intended

When writing the title of your research presentation, it should reflect the topic and objective of the report. Focus only on the subject and avoid adding redundant phrases like “A research on” or “A study on.” However, you may use phrases like “Market Analysis” or “Feasibility Study” because they help identify the purpose of the presentation. Doing so also serves a long-term purpose for the filing and later retrieving of the document.

Here’s a sample title page for a hypothetical market research presentation from Gillette .

2. Executive Summary Slide

The executive summary marks the beginning of the body of the presentation, briefly summarizing the key discussion points of the research. Specifically, the summary may state the following:

• The purpose of the investigation and its significance within the organization’s goals
• The methods used for the investigation
• The major findings of the investigation
• The conclusions and recommendations after the investigation

Although the executive summary encompasses the entry of the research presentation, it should not dive into all the details of the work on which the findings, conclusions, and recommendations were based. Creating the executive summary requires a focus on clarity and brevity, especially when translating it to a PowerPoint document where space is limited.

Each point should be presented in a clear and visually engaging manner to capture the audience’s attention and set the stage for the rest of the presentation. Use visuals, bullet points, and minimal text to convey information efficiently.

3. Introduction/ Project Description Slides

In this section, your goal is to provide your audience with the information that will help them understand the details of the presentation. Provide a detailed description of the project, including its goals, objectives, scope, and methods for gathering and analyzing data.

You want to answer these fundamental questions:

• What specific questions are you trying to answer, problems you aim to solve, or opportunities you seek to explore?
• Why is this project important, and what prompted it?
• What are the boundaries of your research or initiative? 
• How were the data gathered?

Important: The introduction should exclude specific findings, conclusions, and recommendations.

4. Data Presentation and Analyses Slides

This is the longest section of a research presentation, as you’ll present the data you’ve gathered and provide a thorough analysis of that data to draw meaningful conclusions. The format and components of this section can vary widely, tailored to the specific nature of your research.

For example, if you are doing market research, you may include the market potential estimate, competitor analysis, and pricing analysis. These elements will help your organization determine the actual viability of a market opportunity.

Visual aids like charts, graphs, tables, and diagrams are potent tools to convey your key findings effectively. These materials may be numbered and sequenced (Figure 1, Figure 2, and so forth), accompanied by text to make sense of the insights.

5. Conclusions

The conclusion of a research presentation is where you pull together the ideas derived from your data presentation and analyses in light of the purpose of the research. For example, if the objective is to assess the market of a new product, the conclusion should determine the requirements of the market in question and tell whether there is a product-market fit.

Designing your conclusion slide should be straightforward and focused on conveying the key takeaways from your research. Keep the text concise and to the point. Present it in bullet points or numbered lists to make the content easily scannable.

6. Recommendations

The findings of your research might reveal elements that may not align with your initial vision or expectations. These deviations are addressed in the recommendations section of your presentation, which outlines the best course of action based on the result of the research.

What emerging markets should we target next? Do we need to rethink our pricing strategies? Which professionals should we hire for this special project? — these are some of the questions that may arise when coming up with this part of the research.

Recommendations may be combined with the conclusion, but presenting them separately to reinforce their urgency. In the end, the decision-makers in the organization or your clients will make the final call on whether to accept or decline the recommendations.

7. Questions Slide

Members of your audience are not involved in carrying out your research activity, which means there’s a lot they don’t know about its details. By offering an opportunity for questions, you can invite them to bridge that gap, seek clarification, and engage in a dialogue that enhances their understanding.

If your research is more business-oriented, facilitating a question and answer after your presentation becomes imperative as it’s your final appeal to encourage buy-in for your recommendations.

A simple “Ask us anything” slide can indicate that you are ready to accept questions.

1. Focus on the Most Important Findings

The truth about presenting research findings is that your audience doesn’t need to know everything. Instead, they should receive a distilled, clear, and meaningful overview that focuses on the most critical aspects.

You will likely have to squeeze in the oral presentation of your research into a 10 to 20-minute presentation, so you have to make the most out of the time given to you. In the presentation, don’t soak in the less important elements like historical backgrounds. Decision-makers might even ask you to skip these portions and focus on sharing the findings.

2. Do Not Read Word-per-word

Reading word-for-word from your presentation slides intensifies the danger of losing your audience’s interest. Its effect can be detrimental, especially if the purpose of your research presentation is to gain approval from the audience. So, how can you avoid this mistake?

• Make a conscious design decision to keep the text on your slides minimal. Your slides should serve as visual cues to guide your presentation.
• Structure your presentation as a narrative or story. Stories are more engaging and memorable than dry, factual information.
• Prepare speaker notes with the key points of your research. Glance at it when needed.
• Engage with the audience by maintaining eye contact and asking rhetorical questions.

3. Don’t Go Without Handouts

Handouts are paper copies of your presentation slides that you distribute to your audience. They typically contain the summary of your key points, but they may also provide supplementary information supporting data presented through tables and graphs.

The purpose of distributing presentation handouts is to easily retain the key points you presented as they become good references in the future. Distributing handouts in advance allows your audience to review the material and come prepared with questions or points for discussion during the presentation.

4. Actively Listen

An equally important skill that a presenter must possess aside from speaking is the ability to listen. We are not just talking about listening to what the audience is saying but also considering their reactions and nonverbal cues. If you sense disinterest or confusion, you can adapt your approach on the fly to re-engage them.

For example, if some members of your audience are exchanging glances, they may be skeptical of the research findings you are presenting. This is the best time to reassure them of the validity of your data and provide a concise overview of how it came to be. You may also encourage them to seek clarification.

5. Be Confident

Anxiety can strike before a presentation – it’s a common reaction whenever someone has to speak in front of others. If you can’t eliminate your stress, try to manage it.

People hate public speaking not because they simply hate it. Most of the time, it arises from one’s belief in themselves. You don’t have to take our word for it. Take Maslow’s theory that says a threat to one’s self-esteem is a source of distress among an individual.

Now, how can you master this feeling? You’ve spent a lot of time on your research, so there is no question about your topic knowledge. Perhaps you just need to rehearse your research presentation. If you know what you will say and how to say it, you will gain confidence in presenting your work.

All sources you use in creating your research presentation should be given proper credit. The APA Style is the most widely used citation style in formal research.

In-text citation

Add references within the text of your presentation slide by giving the author’s last name, year of publication, and page number (if applicable) in parentheses after direct quotations or paraphrased materials. As in:

The alarming rate at which global temperatures rise directly impacts biodiversity (Smith, 2020, p. 27).

If the author’s name and year of publication are mentioned in the text, add only the page number in parentheses after the quotations or paraphrased materials. As in:

According to Smith (2020), the alarming rate at which global temperatures rise directly impacts biodiversity (p. 27).

Image citation

All images from the web, including photos, graphs, and tables, used in your slides should be credited using the format below.

Creator’s Last Name, First Name. “Title of Image.” Website Name, Day Mo. Year, URL. Accessed Day Mo. Year.

Work cited page

A work cited page or reference list should follow after the last slide of your presentation. The list should be alphabetized by the author’s last name and initials followed by the year of publication, the title of the book or article, the place of publication, and the publisher. As in:

Smith, J. A. (2020). Climate Change and Biodiversity: A Comprehensive Study. New York, NY: ABC Publications.

When citing a document from a website, add the source URL after the title of the book or article instead of the place of publication and the publisher. As in:

Smith, J. A. (2020). Climate Change and Biodiversity: A Comprehensive Study. Retrieved from https://www.smith.com/climate-change-and-biodiversity.

1. Research Project Presentation PowerPoint Template

A slide deck containing 18 different slides intended to take off the weight of how to make a research presentation. With tons of visual aids, presenters can reference existing research on similar projects to this one – or link another research presentation example – provide an accurate data analysis, disclose the methodology used, and much more.

Use This Template

2. Research Presentation Scientific Method Diagram PowerPoint Template

Whenever you intend to raise questions, expose the methodology you used for your research, or even suggest a scientific method approach for future analysis, this circular wheel diagram is a perfect fit for any presentation study.

Customize all of its elements to suit the demands of your presentation in just minutes.

3. Thesis Research Presentation PowerPoint Template

If your research presentation project belongs to academia, then this is the slide deck to pair that presentation. With a formal aesthetic and minimalistic style, this research presentation template focuses only on exposing your information as clearly as possible.

Use its included bar charts and graphs to introduce data, change the background of each slide to suit the topic of your presentation, and customize each of its elements to meet the requirements of your project with ease.

4. Animated Research Cards PowerPoint Template

Visualize ideas and their connection points with the help of this research card template for PowerPoint. This slide deck, for example, can help speakers talk about alternative concepts to what they are currently managing and its possible outcomes, among different other usages this versatile PPT template has. Zoom Animation effects make a smooth transition between cards (or ideas).

5. Research Presentation Slide Deck for PowerPoint

With a distinctive professional style, this research presentation PPT template helps business professionals and academics alike to introduce the findings of their work to team members or investors.

By accessing this template, you get the following slides:

• Introduction
• Problem Statement
• Research Questions
• Conceptual Research Framework (Concepts, Theories, Actors, & Constructs)
• Study design and methods
• Population & Sampling
• Data Collection
• Data Analysis

Check it out today and craft a powerful research presentation out of it!

A successful research presentation in business is not just about presenting data; it’s about persuasion to take meaningful action. It’s the bridge that connects your research efforts to the strategic initiatives of your organization. To embark on this journey successfully, planning your presentation thoroughly is paramount, from designing your PowerPoint to the delivery.

Take a look and get inspiration from the sample research presentation slides above, put our tips to heart, and transform your research findings into a compelling call to action.

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How to make a scientific presentation

Scientific presentation outlines

Questions to ask yourself before you write your talk, 1. how much time do you have, 2. who will you speak to, 3. what do you want the audience to learn from your talk, step 1: outline your presentation, step 2: plan your presentation slides, step 3: make the presentation slides, slide design, text elements, animations and transitions, step 4: practice your presentation, final thoughts, frequently asked questions about preparing scientific presentations, related articles.

A good scientific presentation achieves three things: you communicate the science clearly, your research leaves a lasting impression on your audience, and you enhance your reputation as a scientist.

But, what is the best way to prepare for a scientific presentation? How do you start writing a talk? What details do you include, and what do you leave out?

It’s tempting to launch into making lots of slides. But, starting with the slides can mean you neglect the narrative of your presentation, resulting in an overly detailed, boring talk.

The key to making an engaging scientific presentation is to prepare the narrative of your talk before beginning to construct your presentation slides. Planning your talk will ensure that you tell a clear, compelling scientific story that will engage the audience.

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to make a good oral scientific presentation, including:

• The different types of oral scientific presentations and how they are delivered;
• How to outline a scientific presentation;
• How to make slides for a scientific presentation.

Our advice results from delving into the literature on writing scientific talks and from our own experiences as scientists in giving and listening to presentations. We provide tips and best practices for giving scientific talks in a separate post.

There are two main types of scientific talks:

• Your talk focuses on a single study . Typically, you tell the story of a single scientific paper. This format is common for short talks at contributed sessions in conferences.
• Your talk describes multiple studies. You tell the story of multiple scientific papers. It is crucial to have a theme that unites the studies, for example, an overarching question or problem statement, with each study representing specific but different variations of the same theme. Typically, PhD defenses, invited seminars, lectures, or talks for a prospective employer (i.e., “job talks”) fall into this category.

➡️ Learn how to prepare an excellent thesis defense

The length of time you are allotted for your talk will determine whether you will discuss a single study or multiple studies, and which details to include in your story.

The background and interests of your audience will determine the narrative direction of your talk, and what devices you will use to get their attention. Will you be speaking to people specializing in your field, or will the audience also contain people from disciplines other than your own? To reach non-specialists, you will need to discuss the broader implications of your study outside your field.

The needs of the audience will also determine what technical details you will include, and the language you will use. For example, an undergraduate audience will have different needs than an audience of seasoned academics. Students will require a more comprehensive overview of background information and explanations of jargon but will need less technical methodological details.

Your goal is to speak to the majority. But, make your talk accessible to the least knowledgeable person in the room.

This is called the thesis statement, or simply the “take-home message”. Having listened to your talk, what message do you want the audience to take away from your presentation? Describe the main idea in one or two sentences. You want this theme to be present throughout your presentation. Again, the thesis statement will depend on the audience and the type of talk you are giving.

Your thesis statement will drive the narrative for your talk. By deciding the take-home message you want to convince the audience of as a result of listening to your talk, you decide how the story of your talk will flow and how you will navigate its twists and turns. The thesis statement tells you the results you need to show, which subsequently tells you the methods or studies you need to describe, which decides the angle you take in your introduction.

➡️ Learn how to write a thesis statement

The goal of your talk is that the audience leaves afterward with a clear understanding of the key take-away message of your research. To achieve that goal, you need to tell a coherent, logical story that conveys your thesis statement throughout the presentation. You can tell your story through careful preparation of your talk.

Preparation of a scientific presentation involves three separate stages: outlining the scientific narrative, preparing slides, and practicing your delivery. Making the slides of your talk without first planning what you are going to say is inefficient.

Here, we provide a 4 step guide to writing your scientific presentation:

• Outline your presentation
• Plan your presentation slides
• Make the presentation slides
• Practice your presentation

Writing an outline helps you consider the key pieces of your talk and how they fit together from the beginning, preventing you from forgetting any important details. It also means you avoid changing the order of your slides multiple times, saving you time.

Plan your talk as discrete sections. In the table below, we describe the sections for a single study talk vs. a talk discussing multiple studies:

The following tips apply when writing the outline of a single study talk. You can easily adapt this framework if you are writing a talk discussing multiple studies.

Introduction: Writing the introduction can be the hardest part of writing a talk. And when giving it, it’s the point where you might be at your most nervous. But preparing a good, concise introduction will settle your nerves.

The introduction tells the audience the story of why you studied your topic. A good introduction succinctly achieves four things, in the following order.

• It gives a broad perspective on the problem or topic for people in the audience who may be outside your discipline (i.e., it explains the big-picture problem motivating your study).
• It describes why you did the study, and why the audience should care.
• It gives a brief indication of how your study addressed the problem and provides the necessary background information that the audience needs to understand your work.
• It indicates what the audience will learn from the talk, and prepares them for what will come next.

A good introduction not only gives the big picture and motivations behind your study but also concisely sets the stage for what the audience will learn from the talk (e.g., the questions your work answers, and/or the hypotheses that your work tests). The end of the introduction will lead to a natural transition to the methods.

Give a broad perspective on the problem. The easiest way to start with the big picture is to think of a hook for the first slide of your presentation. A hook is an opening that gets the audience’s attention and gets them interested in your story. In science, this might take the form of a why, or a how question, or it could be a statement about a major problem or open question in your field. Other examples of hooks include quotes, short anecdotes, or interesting statistics.

Why should the audience care? Next, decide on the angle you are going to take on your hook that links to the thesis of your talk. In other words, you need to set the context, i.e., explain why the audience should care. For example, you may introduce an observation from nature, a pattern in experimental data, or a theory that you want to test. The audience must understand your motivations for the study.

Supplementary details. Once you have established the hook and angle, you need to include supplementary details to support them. For example, you might state your hypothesis. Then go into previous work and the current state of knowledge. Include citations of these studies. If you need to introduce some technical methodological details, theory, or jargon, do it here.

Conclude your introduction. The motivation for the work and background information should set the stage for the conclusion of the introduction, where you describe the goals of your study, and any hypotheses or predictions. Let the audience know what they are going to learn.

Methods: The audience will use your description of the methods to assess the approach you took in your study and to decide whether your findings are credible. Tell the story of your methods in chronological order. Use visuals to describe your methods as much as possible. If you have equations, make sure to take the time to explain them. Decide what methods to include and how you will show them. You need enough detail so that your audience will understand what you did and therefore can evaluate your approach, but avoid including superfluous details that do not support your main idea. You want to avoid the common mistake of including too much data, as the audience can read the paper(s) later.

Results: This is the evidence you present for your thesis. The audience will use the results to evaluate the support for your main idea. Choose the most important and interesting results—those that support your thesis. You don’t need to present all the results from your study (indeed, you most likely won’t have time to present them all). Break down complex results into digestible pieces, e.g., comparisons over multiple slides (more tips in the next section).

Summary: Summarize your main findings. Displaying your main findings through visuals can be effective. Emphasize the new contributions to scientific knowledge that your work makes.

Conclusion: Complete the circle by relating your conclusions to the big picture topic in your introduction—and your hook, if possible. It’s important to describe any alternative explanations for your findings. You might also speculate on future directions arising from your research. The slides that comprise your conclusion do not need to state “conclusion”. Rather, the concluding slide title should be a declarative sentence linking back to the big picture problem and your main idea.

It’s important to end well by planning a strong closure to your talk, after which you will thank the audience. Your closing statement should relate to your thesis, perhaps by stating it differently or memorably. Avoid ending awkwardly by memorizing your closing sentence.

By now, you have an outline of the story of your talk, which you can use to plan your slides. Your slides should complement and enhance what you will say. Use the following steps to prepare your slides.

• Write the slide titles to match your talk outline. These should be clear and informative declarative sentences that succinctly give the main idea of the slide (e.g., don’t use “Methods” as a slide title). Have one major idea per slide. In a YouTube talk on designing effective slides , researcher Michael Alley shows examples of instructive slide titles.
• Decide how you will convey the main idea of the slide (e.g., what figures, photographs, equations, statistics, references, or other elements you will need). The body of the slide should support the slide’s main idea.
• Under each slide title, outline what you want to say, in bullet points.

In sum, for each slide, prepare a title that summarizes its major idea, a list of visual elements, and a summary of the points you will make. Ensure each slide connects to your thesis. If it doesn’t, then you don’t need the slide.

Slides for scientific presentations have three major components: text (including labels and legends), graphics, and equations. Here, we give tips on how to present each of these components.

• Have an informative title slide. Include the names of all coauthors and their affiliations. Include an attractive image relating to your study.
• Make the foreground content of your slides “pop” by using an appropriate background. Slides that have white backgrounds with black text work well for small rooms, whereas slides with black backgrounds and white text are suitable for large rooms.
• The layout of your slides should be simple. Pay attention to how and where you lay the visual and text elements on each slide. It’s tempting to cram information, but you need lots of empty space. Retain space at the sides and bottom of your slides.
• Use sans serif fonts with a font size of at least 20 for text, and up to 40 for slide titles. Citations can be in 14 font and should be included at the bottom of the slide.
• Use bold or italics to emphasize words, not underlines or caps. Keep these effects to a minimum.
• Use concise text . You don’t need full sentences. Convey the essence of your message in as few words as possible. Write down what you’d like to say, and then shorten it for the slide. Remove unnecessary filler words.
• Text blocks should be limited to two lines. This will prevent you from crowding too much information on the slide.
• Include names of technical terms in your talk slides, especially if they are not familiar to everyone in the audience.
• Proofread your slides. Typos and grammatical errors are distracting for your audience.
• Include citations for the hypotheses or observations of other scientists.
• Good figures and graphics are essential to sustain audience interest. Use graphics and photographs to show the experiment or study system in action and to explain abstract concepts.
• Don’t use figures straight from your paper as they may be too detailed for your talk, and details like axes may be too small. Make new versions if necessary. Make them large enough to be visible from the back of the room.
• Use graphs to show your results, not tables. Tables are difficult for your audience to digest! If you must present a table, keep it simple.
• Label the axes of graphs and indicate the units. Label important components of graphics and photographs and include captions. Include sources for graphics that are not your own.
• Explain all the elements of a graph. This includes the axes, what the colors and markers mean, and patterns in the data.
• Use colors in figures and text in a meaningful, not random, way. For example, contrasting colors can be effective for pointing out comparisons and/or differences. Don’t use neon colors or pastels.
• Use thick lines in figures, and use color to create contrasts in the figures you present. Don’t use red/green or red/blue combinations, as color-blind audience members can’t distinguish between them.
• Arrows or circles can be effective for drawing attention to key details in graphs and equations. Add some text annotations along with them.
• Write your summary and conclusion slides using graphics, rather than showing a slide with a list of bullet points. Showing some of your results again can be helpful to remind the audience of your message.
• If your talk has equations, take time to explain them. Include text boxes to explain variables and mathematical terms, and put them under each term in the equation.
• Combine equations with a graphic that shows the scientific principle, or include a diagram of the mathematical model.
• Use animations judiciously. They are helpful to reveal complex ideas gradually, for example, if you need to make a comparison or contrast or to build a complicated argument or figure. For lists, reveal one bullet point at a time. New ideas appearing sequentially will help your audience follow your logic.
• Slide transitions should be simple. Silly ones distract from your message.
• Decide how you will make the transition as you move from one section of your talk to the next. For example, if you spend time talking through details, provide a summary afterward, especially in a long talk. Another common tactic is to have a “home slide” that you return to multiple times during the talk that reinforces your main idea or message. In her YouTube talk on designing effective scientific presentations , Stanford biologist Susan McConnell suggests using the approach of home slides to build a cohesive narrative.

To deliver a polished presentation, it is essential to practice it. Here are some tips.

• For your first run-through, practice alone. Pay attention to your narrative. Does your story flow naturally? Do you know how you will start and end? Are there any awkward transitions? Do animations help you tell your story? Do your slides help to convey what you are saying or are they missing components?
• Next, practice in front of your advisor, and/or your peers (e.g., your lab group). Ask someone to time your talk. Take note of their feedback and the questions that they ask you (you might be asked similar questions during your real talk).
• Edit your talk, taking into account the feedback you’ve received. Eliminate superfluous slides that don’t contribute to your takeaway message.
• Practice as many times as needed to memorize the order of your slides and the key transition points of your talk. However, don’t try to learn your talk word for word. Instead, memorize opening and closing statements, and sentences at key junctures in the presentation. Your presentation should resemble a serious but spontaneous conversation with the audience.
• Practicing multiple times also helps you hone the delivery of your talk. While rehearsing, pay attention to your vocal intonations and speed. Make sure to take pauses while you speak, and make eye contact with your imaginary audience.
• Make sure your talk finishes within the allotted time, and remember to leave time for questions. Conferences are particularly strict on run time.
• Anticipate questions and challenges from the audience, and clarify ambiguities within your slides and/or speech in response.
• If you anticipate that you could be asked questions about details but you don’t have time to include them, or they detract from the main message of your talk, you can prepare slides that address these questions and place them after the final slide of your talk.

➡️ More tips for giving scientific presentations

An organized presentation with a clear narrative will help you communicate your ideas effectively, which is essential for engaging your audience and conveying the importance of your work. Taking time to plan and outline your scientific presentation before writing the slides will help you manage your nerves and feel more confident during the presentation, which will improve your overall performance.

A good scientific presentation has an engaging scientific narrative with a memorable take-home message. It has clear, informative slides that enhance what the speaker says. You need to practice your talk many times to ensure you deliver a polished presentation.

First, consider who will attend your presentation, and what you want the audience to learn about your research. Tailor your content to their level of knowledge and interests. Second, create an outline for your presentation, including the key points you want to make and the evidence you will use to support those points. Finally, practice your presentation several times to ensure that it flows smoothly and that you are comfortable with the material.

Prepare an opening that immediately gets the audience’s attention. A common device is a why or a how question, or a statement of a major open problem in your field, but you could also start with a quote, interesting statistic, or case study from your field.

Scientific presentations typically either focus on a single study (e.g., a 15-minute conference presentation) or tell the story of multiple studies (e.g., a PhD defense or 50-minute conference keynote talk). For a single study talk, the structure follows the scientific paper format: Introduction, Methods, Results, Summary, and Conclusion, whereas the format of a talk discussing multiple studies is more complex, but a theme unifies the studies.

Ensure you have one major idea per slide, and convey that idea clearly (through images, equations, statistics, citations, video, etc.). The slide should include a title that summarizes the major point of the slide, should not contain too much text or too many graphics, and color should be used meaningfully.

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How to Create a Powerful Research Presentation

Written by: Raja Mandal

Have you ever had to create a research presentation? If yes, you know how difficult it is to prepare an effective presentation that perfectly explains your research. Since it's a visual representation of your papers, a large chunk of its preparation goes into designing.

No one knows your research paper better than you. So, only you can create the presentation to communicate the core message perfectly. We've developed a practical, step-by-step guide to help you prepare a stellar research presentation.

Let's get started!

Table of Contents

What is a research presentation, purpose of a research presentation, how to prepare an effective research presentation, create a stunning presentation in less time.

• Hundreds of premade slides available
• Add animation and interactivity to your slides
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A research presentation is a visual representation of an individual's or organization's systematic investigation of a subject. It helps the presenter obtain feedback on their proposed research. For example, educational establishments require Higher Degree Research (HDR) students to present their research papers in a research presentation.

The purpose of a research presentation is to share the findings with the world. When done well, it helps achieve significant levels of impact in front of groups of people. Delivering the research paper as a presentation also communicates the subject matter in powerful ways.

A beautifully designed research presentation should:

• Explain the significance of your research.
• Clearly state your findings and the method of analysis.
• Get valuable feedback from others in your community to strengthen your research.
• Make the audience learn more about your work or read your research paper.

According to a recent survey, 79% of people agree that most presentations are boring. You should prepare your presentation in a way that attracts and persuades your audience while effectively sharing the information. Follow the steps below to do that.

Decide on Your Presentation’s Purpose

Beginning the design process without deciding on the purpose of your presentation is like crawling in the dark without knowing the destination. You should first know the purpose of your presentation before creating it.

The purpose of a research presentation can be defending a dissertation, an academic job interview, a conference, asking for funding, and various others. The rest of the process will depend on the purpose of your presentation.

Look at these 25 different presentation examples to get inspiration and find the one that best fits your needs.

Know Your Audience

You probably wouldn't speak to your lecturer like you talk to your friends. Creating a presentation is the same—you need to tailor your presentation's design, tone and content to make it appropriate for your audience.

To do that, you need to establish who your audience is. Your audience could be:

• Scientists/scholars in your field
• Graduate and undergraduate students
• Community members

Your target audience might be a mix of all of the above. In that case, it's better to have something for everyone. Once you know who your target audience is, ask yourself the following questions:

• Why are they here?
• What do they expect from your presentations?
• Are they willing to participate?
• What will keep them engaged?
• What do you want them to do and what's their part in your presentation?
• How do they prefer to receive information?

The answers to these questions will help you know your audience better and prepare your research presentation accordingly. Once you define your target audience, use these five traits of a highly engaging presentation to capture your audience's attention.

Create a Research Presentation Outline

Before crafting your presentation, it's crucial to create an outline. Your outline will act as your guide to put your information in order and ensure you touch on all your major points. Like other forms of academic writing, research presentations can be divided into several parts to make them more effective.

An outline helps guide you as you prepare your presentation as follows:

• It enables you to organize your ideas
• Presents your research in a logical format
• Shows the relationships among slides in your presentation
• Constructs an order overview of your presentation
• Groups ideas into main points

Though there is no universal formula for a research presentation outline, here's an example of what the outline should look like:

• Introduction and purpose
• Background and context
• Data and methodology
• Descriptive data
• Quantitative and qualitative analysis
• Future Research

Learn more about presentation structure to keep your audience engaged. Watch the video below for a better understanding.

Limit the Amount of Text on Your Slides

One of the most important things people often overlook is the amount of text on their presentation slides . Since the audience will be listening and watching, putting up a slide with lots of words will make them focus on reading instead of listening. As a result, they'll miss out on any critical points you are making.

The simpler you make your slides, the more your audience will grasp the meaning and retain the critical information. Here are a few ways to limit the amount of text on your slides.

1. Use Only Crucial Text on the Slides

Without making your point clear immediately, you will struggle to keep your audience's attention. Too much text can make your slides look cluttered and overwhelm the audience. Cut out waffle words, limiting content to the essentials.

To avoid cognitive overload, combine text and images . Add animated graphics , icons , characters and gestures to bring your research presentation to life and capture your audience's attention.

2. Split up the Content Onto Multiple Slides

We recommend using one piece of information on a single slide. If you're talking about two or more topics, divide the topics into different slides to make your slides easily digestible and less daunting. The less information on each slide, the more your audience is likely to read.

3. Put Key Message Into the Heading

Use the slide headings of your presentation as a summary message. Think about the one key point you want the audience to take from each slide. And make the header short and impactful. This will ensure that your audience gets the main points immediately.

For example, you may have a statistic you want to really get across to your audience. Include that number in your heading so that it's the first point your audience reads.

But what if that statistic changes? Having to manually go back and update the number throughout your research presentation can be time-consuming. With Visme's Dynamic Fields feature , updating important information throughout your presentation is a breeze. Take advantage of Dynamic Fields to ensure your data and research information is  always up to date and accurate.

4. Visualize Data Instead of Writing Them

When adding facts and figures to your research presentation, harness the power of data visualization . Add interactive charts and graphs to take out most of the text. Text with visuals causes a faster and stronger reaction than words alone, making your presentation more memorable. However, your data visualization should be straightforward to help create a narrative that further builds connections between information.

Have a look at these data visualization examples for inspiration. And here's an infographic explaining data visualization best practices.

Visme comes with a wide variety of charts and graphs templates you can use in your presentation.

5. Use Presenter Notes

Visme's Presenter Studio comes with a presenter notes feature that can help you keep your slides succinct. Use it to pull out any additional text that the audience needs to understand the content.

View your notes for each slide in the left sidebar of the presentation software to help you stay focused and on message throughout your presentation.

Explain Your Research

Since you're preparing a research presentation, use more slides to explain the research papers you directly contributed to. Sometimes people spend nearly all of the presentation going over the existing research and giving background information on the particular case. This is also helpful to so when creating a grant proposal as well.

Your audience is there to learn about your new and exciting research, not to hear a summary of old work. So, if you create 20 slides for the presentation, spend at least 15 slides explaining your research. However, don't try to include the words in the slide that you'll present.

Learn more about how to give a good presentation . This will help you explain your research more effectively.

Follow Presentation Design Best Practices

A study shows that 91% of presenters feel more confident when presenting a well-designed slide deck. So, let's move on to the design part of your research presentation to boost your confidence.

1. Create a Stunning Background

The background of each presentation slide is a crucial design element for your presentation. So choose the background carefully. Try not to use backgrounds that are distracting or make the text difficult to read.

Use simple backgrounds to make the slide aesthetically appealing. Always use the same background for the slides throughout the presentation. Look at these presentation background templates and examples to get inspired.

2. Use a Variety of Layouts

Slide after slide of the same layout makes your presentation repetitive and boring. Mixing up the layout of your slides can help you avoid this issue and keep your audience engaged.

The presentation template below has a wide variety of images, texts, icons and other elements to create an interesting layout for your presentation slides.

Have a look at these 29 best presentation templates for inspiration.

3. Use Colors Wisely

Colors play an essential role in designing your presentation slides, regardless of the type of presentation you're working with. However, if you're a non-designer, you might be unsure about about how to use colors in a presentation . So, here are some tips for you:

• Use complementary colors to stay on the safe side.
• Use a text color that contrasts with the background to make the text pop.
• Use colors to emphasize a text or design element.
• Keep colors simple — less is more.

Don't be discouraged if you still find it difficult to choose colors for your presentation. All the presentation templates in Visme come with perfect color combinations to get the job done for you. Below is an example.

4. Use Fonts Hierarchy

Fonts are another design element that can make or break the design of your research presentation. If you struggle a lot while choosing fonts for a presentation , you aren't alone. Here are some tips that you can follow:

• Try not to use smaller fonts that make your text difficult to read.
• Use different font sizes for headings and body text. For example, you can use 20 points for the body text, 24 for the subheadings and 40 for the title.
• Learn about font pairing and use it in your design. For example, use sans-serif with serif fonts as they always go well together.
• Use two or three fonts max—ideally two. One should be for the headlines and the other for the body text. Anything more than that can make your slides cluttered.
• Handwritten fonts and script fonts may look tempting, but they are a big no. They could negatively affect the readability and legibility of your research presentation.

Here's a Visme presentation template designed with the points mentioned above in mind.

5. Include High-Resolution Images

Are there any images you can use in your slides to introduce or explain a topic? What could be better than that? As the saying goes, "A picture tells a thousand words." Use pictures to help your audience listen to you more efficiently while viewing the slides.

Pictures can also help you reduce the text clutter in the presentation, as long as they prompt you to make the points you need to make. If you can't find an image for your presentation, browse through Visme's high-resolution stock photo library . It features over 1,000,000 free stock photos.

Have a look at the presentation template below. It includes only high-resolution images, like all the presentation templates in Visme.

Below is a video of 13 presentation design tips to help you design a research presentation that your audience will love.

Prepare Your Research Presentation Using Visme

Designing presentation slides from scratch isn't easy, especially if you have no experience. Fortunately, Visme comes with hundreds of professional presentation templates crafted by expert designers that make the job easy for you. You don't need any design experience to create effective research presentations.

Choose from hundreds of beautifully designed presentation templates and customize them according to your needs using Visme's all-in-one presentation software . Anyone can use our powerful software to create stunning presentations in minutes.

Create a free account in Visme today and start creating your research presentation like an expert.

Put together powerful research presentations in minutes with Visme.

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About the Author

Raja Antony Mandal is a Content Writer at Visme. He can quickly adapt to different writing styles, possess strong research skills, and know SEO fundamentals. Raja wants to share valuable information with his audience by telling captivating stories in his articles. He wants to travel and party a lot on the weekends, but his guitar, drum set, and volleyball court don’t let him.

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• Guide & How to's

How to present a research paper in PPT: best practices

A research paper presentation is frequently used at conferences and other events where you have a chance to share the results of your research and receive feedback from colleagues. Although it may appear as simple as summarizing the findings, successful examples of research paper presentations show that there is a little bit more to it.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the basic outline and steps to create a good research paper presentation. We’ll also explain what to include and what not to include in your presentation of research paper and share some of the most effective tips you can use to take your slides to the next level.

Research paper PowerPoint presentation outline

Creating a PowerPoint presentation for a research paper involves organizing and summarizing your key findings, methodology, and conclusions in a way that encourages your audience to interact with your work and share their interest in it with others. Here’s a basic research paper outline PowerPoint you can follow:

1. Title (1 slide)

Typically, your title slide should contain the following information:

• Title of the research paper
• Affiliation or institution
• Date of presentation

2. Introduction (1-3 slides)

On this slide of your presentation, briefly introduce the research topic and its significance and state the research question or objective.

3. Research questions or hypothesis (1 slide)

This slide should emphasize the objectives of your research or present the hypothesis.

4. Literature review (1 slide)

Your literature review has to provide context for your research by summarizing relevant literature. Additionally, it should highlight gaps or areas where your research contributes.

5. Methodology and data collection (1-2 slides)

This slide of your research paper PowerPoint has to explain the research design, methods, and procedures. It must also Include details about participants, materials, and data collection and emphasize special equipment you have used in your work.

6. Results (3-5 slides)

On this slide, you must present the results of your data analysis and discuss any trends, patterns, or significant findings. Moreover, you should use charts, graphs, and tables to illustrate data and highlight something novel in your results (if applicable).

7. Conclusion (1 slide)

Your conclusion slide has to summarize the main findings and their implications, as well as discuss the broader impact of your research. Usually, a single statement is enough.

8. Recommendations (1 slide)

If applicable, provide recommendations for future research or actions on this slide.

9. References (1-2 slides)

The references slide is where you list all the sources cited in your research paper.

10. Acknowledgments (1 slide)

On this presentation slide, acknowledge any individuals, organizations, or funding sources that contributed to your research.

11. Appendix (1 slide)

If applicable, include any supplementary materials, such as additional data or detailed charts, in your appendix slide.

The above outline is just a general guideline, so make sure to adjust it based on your specific research paper and the time allotted for the presentation.

Steps to creating a memorable research paper presentation

Creating a PowerPoint presentation for a research paper involves several critical steps needed to convey your findings and engage your audience effectively, and these steps are as follows:

Step 1. Understand your audience:

• Identify the audience for your presentation.
• Tailor your content and level of detail to match the audience’s background and knowledge.

Step 2. Define your key messages:

• Clearly articulate the main messages or findings of your research.
• Identify the key points you want your audience to remember.

Step 3. Design your research paper PPT presentation:

• Use a clean and professional design that complements your research topic.
• Choose readable fonts, consistent formatting, and a limited color palette.
• Opt for PowerPoint presentation services if slide design is not your strong side.

Step 4. Put content on slides:

• Follow the outline above to structure your presentation effectively; include key sections and topics.
• Organize your content logically, following the flow of your research paper.

Step 5. Final check:

• Proofread your slides for typos, errors, and inconsistencies.
• Ensure all visuals are clear, high-quality, and properly labeled.

Step 6. Save and share:

• Save your presentation and ensure compatibility with the equipment you’ll be using.
• If necessary, share a copy of your presentation with the audience.

By following these steps, you can create a well-organized and visually appealing research paper presentation PowerPoint that effectively conveys your research findings to the audience.

What to include and what not to include in your presentation

In addition to the must-know PowerPoint presentation recommendations, which we’ll cover later in this article, consider the following do’s and don’ts when you’re putting together your research paper presentation:

• Focus on the topic.
• Be brief and to the point.
• Attract the audience’s attention and highlight interesting details.
• Use only relevant visuals (maps, charts, pictures, graphs, etc.).
• Use numbers and bullet points to structure the content.
• Make clear statements regarding the essence and results of your research.

Don’ts:

• Don’t write down the whole outline of your paper and nothing else.
• Don’t put long, full sentences on your slides; split them into smaller ones.
• Don’t use distracting patterns, colors, pictures, and other visuals on your slides; the simpler, the better.
• Don’t use too complicated graphs or charts; only the ones that are easy to understand.
• Now that we’ve discussed the basics, let’s move on to the top tips for making a powerful presentation of your research paper.

8 tips on how to make research paper presentation that achieves its goals

You’ve probably been to a presentation where the presenter reads word for word from their PowerPoint outline. Or where the presentation is cluttered, chaotic, or contains too much data. The simple tips below will help you summarize a 10 to 15-page paper for a 15 to 20-minute talk and succeed, so read on!

Tip #1: Less is more

You want to provide enough information to make your audience want to know more. Including details but not too many and avoiding technical jargon, formulas, and long sentences are always good ways to achieve this.

Tip #2: Be professional

Avoid using too many colors, font changes, distracting backgrounds, animations, etc. Bullet points with a few words to highlight the important information are preferable to lengthy paragraphs. Additionally, include slide numbers on all PowerPoint slides except for the title slide, and make sure it is followed by a table of contents, offering a brief overview of the entire research paper.

Tip #3: Strive for balance

PowerPoint slides have limited space, so use it carefully. Typically, one to two points per slide or 5 lines for 5 words in a sentence are enough to present your ideas.

Tip #4: Use proper fonts and text size

The font you use should be easy to read and consistent throughout the slides. You can go with Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, or a combination of these three. An ideal text size is 32 points, while a heading size is 44.

Tip #5: Concentrate on the visual side

A PowerPoint presentation is one of the best tools for presenting information visually. Use graphs instead of tables and topic-relevant illustrations instead of walls of text. Keep your visuals as clean and professional as the content of your presentation.

Tip #6: Practice your delivery

Always go through your presentation when you’re done to ensure a smooth and confident delivery and time yourself to stay within the allotted limit.

Tip #7: Get ready for questions

Anticipate potential questions from your audience and prepare thoughtful responses. Also, be ready to engage in discussions about your research.

Tip #8: Don’t be afraid to utilize professional help

If the mere thought of designing a presentation overwhelms you or you’re pressed for time, consider leveraging professional PowerPoint redesign services . A dedicated design team can transform your content or old presentation into effective slides, ensuring your message is communicated clearly and captivates your audience. This way, you can focus on refining your delivery and preparing for the presentation.

Lastly, remember that even experienced presenters get nervous before delivering research paper PowerPoint presentations in front of the audience. You cannot know everything; some things can be beyond your control, which is completely fine. You are at the event not only to share what you know but also to learn from others. So, no matter what, dress appropriately, look straight into the audience’s eyes, try to speak and move naturally, present your information enthusiastically, and have fun!

If you need help with slide design, get in touch with our dedicated design team and let qualified professionals turn your research findings into a visually appealing, polished presentation that leaves a lasting impression on your audience. Our experienced designers specialize in creating engaging layouts, incorporating compelling graphics, and ensuring a cohesive visual narrative that complements content on any subject.

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

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Open Access

Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

* E-mail: [email protected]

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

• Kristen M. Naegle

Published: December 2, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

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

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

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

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

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

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

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

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

Rule 4: Include only essential points

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

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

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

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

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

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

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

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

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

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

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

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

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

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

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

Conclusions

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

Acknowledgments

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

• View Article
• PubMed/NCBI
• Google Scholar
• 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.

6 Tips For Giving a Fabulous Academic Presentation

6-tips-for-giving-a-fabulous-academic-presentation.

Tanya Golash-Boza, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California

January 11, 2022

One of the easiest ways to stand out at an academic conference is to give a fantastic presentation.

In this post, I will discuss a few simple techniques that can make your presentation stand out. Although, it does take time to make a good presentation, it is well worth the investment.

Tip #1: Use PowerPoint Judiciously

Images are powerful. Research shows that images help with memory and learning. Use this to your advantage by finding and using images that help you make your point. One trick I have learned is that you can use images that have blank space in them and you can put words in those images.

Here is one such example from a presentation I gave about immigration law enforcement.

PowerPoint is a great tool, so long as you use it effectively. Generally, this means using lots of visuals and relatively few words. Never use less than 24-point font. And, please, never put your presentation on the slides and read from the slides.

Tip #2: There is a formula to academic presentations. Use it.

Once you have become an expert at giving fabulous presentations, you can deviate from the formula. However, if you are new to presenting, you might want to follow it. This will vary slightly by field, however, I will give an example from my field – sociology – to give you an idea as to what the format should look like:

• Introduction/Overview/Hook
• Theoretical Framework/Research Question
• Methodology/Case Selection
• Background/Literature Review
• Discussion of Data/Results

Tip #3: The audience wants to hear about your research. Tell them.

One of the most common mistakes I see in people giving presentations is that they present only information I already know. This usually happens when they spend nearly all of the presentation going over the existing literature and giving background information on their particular case. You need only to discuss the literature with which you are directly engaging and contributing. Your background information should only include what is absolutely necessary. If you are giving a 15-minute presentation, by the 6 th minute, you need to be discussing your data or case study. At conferences, people are there to learn about your new and exciting research, not to hear a summary of old work.

Tip #4: Practice. Practice. Practice.

You should always practice your presentation in full before you deliver it. You might feel silly delivering your presentation to your cat or your toddler, but you need to do it and do it again. You need to practice to ensure that your presentation fits within the time parameters. Practicing also makes it flow better. You can’t practice too many times.

Tip #5: Keep To Your Time Limit

If you have ten minutes to present, prepare ten minutes of material. No more. Even if you only have seven minutes, you need to finish within the allotted time. If you write your presentation out, a general rule of thumb is two minutes per typed, double-spaced page. For a fifteen-minute talk, you should have no more than 7 double-spaced pages of material.

Tip #6: Don’t Read Your Presentation

Yes, I know that in some fields reading is the norm. But, can you honestly say that you find yourself engaged when listening to someone read their conference presentation? If you absolutely must read, I suggest you read in such a way that no one in the audience can tell you are reading. I have seen people do this successfully, and you can do it too if you write in a conversational tone, practice several times, and read your paper with emotion, conviction, and variation in tone.

What tips do you have for presenters? What is one of the best presentations you have seen? What made it so fantastic? Let us know in the comments below.

Want to learn more about the publishing process? The Wiley Researcher Academy is an online author training program designed to help researchers develop the skills and knowledge needed to be able to publish successfully. Learn more about Wiley Researcher Academy .

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Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

How to Prepare for a Research Presentation

Imagine that you’ve been working on a research project for months. Now you’re standing in front of a crowd of professors, some of which probably know more about your topic than you do. If you do research working in an academic department, it can be a stressful experience if you have to eventually present your work to that department. Trying to talk about what you’ve done with your own adviser can be enough sometimes, and showing work that you may not be 100% comfortable with for a whole crowd of professors is a whole new level of daunting. They all have years of experience and may know more about aspects of your presentation than you do, so trying to seem like you know what you’re talking about while possibly being asked questions far out of your depth may seem impossible for an undergraduate to do.

Nonetheless, whether it’s theses, JPs, internships, or summer projects, all undergraduates here are going to find themselves in this position. So how do you do it?

• Have your adviser (and maybe your classmates, dormmates, peers, or anyone else) look over your material before you present

Your poster, paper, PowerPoint slides, or whatever you present probably has been changed so many times that it can be hard for you to take a step back and evaluate it properly. Have at least one more set of eyes look it over to make sure everything flows nicely and makes sense.

Having your adviser look over it is crucial, as they will be able to catch errors better than anyone else. It’s much better for these corrections to happen before you go up rather than a correction DURING your presentation.

Having other people look over your work can help make sure it is understandable by whatever audience you are presenting to. Different projects may have different circumstances: you may need your presentation to be understandable by those with a lot of knowledge about your topic, people who have more general expertise in your department but may not know specifics, or anyone. Practicing your presentation with people unfamiliar with your topic can ensure that you’re communicating well. Sure, you and your adviser may have been working on this research for months, but most of the people in your audience haven’t, so make sure it is digestible for them.

• Prepare for questions

If you have any questions about your work, ask your adviser! If you’re still confused, I would recommend returning to the literature or asking other members of your department. Remember, there is no such thing as a silly question, so please don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself. If something about your topic confuses you, it will probably be just as confusing for your audience, so get answers to those questions!

Try to show your work to other people, taking note of what questions they ask. Your most common questions are probably going to come up when you present, so you can include them as part of your presentation to make sure people stay engaged.

If you have to deliberately cut content that may answer a question, add them in as “extra slides” after your conclusion. This is a great way to meet a presentation time limit while still including information in case people are interested. There’s nothing better than a professor asking a question and you having pre-prepared slides ready to answer it!

• Know how to “redirect” questions you can’t answer

No matter how many possible questions you try to prepare for, there is a large chance that someone will ask something completely unexpected that you have no idea how to answer. It is perfectly fine in a research talk to say that you don’t know the answer to something. The hard part can be how to respond when this happens and not seem like you’ve “given up” or are completely lost. 

You can try to reason out your thought process aloud to think about what the answer might be, something like, 

• “Well, I’m not entirely sure, but I do know that… 
• …so it seems to make sense that it would be something like… 
• …which is definitely the case, but I’m not entirely sure how that would play out differently if it was more like…” 

This not only reinforces that you do, in fact, know what you are talking about, but if you’re lucky may prompt the person who asked or others in the audience to answer the question for you, “Oh, if it is like that, then it must be…”. 

If that isn’t an option you could always respond with “That unfortunately is outside the scope of this project, but in the future I would love to work on figuring out…”. You could also reference other papers that they can read for more info (which may often be the papers you used as a background for your project). When I gave my first ever research presentation in front of our Astrophysics department for my summer project, I had extra slides and had responses to common questions all prepared and ready to go. I still was asked two questions that I had absolutely no idea how to even begin to answer.

If the question is something that you knew but can’t quite remember at the moment, you can always ask them to email you about it later where you can get back to them afterwards.

Also, if someone asks a question that is answered later or relates to content later on in your presentation, you can say “I will actually address that later on.” Most people would be very pleased if they ask a question that is answered later on. It means that you both are on the same page and thinking in the right direction.

If you are stressing over an upcoming presentation, take a deep breath, and try to prepare yourself as best you can. Most of these intimidating faculty members have given dozens of talks before, and they know what you’re going through. Something unexpected might happen, and things may not go as planned. There are many strategies that you can do beforehand to better prepare yourself, but the main thing to remember is that you are there to show them what you’ve done. Try to get that across as best you can, and it’ll all be okay!

— Xander Jenkin, Natural Sciences Correspondent

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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation of Your Research Paper

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

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

Purpose of a Research Paper Presentation

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

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

Tips for Creating Your Research Paper Presentation

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

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

Know more about: Discover the Target Audience .

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

What Makes a PowerPoint Presentation Effective?

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

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

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

How to Present a Research Paper

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

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

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11 Tips to Make an Effective Research Presentation

Home » Presenting Your Research » 11 Tips to Make an Effective Research Presentation

The purpose of a presentation is to tell your audience a story. To achieve this goal, the person giving the presentation must place themselves in the shoes of their listeners and determine what they need to know to understand the story. Telling a great story is more important than any embellishments or technology you use to do it. Below are 11 tips for giving an effective research presentation.

1. Decide what your most important messages are, tailored to your specific audience.

Research can be messy, and so can the results of research. Your audience does not usually need to know every tiny detail about your work or results. Try to narrow down your findings to two or three of the most important takeaways that would resonate with the people in attendance. These takeaways are the messages of your presentation.

2. Start at the beginning and keep it simple.

Now that you have your messages, think about how you got to that point. What question did you ask that led you to do this research, and why did you ask it? Tell your audience this information, just enough of it for them to understand why the story is important and why you’re telling it. Use language that is tailored to the level of understanding of your audience.

3. Tell them how you addressed your question.

This part of any presentation usually involves the greatest risk of being dull. Tell your audience how you address your question, but don’t overwhelm them with detail they don’t need. Tell them what they need to know to get a basic idea of how you got your results.

4. Tell them your most important findings.

Again, do not overwhelm your listeners with noisy data or too much information. Give them a streamlined version of your results, using as your guide what you might include in an abstract of the work.

5.  Give them the payoff—your main messages.

Link your results to the main or most important conclusions from your work. Make sure that the results you talk about directly connect with these final messages.

6. Hint at where you’re going next.

If appropriate, you can also tell your audience the new questions that your findings open up, leaving them a little intrigued about where things will go next.

7. Do not go over your time.

No one wants to listen to anyone talk longer than they are supposed to talk. If you’ve been given a 10-minute limit for your presentation, do not take more than 10 minutes. Your best bet is to practice it beforehand, timing yourself, to make sure that you have the right pace to stay within limits. Don’t make it too short, either, although that is almost never a problem.

8. Think about questions people might ask.

If a question-and-answer session is to follow your presentation, go through your talk and put yourself again in your audience’s shoes. What questions would you have if you were listening to this research presentation? Try to anticipate what people might ask and how you’ll answer. If you have friends or family you can use for practice, encourage them to ask questions so you can gain experience answering them.

9. Do not overwhelm with too much text, busy images, tables, or charts.

Having too much text on a slide or busy, illegible images is a major fault of many academic research presentations. Consider the people in your audience and what they’ll be able to see from where they sit. Keep text limited and plain and figures simple and clear. Explain each image that you show, including axis labels and their meaning, and don’t just assume your audience will understand with a quick glance. Also, you do not need to use the tricks that some digital software allows for slides to fade in or out or advance automatically. In fact, you should avoid the latter entirely.

10. Do not read text word for word.

If you are using some form of presentation that involves slides or words on a screen, do not read these words verbatim. Your best approach is to use short phrases in the slides and then add your own expansion as you talk. That way, your audience sees an important, brief phrase and hears you add context around it. Listening to someone read a slide packed with text while reading along with them is mind numbing.

11. Engage with your audience.

If you are comfortable, you can always present your research in a way that invites audience engagement, asking questions as you go that anticipate a slide you are about to show, a result you are about to introduce, or a conclusion you will present.

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.css-1qrtm5m{display:block;margin-bottom:8px;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:14px;line-height:1.5714285714285714;-webkit-letter-spacing:-0.35px;-moz-letter-spacing:-0.35px;-ms-letter-spacing:-0.35px;letter-spacing:-0.35px;font-weight:300;color:#606F7B;}@media (min-width:600px){.css-1qrtm5m{font-size:16px;line-height:1.625;-webkit-letter-spacing:-0.5px;-moz-letter-spacing:-0.5px;-ms-letter-spacing:-0.5px;letter-spacing:-0.5px;}} Best Practices 5 essential preparation steps for a successful presentation

by Tom Rielly • June 15, 2020

Keeping your presentation visuals minimalistic, simple, and clear is just one important step to remember when designing a hit presentation. Leaving nothing to chance, great presenters prove quite methodical as they prepare. Here’s a checklist for everything you need to keep in mind before your next presentation:

1. Choose the right software for your needs

The easiest way to select the right presentation software for you is to simply find the one that is native to your device. For example, if you have a Mac, use Apple Keynote, if you work on Windows, use PowerPoint. Google Slides is recommended if you’re working with someone, as it makes collaboration very easy. Another software option is Prezi: a specialty tool called Prezi that creates a presentation using motion, zoom, and panning across one giant visual space.

2. Organize your files

As you develop your script and visuals, you will need to start assembling all the assets for your slides. Create a unique folder on your computer to hold these items. Keep the folder organized by media type (presentation drafts, photos, videos, scripts) and back them up frequently to the Cloud or external disk. Label each file with a specific descriptive name, e.g. “Susan Johnson singing magpie 2020”, as opposed to “IMG_4043.jpg”, which can make it confusing to find your assets. The more organized you are up front, the easier preparing for your presentation will be.

3. Prepare your presentation materials

Make sure your presentation materials (script, graphics, actual slides) are saved in at least two safe spots (for example, your computer and an external USB drive) and are backed-up frequently. If you are using an online presentation software, such as Google Slides, be sure to also download a copy of your presentation in case the internet connection is unreliable. Having all the individual assets on hand in addition to your presentation slides can be helpful if you experience tech issues before presenting, or if you need to make any last minute changes. Make sure to label your final presentation with the title and your name so it’s easy to find.

4. Practice, practice, practice!

Remember, practice makes perfect. People often run out of time making their presentations and have no time to practice. Most TED speakers practice at least ten times. Neuroscientist Jill-Bolte Taylor gave one of the most successful Talks in TED history with nearly 27 million views. How did she do it? She practiced her Talk over 40 times! By rehearsing multiple times you will naturally memorize your Talk, which means you won’t need note cards when you give your final presentation.

5. Do a final test run

Before presenting, make sure the equipment you need is working properly. It’s generally good practice to rehearse standing on the exact stage with the exact lighting using the exact computer that you will be using in your final presentation.

Here’s a quick checklist of what to look for when testing your equipment:

• If you're not using your own computer, the one provided might be slower and have trouble playing media. If you have videos or other media, make sure they play correctly
• Test the projector to make sure it’s HD
• Make sure images are clear
• Test the sound of any clips you use, as this is what goes wrong most frequently
• If you’re using a mic, test the volume

Don’t let technical issues or other blunders overshadow your presentation. By following these guidelines, and with a little preparation, you can engineer out the problems BEFORE they happen.

Ready to learn more about how to make your presentation even better? Get TED Masterclass and develop your ideas into TED-style talks

© 2024 TED Conferences, LLC. All rights reserved. Please note that the TED Talks Usage policy does not apply to this content and is not subject to our creative commons license.

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How to Present Your Research (Guidelines and Tips)

Published on 01 Feb 2023

Presenting at a conference can be stressful, but can lead to many opportunities, which is why coming prepared is super beneficial.

The internet is full to the brim with tips for making a good presentation. From what you wear to how you stand to good slide design, there’s no shortage of advice to make any old presentation come to life. 

But, not all presentations are created equal. Research presentations, in particular, are unique. 

Communicating complex concepts to an audience with a varied range of awareness about your research topic can be tricky. A lack of guidance and preparation can ruin your chance to share important information with a conference community. This could mean lost opportunities in collaboration or funding or lost confidence in yourself and your work.

So, we’ve put together a list of tips with research presentations in mind. Here’s our top to-do’s when preparing to present your research.

Take every research presentation opportunity

The worst thing you could do for your research is to not present it at all. As intimidating as it can be to get up in front of an audience, you shouldn’t let that stop you from seizing a good opportunity to share your work with a wider community.

These contestants from the Vitae Three Minute Thesis Competition have some great advice to share on taking every possible chance to talk about your research. 

Double-check your research presentation guidelines

Before you get started on your presentation, double-check if you’ve been given guidelines for it. 

If you don’t have specific guidelines for the context of your presentation, we’ve put together a general outline to help you get started. It’s made with the assumption of a 10-15 minute presentation time. So, if you have longer to present, you can always extend important sections or talk longer on certain slides:

• Title Slide (1 slide) - This is a placeholder to give some visual interest and display the topic until your presentation begins.
• Short Introduction (2-3 slides) - This is where you pique the interest of your audience and establish the key questions your presentation covers. Give context to your study with a brief review of the literature (focus on key points, not a full review). If your study relates to any particularly relevant issues, mention it here to increase the audience's interest in the topic.
• Hypothesis (1 slide) - Clearly state your hypothesis.
• Description of Methods (2-3 slides) - Clearly, but briefly, summarize your study design including a clear description of the study population, the sample size and any instruments or manipulations to gather the data.
• Results and Data Interpretation (2-4 slides) - Illustrate your results through simple tables, graphs, and images. Remind the audience of your hypothesis and discuss your interpretation of the data/results.
• Conclusion (2-3 slides) - Further interpret your results. If you had any sources of error or difficulties with your methods, discuss them here and address how they could be (or were) improved. Discuss your findings as part of the bigger picture and connect them to potential further outcomes or areas of study.
• Closing (1 slide) - If anyone supported your research with guidance, awards, or funding, be sure to recognize their contribution. If your presentation includes a Q&A session, open the floor to questions.

Plan for about one minute for each slide of information that you have. Be sure that you don’t cram your slides with text (stick to bullet points and images to emphasize key points).

And, if you’re looking for more inspiration to help you in scripting an oral research presentation. University of Virginia has a helpful oral presentation outline script .

A PhD Student working on an upcoming oral presentation.

Put yourself in your listeners shoes

As mentioned in the intro, research presentations are unique because they deal with specialized topics and complicated concepts. There’s a good chance that a large section of your audience won’t have the same understanding of your topic area as you do. So, do your best to understand where your listeners are at and adapt your language/definitions to that.

There’s an increasing awareness around the importance of scientific communication. Comms experts have even started giving TED Talks on how to bridge the gap between science and the public (check out Talk Nerdy to Me ). A general communication tip is to find out what sort of audience will listen to your talk. Then, beware of using jargon and acronyms unless you're 100% certain that your audience knows what they mean. 

On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want to underestimate your audience. Giving too much background or spending ages summarizing old work to a group of experts in the field would be a waste of valuable presentation time (and would put you at risk of losing your audience's interest). 

Finally, if you can, practice your presentation on someone with a similar level of topic knowledge to the audience you’ll be presenting to.

Use scientific storytelling in your presentation

In scenarios where it’s appropriate, crafting a story allows you to break free from the often rigid tone of scientific communications. It helps your brain hit the refresh button and observe your findings from a new perspective. Plus, it can be a lot of fun to do!

If you have a chance to use scientific storytelling in your presentation, take full advantage of it. The best way to weave a story for your audience into a presentation is by setting the scene during your introduction. As you set the context of your research, set the context of your story/example at the same time. Continue drawing those parallels as you present. Then, deliver the main message of the story (or the “Aha!”) moment during your presentation’s conclusion.

If delivered well, a good story will keep your audience on the edge of their seats and glued to your entire presentation.

Emphasize the “Why” (not the “How”) of your research

Along the same lines as using storytelling, it’s important to think of WHY your audience should care about your work. Find ways to connect your research to valuable outcomes in society. Take your individual points on each slide and bring things back to the bigger picture. Constantly remind your listeners how it’s all connected and why that’s important.

One helpful way to get in this mindset is to look back to the moment before you became an expert on your topic. What got you interested? What was the reason for asking your research question? And, what motivated you to power through all the hard work to come? Then, looking forward, think about what key takeaways were most interesting or surprised you the most. How can these be applied to impact positive change in your research field or the wider community?

Be picky about what you include

It’s tempting to discuss all the small details of your methods or findings. Instead, focus on the most important information and takeaways that you think your audience will connect with. Decide on these takeaways before you script your presentation so that you can set the scene properly and provide only the information that has an added value.

When it comes to choosing data to display in your presentation slides, keep it simple. Wherever possible, use visuals to communicate your findings as opposed to large tables filled with numbers. This article by Richard Chambers has some great tips on using visuals in your slides and graphs.

Hide your complex tables and data in additional slides

With the above tip in mind: Just because you don’t include data and tables in your main presentation slides, doesn’t mean you can’t keep them handy for reference. If there’s a Q&A session after your presentation (or if you’ll be sharing your slides to view on-demand after) one great trick is to include additional slides/materials after your closing slide. You can keep these in your metaphorical “back pocket” to refer to if a specific question is asked about a data set or method. They’re also handy for people viewing your presentation slides later that might want to do a deeper dive into your methods/results.

However, just because you have these extra slides doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make the effort to make that information more accessible. A research conference platform like Fourwaves allows presenters to attach supplementary materials (figures, posters, slides, videos and more) that conference participants can access anytime.

Leave your audience with (a few) questions

Curiosity is a good thing. Whether you have a Q&A session or not, you should want to leave your audience with a few key questions. The most important one:

“Where can I find out more?”

Obviously, it’s important to answer basic questions about your research context, hypothesis, methods, results, and interpretation. If you answer these while focusing on the “Why?” and weaving a good story, you’ll be setting the stage for an engaging Q&A session and/or some great discussions in the halls after your presentation. Just be sure that you have further links or materials ready to provide to those who are curious. 

Conclusion: The true expert in your research presentation

Throughout the entire process of scripting, creating your slides, and presenting, it’s important to remember that no one knows your research better than you do. If you’re nervous, remind yourself that the people who come to listen to your presentation are most likely there due to a genuine interest in your work. The pressure isn’t to connect with an uninterested audience - it’s to make your research more accessible and relevant for an already curious audience.

Finally, to practice what we preached in our last tip: If you’re looking to learn more about preparing for a research presentation, check out our articles on how to dress for a scientific conference and general conference presentation tips .

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How to Make an Effective Research Presentation

Presentation software programs have advanced to the point where you no longer need to be an experienced designer to put together a compelling piece of collateral that conveys your findings about academic research in exactly the right way. With the right materials, the right presentation software, and a little bit of time, you can visualize any data that you have in the form of a terrific presentation that sells your research better than numbers alone ever could. However, this does not mean that you shouldn’t keep in mind a few things. As both a marketing tool and a means to convey information, presentations are helpful because they are malleable—the format can essentially be anything you need it to be at any given time. The other side of this, however, is that there are certain traps that are all too easy for even experts to fall into that will harm your ultimate message, not help it. If you wish to learn how to make a professional research presentation as an author, or a researcher, then you should avoid some mistakes at all costs.

Mistakes to Avoid

As a researcher or a student, your number one goal isn’t just to provide insight into a topic—it’s to do so in a compelling way. It is important to communicate ideas in a way that is both easy to understand for people who haven’t completed the work you have and to do so in a compelling and engaging way. In many ways, it’s a lot like telling a story—albeit one that is heavily research-oriented. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end and you need to ensure that the content in the presentation has a proper narrative flow.

In many ways, your presentation will operate exactly along the same lines. To that end, always remember to make sure that the information is presented not only in the right manner but also in the right order to complement intent and maximize impact. If you have three subtopics within a presentation, all of which are related but are still different ideas, don’t mix and match the content. Don’t jump from one topic to the other and back again—you’re only going to lose focus and eventually, the attention of your reader.

If you start preparing your presentation and realize that you’re actually kind of covering two distinct and different topics, don’t be afraid to break one presentation into two. You’ll be able to devote more attention to promoting each idea and you’ll walk away with two great pieces of research presentations instead of one “okay” one.

Length of Your Presentation

Another element of your presentation that you need to pay extremely close attention to is the length. This goes back to another one of the old rules of storytelling: “Whatever you do, don’t overstay your welcome.” While it is true that presentations are naturally designed to be a longer form than something like an Infographic, it’s important to recognize when you’re asking too much of your reader/viewer. A presentation isn’t just a visualized form of something like a white paper. It’s a unique medium all unto itself.

When you start preparing your presentation for the first time, feel free to include as many slides or as much information as you want. Also, don’t forget that there are three versions of your presentation that will exist—the initial outline, the “first draft” of the presentation and the final edited version that you release. Make an effort to only include information that A) is needed to understand your research topic, and B) is necessary to contextualize your findings or the points you’re trying to make. Go through your presentation from start to finish and really try to experience it with fresh eyes—the same way your audience will.

Does it feel like the end of your presentation is getting a little sluggish? You feel that it should be over but there are ten slides to go still. Be precise in your editing process —rest assured that you’ll thank yourself when the end result is much more powerful than it would be if it had remained bloated.

The Power of Presentations

In many ways, presentations provide a unified experience where you can have text, images, video, and more. Remember that human beings are visual learners— visuals are processed up to 60,000 times faster than text and people have a much easier time understanding complex information when it is paired with relevant images as opposed to just text. As an author, researcher, or student, your job is to take complicated ideas and present them in a way that is appealing to a larger audience. Presentations are one of the most essential ways for you to do exactly that. The central message you are trying to convey—the thesis, if you will—needs to be strong enough to justify the creation of a presentation in the first place.

It needs to be a big enough topic to warrant a lengthy experience and a compelling enough story that demands to be told in this particular format above all others. If you start from that simple foundation and build outward, you’ll be left with the best type of marketing tool—one that promotes your research for you and one that people can’t wait to share with their friends and colleagues.

About the Author

Payman Taei is the founder of Visme , an easy-to-use online tool to create engaging presentations, infographics, and other forms of visual content. He is also the founder of HindSite Interactive , an award-winning Maryland based digital agency specializing in website design, user experience, and web app development.

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[Guide] How to Present Qualitative Research Findings in PowerPoint?

By: Author Shrot Katewa

As a researcher, it is quite pointless to do the research if we are unable to share the findings with our audience appropriately! Using PowerPoint is one of the best ways to present research outcomes. But, how does one present qualitative research findings using PowerPoint?

In order to present the qualitative research findings using PowerPoint, you need to create a robust structure for your presentation, make it engaging and visually appealing, present the patterns with explanations for it and highlight the conclusion of your research findings.

In this article, we will help you understand the structure of your presentation. Plus, we’ll share some handy tips that will make your qualitative research presentation really effective!

How to Create a Structure for your Qualitative Research Presentation?

Creating the right structure for your presentation is key to ensuring that it is correctly understood by your audience.

The structure of your Research Presentation not only makes it easier for you to create the document, it also makes it simple for the audience to understand what all will be covered in the presentation at the time of presenting it to your audience.

Furthermore, having a robust structure is a great way to ensure that you don’t miss out on any of the points while working on creating the presentation.

But, what structure should one follow?

Creating a good structure can be tricky for some. Thus, I’m sharing what has worked well for me during my previous research projects.

NOTE – It is important to note that although the following structure is highly effective for most research findings presentation, it has been generalized in order to serve a wide range of research projects. You may want to take a look at points that are very specific to the nature of your research project and include them at your discretion.

Here’s my recommended structure to create your Research Findings presentation –

1. Objective of the Research

A great way to start your presentation is to highlight the objective of your research project.

It is important to remember that merely sharing the objective may sometimes not be enough. A short backstory along with the purpose of your research project can pack a powerful punch ! It not only validates the reasoning for your project but also subtly establishes trust with your audience.

However, do make sure that you’re not reading the backstory from the slide. Let it flow naturally when you are delivering the presentation. Keep the presentation as minimalistic as possible.

2. Key Parameters Considered for Measurement

Once you’ve established the objective, the next thing that you may want to do is perhaps share the key parameters considered for the success of your project.

Every research project, including qualitative research, needs to have a few key parameters to measure against the objective of the research.

For example – If the goal of your project is to gather the sentiments of a certain group of people for a particular product, you may need to measure their feelings. Are they happy or unhappy using the product? How do they perceive the branding of the product? Is it affordable?

Make sure that you list down all such key parameters that were considered while conducting the qualitative research.

In general, laying these out before sharing the outcome can help your audience think from your perspective and look at the findings from the correct lens.

3. Research Methodology Adopted

The next thing that you may want to include in your presentation is the methodology that you adopted for conducting the research.

By knowing your approach, the audience can be better prepared for the outcome of your project. Ensure that you provide sound reasoning for the chosen methodology.

This section of your presentation can also showcase some pictures of the research being conducted. If you have captured a video, include that. Doing this provides further validation of your project.

4. Research Outcomes (Presenting Descriptive Analysis)

This is the section that will constitute the bulk of the your presentation.

Use the slides in this section to describe the observations, and the resulting outcomes on each of the key parameters that were considered for the research project.

It is usually a good idea to dedicate at least 1 or more slides for each parameter . Make sure that you present data wherever possible. However, ensure that the data presented can be easily comprehended.

Provide key learnings from the data, highlight any outliers, and possible reasoning for it. Try not to go too in-depth with the stats as this can overwhelm the audience. Remember, a presentation is most helpful when it is used to provide key highlights of the research !

Apart from using the data, make sure that you also include a few quotes from the participants.

5. Summary and Learnings from the Research

Once you’ve taken the audience through the core part of your research findings, it is a good practice to summarize the key learnings from each of the section of your project.

Make sure your touch upon some of the key learnings covered in the research outcome of your presentation.

Furthermore, include any additional observations and key points that you may have had which were previously not covered.

The summary slide also often acts as “Key Takeaways” from the research for your audience. Thus, make sure that you maintain brevity and highlight only the points that you want your audience to remember even after the presentation.

6. Inclusions and Exclusions (if any)

While this can be an optional section for some of the researchers.

However, dedicating a section on inclusions and exclusions in your presentation can be a great value add! This section helps your audience understand the key factors that were excluded (or included) on purpose!

Moreover, it creates a sense of thoroughness in the minds of your audience.

7. Conclusion of the Research

The purpose of the conclusion slide of your research findings presentation is to revisit the objective, and present a conclusion.

A conclusion may simply validate or nullify the objective. It may sometimes do neither. Nevertheless, having a conclusion slide makes your presentation come a full circle. It creates this sense of completion in the minds of your audience.

8. Questions

Finally, since your audience did not spend as much time as you did on the research project, people are bound to have a few questions.

Thus, the last part of your presentation structure should be dedicated to allowing your audience to ask questions.

Tips for Effectively Presenting Qualitative Research Findings using PowerPoint

For a presentation to be effective, it is important that the presentation is not only well structured but also that it is well created and nicely delivered!

While we have already covered the structure, let me share with you some tips that you can help you create and deliver the presentation effectively.

Tip 1 – Use Visuals

Using visuals in your presentation is a great way to keep the presentations engaging!

Visual aids not only help make the presentation less boring, but it also helps your audience in retaining the information better!

So, use images and videos of the actual research wherever possible. If these do not suffice or do not give a professional feel, there are a number of resources online from where you can source royalty-free images.

My recommendation for high-quality royalty-free images would be either Unsplash or Pexels . Both are really good. The only downside is that they often do not provide the perfect image that can be used. That said, it can get the job done for at least half the time.

If you are unable to find the perfect free image, I recommend checking out Dreamstime . They have a huge library of images and are much cheaper than most of the other image banks. I personally use Dreamstime for my presentation projects!

Tip 2 – Tell a Story (Don’t Show Just Data!)

I cannot stress enough on how important it is to give your presentation a human touch. Delivering a presentation in the form of a story does just that! Furthermore, storytelling is also a great tool for visualization .

Data can be hard-hitting, whereas a touching story can tickle the emotions of your audience on various levels!

One of the best ways to present a story with your research project is to start with the backstory of the objective. We’ve already talked about this in the earlier part of this article.

Start with why is this research project is so important. Follow a story arc that provides an exciting experience of the beginning, the middle, and a progression towards a climax; much like a plot of a soap opera.

Tip 3 – Include Quotes of the Participants

Including quotes of the participants in your research findings presentation not only provides evidence but also demonstrates authenticity!

Quotes function as a platform to include the voice of the target group and provide a peek into the mindset of the target audience.

When using quotes, keep these things in mind –

1. Use Quotes in their Unedited Form

When using quotes in your presentation, make sure that you use them in their raw unedited form.

The need to edit quotes should be only restricted to aid comprehension and sometimes coherence.

Furthermore, when editing the quotes, make sure that you use brackets to insert clarifying words. The standard format for using the brackets is to use square brackets for clarifying words and normal brackets for adding a missing explanation.

2. How to Decide which Quotes to Consider?

It is important to know which quotes to include in your presentation. I use the following 3 criteria when selecting the quote –

• Relevance – Consider the quotes that are relevant, and trying to convey the point that you want to establish.
• Length – an ideal quote should be not more than 1-2 sentences long.
• Choose quotes that are well-expressed and striking in nature.

3. Preserve Identity of the Participant

It is important to preserve and protect the identity of the participant. This can be done by maintaining confidentiality and anonymity.

Thus, refrain from using the name of the participant. An alternative could be using codes, using pseudonyms (made up names) or simply using other general non-identifiable parameters.

Do note, when using pseudonyms, remember to highlight it in the presentation.

If, however, you do need to use the name of the respondent, make sure that the participant is okay with it and you have adequate permissions to use their name.

Tip 4 – Make your Presentation Visually Appealing and Engaging

It is quite obvious for most of us that we need to create a visually appealing presentation. But, making it pleasing to the eye can be a bit challenging.

Fortunately, we wrote a detailed blog post with tips on how to make your presentation attractive. It provides you with easy and effective tips that you can use even as a beginner! Make sure you check that article.

7 EASY tips that ALWAYS make your PPT presentation attractive (even for beginners)

In addition to the tips mentioned in the article, let me share a few things that you can do which are specific to research outcome presentations.

4.1 Use a Simple Color Scheme

Using the right colors are key to make a presentation look good.

One of the most common mistakes that people make is use too many colors in their presentation!

My recommendation would be to go with a monochromatic color scheme in PowerPoint .

4.2 Make the Data Tables Simple and Visually Appealing

When making a presentation on research outcomes, you are bound to present some data.

But, when data is not presented in a proper manner, it can easily and quickly make your presentation look displeasing! The video below can be a good starting point.

Using neat looking tables can simply transform the way your presentation looks. So don’t just dump the data from excel on your PowerPoint presentation. Spend a few minutes on fixing it!

4.3 Use Graphs and Charts (wherever necessary)

When presenting data, my recommendation would be that graphs and charts should be your first preference.

Using graphs or charts make it easier to read the data, takes less time for the audience to comprehend, and it also helps to identify a trend.

However, make sure that the correct chart type is used when representing the data. The last thing that you want is to poorly represent a key piece of information.

4.4 Use Icons instead of Bullet Points

Consider the following example –

This slide could have been created just as easily using bullet points. However, using icons and representing the information in a different format makes the slide pleasing on the eye.

Thus, always try to use icons wherever possible instead of bullet points.

Tip 5 – Include the Outliers

Many times, as a research project manager, we tend to focus on the trends extracted from a data set.

While it is important to identify patterns in the data and provide an adequate explanation for the pattern, it is equally important sometimes to highlight the outliers prominently.

It is easy to forget that there may be hidden learnings even in the outliers. At times, the data trend may be re-iterating the common wisdom. However, upon analyzing the outlier data points, you may get insight into how a few participants are doing things successfully despite not following the common knowledge.

That said, not every outlier will reveal hidden information. So, do verify what to include and what to exclude.

Tip 6 – Take Inspiration from other Presentations

I admit, making any presentation can be a tough ask let alone making a presentation for showcasing qualitative research findings. This is especially hard when we don’t have the necessary skills for creating a presentation.

One quick way to overcome this challenge could be take inspiration from other similar presentations that we may have liked.

There is no shame in being inspired from others. If you don’t have any handy references, you can surely Google it to find a few examples.

One trick that almost always works for me is using Pinterest .

But, don’t just directly search for a research presentation. You will have little to no success with it. The key is to look for specific examples for inspiration. For eg. search for Title Slide examples, or Image Layout Examples in Presentation.

Tip 7 – Ask Others to Critic your Presentation

The last tip that I would want to provide is to make sure that you share the presentation with supportive colleagues or mentors to attain feedback.

This step can be critical to iron out the chinks in the armor. As research project manager, it is common for you to get a bit too involved with the project. This can lead to possibilities wherein you miss out on things.

A good way to overcome this challenge is to get a fresh perspective on your project and the presentation once it has been prepared.

Taking critical feedback before your final presentation can also prepare you to handle tough questions in an adept manner.

Final Thoughts

It is quite important to ensure that we get it right when working on a presentation that showcases the findings of our research project. After all, we don’t want to be in a situation wherein we put in all the hard-work in the project, but we fail to deliver the outcome appropriately.

I hope you will find the aforementioned tips and structure useful, and if you do, make sure that you bookmark this page and spread the word. Wishing you all the very best for your project!

Cornell University --> Graduate School

Careers beyond academia, tips for a memorable 5-minute research presentation.

“If you get the first 5 minutes down, you are going to be golden for the rest of your presentation.” These were the words Susi Varvayanis, Executive Director of Careers Beyond Academia, stated at the start of Tips for a Memorable 5-Minute Research Presentation.

To help alleviate the stress and worries of making a good presentation, please review a summary of some amazing tips. There are three parts of a presentation that can influence the outcome of the presentation.

• You, the speaker
• Your presentation slides
• The audience

How do you as the speaker prepare yourself for the best presentation?

• Be aware of your body language – gestures are important, and they underscore the importance of the message we pass across. Add a smile! Be enthusiastic and make eye contact with the audience. These contribute to the appearance of confidence as you present.
• Practice voice modulations – the way you speak can convey a lot about the information you are passing. Avoid going too fast. Add pauses as you speak, slow your speech, and emphasize key words.
• Avoid jargon and acronyms – According to the dictionary, jargon is defined as special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or groups and is difficult for others to understand. So, avoid them! Especially since some words can convey different connotations for different audiences. So, if I don’t use jargon, what should I use? How do I still convey my point? Try a different word, or use an analogy.

What makes for good presentation slides?

• Good illustrations – make use of simplified images that pass across the information that you are presenting. Simple cartoon illustrations make it easy for the audience, regardless of background, to understand and follow the meanings.
• Data presentation – avoid using excel defaults. Replace topics and labels with easier to understand headings that communicate your main point. Also, simplify images by removing unnecessary sections that do not apply to your audience. Most importantly, lead the audience through your work with all its ups and downs.

How does the audience affect your presentation?

The audience that you have dictates how you present your information. To prepare for your presentation, evaluate your audience. Understand the hook and make them care. Find unifying interests or commonality among the audience. Understand the goals and issues that challenge the audience. Do your images intrigue the audience?

Here is what makes your 5-minute pitch memorable:

• It is passionate – This comes with understanding what inspires your work. Passion for research leads you to excel, even when you suffer setbacks.
• It tells a good story – when you have a flow with compelling images, it helps tell a story, saves explanation, and hooks the audience.
• It gives a ‘why’ – from your presentation, the audience should know why they should care about your work, the implications of your results and how they can apply this information.

Here are some resources that you can explore to help you with a great presentation:

• Tool to check for jargon: De-Jargonizer (scienceandpublic.com)
• The difference between ‘what’ and your ‘why’: Know Your Why | Michael Jr. – YouTube
• Practice your skills: join ComSciCon-NY – in early June; Three-Minute Thesis or business case competitions
• A guide with many exercises to improve your research communication – Finding Your Research Voice – Cornell University Library Catalog

We would love to hear your own opinions and tips on what you feel gives a good presentation!

• 2018/03/18/Making-a-presentation-from-your-research-proposal

Making a presentation from your research proposal

In theory, it couldn’t be easier to take your written research proposal and turn it into a presentation. Many people find presenting ideas easier than writing about them as writing is inherently difficult. On the other hand, standing up in front of a room of strangers, or worse those you know, is also a bewildering task. Essentially, you have a story to tell, but does not mean you are story telling. It means that your presentation will require you to talk continuously for your alloted period of time, and that the sentences must follow on from each other in a logical narative; i.e. a story.  

So where do you start?

Here are some simple rules to help guide you to build your presentation:

• One slide per minute: However many minutes you have to present, that’s your total number of slides. Don’t be tempted to slip in more.
• Keep the format clear: There are lots of templates available to use, but you’d do best to keep your presentation very clean and simple.
• Be careful with animations: You can build your slide with animations (by adding images, words or graphics). But do not flash, bounce, rotate or roll. No animated little clipart characters. No goofy cartoons – they’ll be too small for the audience to read. No sounds (unless you are talking about sounds). Your audience has seen it all before, and that’s not what they’ve come for. They have come to hear about your research proposal.
• Don’t be a comedian: Everyone appreciates that occasional light-hearted comment, but it is not stand-up. If you feel that you must make a joke, make only one and be ready to push on when no-one reacts. Sarcasm simply won’t be understood by the majority of your audience, so don’t bother: unless you’re a witless Brit who can’t string three or more sentences together without.

Keep to your written proposal formula

• You need a title slide (with your name, that of your advisor & institution)
• that put your study into the big picture
• explain variables in the context of existing literature
• explain the relevance of your study organisms
• give the context of your own study
• Your aims & hypotheses
• Images of apparatus or diagrams of how apparatus are supposed to work. If you can’t find anything, draw it simply yourself.
• Your methods can be abbreviated. For example, you can tell the audience that you will measure your organism, but you don’t need to provide a slide of the callipers or balance (unless these are the major measurements you need).
• Analyses are important. Make sure that you understand how they work, otherwise you won’t be able to present them to others. Importantly, explain where each of the variables that you introduced, and explained how to measure, fit into the analyses. There shouldn’t be anything new or unexpected that pops up here.
• I like to see what the results might look like, even if you have to draw graphs with your own lines on it. Use arrows to show predictions under different assumptions.

Slide layout

• Your aim is to have your audience listen to you, and only look at the slides when you indicate their relevance. 
• You’d be better off having a presentation without words, then your audience will listen instead of trying to read. As long as they are reading, they aren't listening. Really try to limit the words you have on any single slide (<30). Don’t have full sentences, but write just enough to remind you of what to say and so that your audience can follow when you are moving from point to point.
• Use bullet pointed lists if you have several points to make (Font 28 pt)
• If you only have words on a slide, then add a picture that will help illustrate your point. This is especially useful to illustrate your organism. At the same time, don’t have anything on a slide that has no meaning or relevance. Make sure that any illustration is large enough for your audience to see and understand what it is that you are trying to show.
• Everything on your slide must be mentioned in your presentation, so remove anything that becomes irrelevant to your story when you practice.
• Tables: you are unlikely to have large complex tables in a presentation, but presenting raw data or small words in a table is a way to lose your audience. Make your point in another way.
• Use citations (these can go in smaller font 20 pt). I like to cut out the title & authors of the paper from the pdf and show it on the slide.
• If you can, have some banner that states where you are in your presentation (e.g. Methods, or 5 of 13). It helps members of the audience who might have been daydreaming.

Practice, practice, practice

• It can’t be said enough that you must practice your presentation. Do it in front of a mirror in your bathroom. In front of your friends. It's the best way of making sure you'll do a good job.
• If you can't remember what you need to say, write flash cards with prompts. Include the text on your slide and expand. When you learn what’s on the cards, relate it to what’s on the slide so that you can look at the slides and get enough hints on what to say. Don’t bring flashcards with you to your talk. Instead be confident enough that you know them front to back and back to front.
• Practice with a pointer and slide advancer (or whatever you will use in the presentation). You should be pointing out to your audience what you have on your slides; use the pointer to do this.
• Avoid taking anything with you that you might fiddle with.

Maybe I've got it all wrong?

There are some things that I still need to learn about presentations. Have a look at the following video and see what you think. There are some really good points made here, and I think I should update my example slides to reflect these ideas. I especially like the use of contrast to focus attention. 

This page has been archived and is no longer being updated regularly.

Presenting your research effectively

Here's how to home in on your key message and present it in a clear, engaging way.

By Richard Chambers

Print version: page 28

For many graduate students, presenting their research is a daunting task. How do you cram your months' worth of data collection and analysis into a 10- to 20-minute presentation? Deciding what information to include and how to organize it can be more stressful than actually giving the presentation.

But anyone filled with presentation anxiety should remember that the difficult part is already over once it comes time to present. No one knows your research better than you, and those who come to listen to your presentation are probably there because they are interested in your research, not because they are required to be there. Taking this perspective can make presenting your research much less stressful because the focus of the task is no longer to engage an uninterested audience: It is to keep an already interested audience engaged.

Here are some suggestions for constructing a presentation using various multimedia tools, such as PowerPoint, Keynote and Prezi.

Planning: What should be included?

First, it is always important to refer to the APA Publication Manual as well as to your specific conference's guidelines. Second, before you start building any presentation, consider your audience. Will it be scientists who are familiar with your research area or will it be people who may never have had a class in psychology? Based on the answer, you will want to make sure you structure your presentation with the appropriate depth and terminology.

Determining the main messages you want to communicate in your presentation is often the next step in organizing your thoughts. As you create your presentation, sometimes it is difficult to determine whether a particular piece of information is important or necessary. Consider the value added by each piece of content as you determine whether to include it or not. Often, the background and theory for your research must be presented concisely so that you have time to present your study and findings. Ten minutes is not much time, so emphasize the main points so that your audience has a clear understanding of your take-home messages. When you start planning, writing out content on individual Post-it Notes can be a great way to visually organize your thoughts and, ultimately, your presentation.

Building slides: The do's and don'ts

After you've decided on your content, the real fun begins: designing slides. There are no rules for how to build a slide, but here are a few suggestions to keep in mind:

Tell your story simply

Remember that you want to tell a story, not lecture people. The oral presentation as a whole should be the work of art, and the slides should be supplementary to the story you are trying to convey. When laying out content and designing slides, remember that less is more. Having more slides with less content on each will help keep your audience focused more on what you are saying and prevent them from staring blankly at your slides.

Consider the billboard

Marketers try to use only three seconds' worth of content, the same amount of time a driver has to view a billboard. Your audience may not be driving cars, but you want them to stay engaged with your story, and this makes the three-seconds rule a good one to apply when building a slide. If it takes more than three seconds to read the slide, consider revising it.

Keep it clean

White space will help the slide appear cleaner and more aesthetically appealing. It is important to note that white space may not always be white. Each presentation should have its own color palette that consists of approximately three complementary colors. Try not to use more than three colors, and be aware of the emotion certain colors may evoke. For example, blue is the color of the sky and the ocean and is typically a soothing and relaxing color; red, on the other hand, is a bold, passionate color that may evoke more aggressive feelings.

Don't get too lively

Animation is another customizable option of presentations, but it may not be worth the effort. Animation can be distracting, making it difficult for the audience to stay with the story being told. When in doubt about animation, remember to ask what value is being added. There may be times when you really want to add emphasis to a specific word or phrase. If this is the case, and you deem it necessary, animation may be an acceptable choice. For example, the "grow" feature may be useful for adding emphasis to a word or phrase.

It is important to have highly readable slides with good contrast between the words and background. Choose a font that is easy to read, and be aware that each font has a different personality and sends a different message. The personality of some fonts may even be considered inappropriate for certain settings. For example, the font Comic Sans is a "lighter" font and would most likely not be a wise choice for a presentation at a conference.

Other important considerations include typesetting and the spacing of letters, words and lines. These all affect readability but can also be used as a way to add emphasis. Sometimes you may feel a need to use bullet points. Do not. Typesetting can replace bullet points and add extra distinction to each line of content without cluttering the slide with bullets. For example, consider bolding and increasing the font size of parent lines and indenting child lines.

If you find that your slides contain mainly words, remember that a picture, chart or diagram can augment the text. People often depend on vision as their primary sense; this means your audience has a potential preference for visual information other than just words on the screen.

Presenting data: Think about what kind of graph is best

When you share information, specifically about data, bar graphs should usually be your first choice, with scatter plots a close second because they are simple. The same suggestion about having more slides with less content on each applies to charts and graphs. If the graph or chart will look cleaner as two graphs instead of one, use two graphs.

Accuracy of a graph is, of course, important. For example, it is easy to convey the wrong message simply by altering the range of the y-axis. A restricted y-axis can make the differences between groups look much larger than they actually are to those audience members who do not look closely. It is always important to be ethical and to ensure that information, especially about data, is not being misrepresented. Strive to make charts and graphs easily interpretable, and try not to clutter them with additional numbers.

Building presentations does not need to be a challenge. Presenting should be an opportunity to share with others something very important to you — your research. These suggestions can be used as a starting point to guide the development of future research presentations and to help relieve some of the stress surrounding them.

Richard Chambers is the industrial/organizational psychology representative on the APA Student Science Council. He is a doctoral student at Louisiana Tech University. 

Letters to the Editor

Making a short presentation based on your research: 11 tips

Markus goldstein, david evans.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve both spent a fair amount of time at conferences. Given that many conferences ask researchers to summarize their work in 15 to 20 minutes, we thought we’d reflect on some ideas for how to do this, and – more importantly – how to do it well.

• You have 15 minutes. That’s not enough time to use the slides you used for that recent 90-minute academic seminar. One recent presentation one of us saw had 52 slides for 15 minutes.    No amount of speed talking will get you through this in anything resembling coherence. (And quit speed talking, anyway. This isn’t a FedEx commercial !) There is no magic number of slides since the content you’ll have and how you talk will vary. But if you have more than 15 slides, then #2 is doubly important.
• Practice. This is the great thing about a 15-minute talk: You can actually afford to run through it, out loud. Running through it once in advance can reveal to you – wow! – that it’s actually a 25-minute talk and you need to cut a bunch. Of course, the first time through the presentation it may take a bit longer than you will when you present, but if you have any doubts, practice again (bringing your prep time to a whopping 30 minutes plus a little bit).
• You need a (short) narrative. What is the main story you are trying to tell with this paper? Fifteen minutes works better for communicating a narrative then for taking an audience through every twist and turn of your econometric grandeur. Deciding on your narrative will help with the discipline in the points that follow.
• A model or results? Even if your audience is all academics, you don’t have academic seminar time. So the first thing to do is to figure out which is more important to get across – your model or your empirical results. Then trim the other one down to one slide, max. If the results are your focus (usually the case for us), give the audience a sense of how the model is set up, and what the main implications are as they pertain to the results you will show. Conversely, if it’s the model that’s more important, the empirical results will come later and you can just give the very brief highlights that bolster the key points.
• The literature. Really, really minimal. If you do it at all, choose only the papers that you are either going to build on in a major way or contradict. For some types of discussants, it may help to include them, even if they don’t meet the other criteria. Marc Bellemare takes an even stronger stance: “Never, ever have a literature review in your slides. If literature reviews are boring to read in papers, they are insanely boring to listen to during presentations.”
• Program details. Here it’s a bit of a balance. The audience needs a flavor for the program, they need to understand what it did and how it’s different from other things (particularly other things with some kinds of evidence). But only in exceptional cases (as in, it’s a really different program for theoretical reasons, or you don’t have more than process results yet) do you want this to eat up a lot of your time.
• You don’t have time to go through the nitty gritty of the data.   We get that every detail about the survey was fascinating (we spend a lot of our lives thinking about this).   But if it’s not key to the story, save it for a longer presentation (or another paper). And if you’re doing a primarily theoretical paper, this is a bullet on one slide.
• Balance and summary stats. Key summary stats that tell the audience who the people are might make the cut, but 3 slides of every variable that you’ll use are going to be slides you either rip through (telling the audience nothing) or waste most of your time on. Summarize the summary stats. On balance tests: you are either balanced or not.  If you are, this gets a bullet at most (you can also just say that). If you’re not, tell us what’s up and why we should or should not worry.  
• Pre-analysis plan. If you had it, mention it (quickly). If not, don’t. It’s not critical here.
• A picture may be worth 1,000 numbers. Sometimes, taking that really packed table which is currently in 12 point font and turning it into a graph is going to help you with self-control and help your audience with comprehension. Put the significant results in a bar chart, and use asterisks to tell folks which are significant.  
• A special warning about presenting your job market paper. When I (Markus) submitted my job market paper to a journal, the referee report came back noting that this was surely a job market paper since it had 40(!) tables. Key example of how everything matters when you just spent four years of your life collecting each observation. Discipline. You have (or will have) an elevator pitch from the job market – use this to trim your presentation. 
• Marc Bellemare has a great series of “22 tips for conference and seminar presentations,” many of which apply to short presentations: “Always provide a preview of your results. This isn’t a murder mystery: it’s only when people know where you’re taking them that they can enjoy the scenery along the way.”
• Jeff Leek has a great guide to giving presentations of different lengths, and what your goal should be: “As a scientist, it is hard to accept that the primary purpose of a talk is advertising, not science.” This is doubly true for a 15-minute talk.
• The AEA Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession has a top 10 list. “Never cut and paste a table from your paper onto a slide. These tables are never easy to read and only irritate your audience. Instead, choose a few results that you want to highlight and present them on a slide in no smaller than 28 font.” We’ve pretty much all done this. It’s bad practice. (“I’m sorry you can’t read this table.” “Oh really, then why did you cut and paste that giant table from your paper into the presentation?!”)
• I (Dave) go back and re-read Jesse Shapiro’s guide on “ How to Give an Applied Micro Talk ” from time to time. It’s more geared toward a full-length seminar, but the advice is so good I can’t resist plugging it here.

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How to Build Great Slides for Your Research Presentation

• Research Process
• Peer Review
• Presentations are important for researchers, so make sure your slides are easy to read.
• Cut down on text, and use images where possible.
• Remember that your slides don't have to explain themselves; minimize what's on the slide in favor of explaining the contents yourself.

Updated on April 1, 2010

This editing tip deals with a different kind of writing: slides in a presentation.

Researchers have many roles in addition to the important work they do each day in the lab, the library, or the field. They must also be good readers, writers, reviewers, and presenters. In particular, presentations and talks are an important way to share your results with others your field, and being invited to speak is a great honor. But how do you convey your research results clearly in a presentation?

Cut down on the amount of text

Remember that your audience will be listening AND watching. If you put up a slide with lots of words, most people will focus on reading instead of listening to you. Any important points you are making might be lost. Always ask yourself, do I need full sentences on this slide? Would a single phrase or even one word be sufficient, given that I can explain it verbally? (If people will be downloading your slides later, consider adding some additional context in the “notes” section of the presentation.)

In some cases, you may not need text at all. Is there an image you can use to introduce a topic? With pictures, the audience is able to continue listening more easily while they view the slide. As long as pictures can prompt you to make the points you need to make, they are a great way to reduce the text clutter in a presentation.

Download these slides to view examples of how to format text, graphics, and animations.

Control the pace of new information

With a book, the reader controls the pace. In your presentation, you do. If you want to make sure that quick readers don't get ahead of the points you'll be talking about, don't provide all of your text at once. Instead, animate each line or bullet point so it appears when you're ready to discuss it.

Also, be careful that your title doesn't reveal the conclusion of the slide. If you bring up a slide that is entitled “Protein A is required for proper heart function,” the audience will immediately know the results of your experiments (and they may stop listening). Consider mentioning your research question or your experiments instead – that way you can lead the audience through the data and provide the conclusion at the end.

Other formatting suggestions

If you are using text (for example, a bulleted list), be sure that the text is easy for the audience to read.

• Check carefully for spelling errors, which can be very distracting to the audience.
• Consider adding some space between lines or paragraphs (an empty 10 pt line is quite effective).
• Watch your parallel structure . If most items in your list are full sentences, make sure all items are full sentences. (Note that this list includes items that all start with a verb.)
• Choose a font that looks professional and clear and a large font size whenever possible. Just because something can easily be read while sitting at your computer doesn't mean it will be visible to the audience in the back of a large room. While there is no firm rule, aim for at least a font size of 24.

Overall, remember that your slides don't have to explain themselves – a good presentation requires a presenter to fill in the important details for the audience. Let your slides guide your story, but not tell it themselves.

If you have questions about describing your research on a presentation slide, please write to us at [email protected] . Best of luck with your next research presentation!

Presenting a poster, not a talk? Learn more about how AJE can help with your poster.

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Oral Presentation Tips

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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.

This page is older archived content from an older version of the Emerald Publishing website.

As such, it may not display exactly as originally intended.

How to... give a research presentation

Preparing for the presentation.

When you give a presentation, it's tempting to start off by considering what you are going to be presenting. A better approach is to look at why you are presenting in the first place, and what your audience needs are.

What is the purpose of the presentation?

In the introduction to this section, we mentioned a number of possible reasons for giving a presentation about your research – defending a dissertation, a job interview, a conference, and asking for funding. Knowing the purpose of your presentation is a matter of determining the actions which you want to stimulate in your audience. Here are some examples:

Many people working for universities are used to lecturing; it is a mistake to consider making presentations as a similar activity. In the former you are presenting information, whereas all the above examples (with the possible exception of conference presentations) call for a degree of selling – your dissertation, yourself, or your project. The emotional dynamic is different, and it is important to be aware of this.

Who is the audience, why will they be there, and how many will there be?

It is very important, when considering your audience, to know:

• who they are
• what their prior knowledge of the topic will be
• why they are likely to be interested
• what their needs are and how you can help them

If you are being examined for a thesis, you will obviously do a great deal of background on your examiners, finding out what their research in the area is. In the case of a job interview , it is probable that you will have to do a presentation about your research to other members of the department; you can find out about them and their research strengths from the departmental web pages, and make any connections with people whose research interests are similar to yours. For a conference presentation, the background/needs of your audience will be determined by the topic of the conference.

In some respects, the most difficult audience to prepare for is that for whom you are making a presentation to obtain money for research . If you are presenting to a panel from a funding body, find out the composition of the panel and their interests. The most likely reason however is seeking commercial sponsorship. In this case, it is important to identify:

• who will be the members of the audience – what are their job titles, will they have any particular preconceptions? It would be useful to ask your contact at the organization about people's background, and whether any particular individuals have particular "bees in their bonnet", i.e. whether so and so is particularly risk averse, etc.
• what are their needs, both collectively and individually? This is a very important issue to establish. Try and establish synchronicity with your own research questions.

For example, you may be interested in doing research on the supply chain, but your potential sponsor will also have an interest in its effectiveness. Likewise, your own research may be on the psychological process of decision making, but why people make decisions in particular to purchase your products or services is a part of what business is all about!

How long should the presentation be?

It is normal practice in job interview to be informed as to the length of the presentation; it is very important if you are not informed to find out the length and whether this includes questions. A rough rule of thumb is, for every minute of presentation, allow 100 words, slowly and clearly spoken.

How formal will the presentation be?

Find out about the location of the presentation – will it be in a seminar room, meeting room, board room, someone's office?

What sort of equipment will you have at your disposal? (See Technical matters – using Microsoft PowerPoint )

How formal is the presentation – will you be expected to present without interruptions and then answer questions, or will you be expected to do something more interactive, taking questions as you go along?

Planning the presentation

Once you have done your research, you will know all about your audience and its needs, and the actions you need to stimulate, and how long you are expected to speak for. The next stage is planning the actual presentation.

These days, particularly in a commercial setting, it is expected that the presentation will be accompanied by slides created using Microsoft PowerPoint. Because of this, we deal with more general points of planning on this page, and the more specific aspects of preparing the slides to go with your presentation in the page in Technical matters – using Microsoft PowerPoint .

In this section

Introduction, the body of the presentation, using graphics, practise, practise, practise, supporting documents.

This is the first chance you have to grab your audience's attention – take it! It is usual to have a cover slide with the title of the presentation and your name: while this is up on the screen, take the opportunity to introduce yourself briefly. Having done that, make some arresting statement which sums up your presentation in a way that will make them prick up their ears and convince them that you understand their needs .

For example, you are seeking funding on ways of streamlining the production line for the creation of space rockets. This could be stated as:

"Would you like to improve the production management of your space rocket construction?"

Or, you may be interested comparing how people manage projects with and without software. This could be stated as:

"Would you like to understand the factors that improve project management?"

Obviously, you will have to show how your research will in fact reveal these factors.

Of course, there are other circumstances when it might be better not to make explicit reference to your audience's needs, for example, when you are attending a job interview you could start like this:

"I want to talk to you about my research in the area of X, where I have key interests in a, b, and c."

The next part of your presentation should be a brief summary of what you are going to cover: this will give the audience a roadmap.

First, you need to decide what material you need to cover. There are various ways of doing this, not necessarily mutually exclusive:

• Write out a list of the main points, and then establish a structure.
• Prepare a spider diagram of associated words to do with the theme, then use different colours to link related themes.
• Identify a number of key concepts, and write a paragraph for each.
• Write down a list of questions you think your audience might want answers to.

You also need to establish how you are going to structure the presentation. Here are some possible approaches:

• Having a list of topics which are examined sequentially, possibly grouped according to major themes, with sub-topics.
• Research sequence : this is where the research is described chronologically, from the research question through the chosen methodology to the data and its analysis to the findings. Your research could include the testing of a hypothesis, or a general principle which you have established.
• Problem-based : outline a problem, and discuss possible solutions.
• Describe a project : the questions it is attempting to answer, why it is important to answer them, the stages, time scale, budget, reporting structure etc.

The occasion of the presentation will also help determine its structure. For a job interview, you may wish to use a topic based approach providing a few general statements about your research (the detail will be in your publications/work in progress, a list of which will have been supplied with your application).

A presentation requesting funding requires a different approach in that you are probably talking about future research. You could adopt a problem based approach, but you will also need to describe the stages of the project with built in milestones so that your potential sponsors can feel that they are monitoring progress, and obtaining tangible benefits along the way.

Some further points to remember are:

• Tailor your style to your audience. Using technical terms and jargon is OK if you are talking to your peer group, but not for a 'lay' audience.
• Avoid going into too much detail. People will not remember. The object of a presentation is to give a broad brush view

Briefly recapitulate the main points, referring to your objective. In the case of a presentation for sponsorship, make a specific request for action – "We need £x amount over y time period."

It is important to make a visual impact with your audience – we will discuss other ways of doing this, such as through design, when we come to the section on Technical matters: using Microsoft PowerPoint . Here we are talking specifically about the use of graphics. These can clarify concepts, help make your presentation appealing, add variety and interest, and retain audience attention. However, make sure that your graphics:

• Really do convey the message better than words could.
• Are large enough to be seen when projected onto a large screen.
• Are not hand drawn but created by a graphics package or PowerPoint.
• Use text sparingly – too much text on graphics can be confusing.
• Use enough data to make your point, but not too much, as in the following example, which will just be a blur to most people watching:

Use a graphic type suitable for making a point:

• Tables are suitable for presenting groups of detailed facts and their relationship to one another, as in the following example:

• Bar graphs are a useful way of comparing numerical data, e.g. sales figures of different types of products.
• Line graphs show trends or how one variable can change as a result of the other's actions.
• Flowcharts demonstrate a process.
• Organization charts depict hierarchical relationships
• Pie charts show the relationship of different elements of the whole.
• Formulae can be done using TexPoint , a LaTeX add-in for PowerPoint.

Once you have written your presentation, and assembled your overheads, you need to practise to ensure:

• That you can speak fluently without having to refer too much to notes.
• That your presentation is the right length (remember, a presentation takes longer "live").
• That you can handle your overheads confidently.

Remember, your presentation is really just a snapshot of the entire information you are trying to convey.

• If you are a job applicant, you will have a CV with a list of your publications.
• If you are applying for a grant or sponsorship, you will have already submitted a proposal.
• If you are doing a conference presentation, it is an idea to do a paper even though the conference proceedings may not call for one. You can hand it out to people who are interested, and adapt it afterwards for a journal article.

Technical matters: using Microsoft PowerPoint

One of the more challenging aspects of doing a presentation can be using the technology. In the commercial sector, this means using PowerPoint, a Microsoft product which allows you to build a slide show.

If you are not familiar with PowerPoint, you will find it on most Microsoft Office packages, and it is not a difficult piece of software to learn. Microsoft do a number of training courses : "Create your first presentation" is a good introduction.

Avoid falling into hardware traps

• Check that the venue has the right equipment for you: you will need a computer and a projector.
• Decide whether you are going to bring your presentation on a USB memory stick, or on a laptop, and check with your hosts beforehand that they can accommodate you.
• If bringing a USB memory stick, scan it for viruses, and have a back-up.
• Email your host a copy of the presentation beforehand, asking him or her to test it on the computer you will be using.
• Check that you are using the 'right' version of PowerPoint, i.e. one that is compatible with the "receiving" computer's software.
• Arrive early and check out the equipment, and have a practice run-through of your presentation from a technical point of view, ensuring that you can run through the slides seamlessly.
• Run your presentation out on acetates, or have a set of 35mm presentation slides, just in case their equipment fails. This will make you look as though you are the sort of person who thinks of everything!
• If you require sound, check that the computer has a sound card.
• Check the size of the room beforehand, and if it is large, request a microphone.
• Bring USB memory sticks that are not standard format, or without first checking that the hardware can accommodate them.
• Let lack of confidence in the technology mar your presentation!

Avoid Death by PowerPoint!

PowerPoint is a powerful tool, but like all powerful tools if not well used it can be deadly!

• Prepare a draft of what you are going to say, then consider how best it would appear into slide form. You will probably want to divide up the presentation into a number of sections according to the number of slides you consider appropriate.
• Allow a maximum of two to three minutes per slide – so for a 15 minute presentation, you should have no more than five to seven slides.
• Bullet points should be just that – a summary of the point you will make when talking, "headings" which convey the flavour of your point without gving all the detail, as in the following example (click here to see how I would talk to these bullet points):

• Draft notes for your speech separately from your bullet point slides. Either print out a second copy of your slides which you can use for notes, or use the "Handouts" facility – available by clicking just under the slide:

• Allow the software to run away with you! Don't use PowerPoint to write your talk – it is NOT word processing software.
• Present by reading out what's on your slide.
• Have too much on a slide – too much material will get lost.

Use your slides to capture the audience's attention!

• Use minimum 24pt – anything else will be hard on your audience's eyes!
• Use serif rather than sans serif fonts:

• Use graphics, pictures and tabular material where appropriate. (See Planning the presentation: using graphics INS LINK for more information.)

• Keep it simple –"PowerPoint is fun the first time you use it and get to know its many features, but your audience...won't be impressed that you know how to use the 'dissolve' feature accompanied by a 'whoosh' sound." (Abby Day Peters, Winning Research Funding , p. 140.)
• Use technology for its own sake, but ALWAYS to help you and your audience.
• Use graphics and pictures where not appropriate , just to show you can use the technology.
• Use any of the fancier features, such as animation, media clips etc. unless you are really sure that you can make them work, and work effectively.

Give your audience something to remember

• Provide handouts (use the Print menu, and set the 'Print what' drop-down menu to "handouts"). These should contain your contact details.
• Check how many people will attend the presentation, and provide that number of handouts, and a few more (about 10 per cent).

Giving the presentation

If you are well prepared, that's over half the battle. On this page we'll look at a few things you need to remember on the day, including body language and dress.

Arrive early at the venue, to check out the room, equipment etc.

• Check that the lighting is adequate – is the room sufficiently dark/bright? Can you alter the lighting by drawing blinds etc.? (Ensure that closing the latter will not mean that you also shut out air, which may cause your audience to go to sleep!)
• Does the sound card work, and is the quality of the sound OK? If you are using a microphone, test that.
• Check for any potential problems with "dead" areas of the room, e.g. where visibility may be poor due to no overhead light, furniture in the way etc.
• Set up the USB memory stick to run from the computer, or connect your laptop to the projector, and make sure you are comfortable with running through the slides.
• If you have requested a whiteboard and markers, are they there and in an appropriate place?
• Take deep breaths before you begin – this will help calm any nerves.
• Acknowledge other people's part in the research.
• Be enthusiastic – enthusiasm is infectious, as is your energy.
• Talk at a moderate pace, don't rush, and keep your voice at normal volume.
• Talk rather than read from a script.
• Rush the presentation – if you have properly rehearsed then you should have got the timing right, and you should know which areas you can leave out if short of time.
• Stand in such a position that you obscure the screen.
• Stand with your back to the audience.
• Betray any sign of boredom, or nerves, or tiredness.
• Read from a script (unless your first language is not English, in which case make sure that you look up often).
• Make jokes – you may be too nervous to carry them off, it can be devastating if the audience doesn't laugh.

Body language and appearance

• Dress well, but avoid flamboyant clothes. Business dress is usually a suit in a fairly sober colour for both men and women.
• Maintain eye contact with the audience.
• Make your body movements quiet and natural; some hand movements are OK, but avoid wild gesticulations!
• Dress casually, or in academic "grunge".
• Employ exaggerated body language.
• Stand with your hands in your pockets.
• Fumble with change in your pockets, bite your nails, or twiddle your hair. If you have habits like these, practise NOT doing these things while presenting, as they can be VERY distracting.

Answering questions

The following points are worth bearing in mind:

• If you have planned your presentation well, you should have forestalled obvious questions, e.g. how many people will be involved in this project, what will the reporting structure be etc. (We have earlier suggested that a good way of planning your presentation is to write down a list of possible questions.)
• Try and make the question and answer session a two way process: have some questions of your own; try and stimulate discussion.
• Always repeat questions – the questionner may have asked the question quietly so that some of the audience may not have heard.
• Don't feel that you have to know all the answers. Either say that you will come back to the person, or if appropriate ask if anyone else in the hall knows the answer.
• Prepare an "additional point" so that if there are no questions, you can use the time effectively.
• If you get asked a question in the middle of your presentation, answer it if it will clarify a point, but don't be afraid to ask if you can come back to the point after the main presentation.
• Stay calm, even in the face of difficult questions. Never be afraid to pause in order to collect your thoughts.
• Try and think up possible questions as you prepare your presentation, and write down a list, including answers.

Some useful resources

Advice on presenting your research from the Kansas University Medical Center

Using LaTeX add-ins

Writing a Research Paper

The information search process, some definitions.

• Choosing a Topic and Identifying Keywords
• Finding Library Materials: Using LibGuides
• Using HillSearch (Library Catalog) to Find Books, Ebooks, And Streaming Media
• Search Databases for Scholarly Journal Articles
• Synthesizing Sources
• Citing Your Research/Creating a Bibliography
• Where to Get Help with Research and Writing

Your Librarian

Have you been assigned a research paper or presentation and are uncertain where to begin? Librarians are here to help you at each step of the research process, from initial topic selection to preparing your bibliography. In her work, Rutgers Information Science Professor Carol Kuhthau defines the steps of  the  Information Search Process  and the feelings researchers experience during each part of it -including occasional feelings of frustration and discouragement. Recognizing that frustration can be part of the research process can help you in the long run. Grappling with initial discomfort can ultimately help you develop your thesis statement, craft arguments and find the resources that best meet your research needs..

The chart below describes The Information Search Process, the tasks related to each step of the process, and the related feelings you may experience.

We're happy to meet with you one-on-one to help you with your research and compiling your citations. Click on the "Book an Appointment" link in our profile boxes to set up a meeting. If you don't see a time that meets your needs, email us.

Your professor might require a specific type or number of sources for your assignment. The following definitions might be of help understanding the assignment. These definitions have been adapted from the Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science .

Abstract -  A brief, objective representation of the essential content of a book, article, speech, report, dissertation, patent, standard, or other work, presenting the main points in the same order as the original but having no independent literary value. A well-prepared abstract enables the reader to 1) quickly identify the basic content of the document, 2) determine its relevance to their interests, and 3) decide whether it is worth their time to read the entire document

Annotated Bibliography -  A bibliography in which a brief explanatory or evaluative note is added to each reference/citation and abstract. An annotation can be helpful to the researcher in evaluating whether the source is relevant to a given topic or line of inquiry. For more information, watch our video tutorial on creating an annotated bibliography .

Primary Source (non/science topics)  -  A  document or record containing firsthand information or original data on a topic, used in preparing a new (derivative) work. Primary sources include original manuscripts, periodical articles reporting original research or thought, diaries, memoirs, letters, journals, photographs, drawings, posters, film footage, sheet music, songs, interviews, government documents, public records, eyewitness accounts, newspaper clippings, etc.

Primary Source/Primary Study (science topics) -  Also called empirical research studies, primary research studies in the sciences report on an experiment that was performed by the author(s) of the study.  These articles are formatted similarly to a lab report, and will contain the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and References.  Primary research studies will often contain data tables, graphs, and statistical analyses.

Scholarly Journal - A journal  publishing original research and commentary on current developments in a specific discipline, subdiscipline, or field of study (example: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology ). Scholarly journals are usually published in quarterly, bimonthly, or monthly issues sold by subscription (click here to see an example). Articles in scholarly journals are usually written by the person (or persons) who conducted the research. Longer than most magazine articles, they almost always include a bibliography or list of works cited at the end. In journals in the sciences and social sciences, an abstract usually precedes the text of the article, summarizing its content. Most scholarly journals are peer-reviewed, meaning article drafts are reviewed by a panel of experts prior to publication and any needed edits are made by the author. Not all periodicals are scholarly. Some are popular magazines - such as Time or People . Other periodicals are produced for a particular discipline - such as Inc. or Education Week - but articles are written by journalists, not disciplinary experts.

• Next: Choosing a Topic and Identifying Keywords >>
• Last Updated: Jul 15, 2024 10:53 AM
• URL: https://libguides.stonehill.edu/writing_a_research_paper

Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Organization > How to turn your paper into a presentation

How to turn your paper into a presentation

To make your information and findings more accessible, you might need to transform an academic or white paper into a slideshow presentation. Whether you’re a student presenting your research, a professional conveying a proposal, or someone simply looking to share ideas, turning a paper into a presentation is much easier than it seems. See how you can seamlessly transition from written content to a captivating presentation.

Why turn your paper into a presentation?

How can you turn pages of dense text into an easily digestible PowerPoint ? By knowing your audience and the key points of your work, you can easily create a compelling way to convey your research and findings.

Academic and corporate papers are dense, usually written in jargon, and might be dozens of pages long—which can be a detriment in conveying your information, research, and findings to a widespread audience. If you need to make a presentation in front of a class or company meeting, it can be effective to distill your work into slides that merely touch upon the key points onscreen, while giving you enough room to further delve into detail before moving on to the next slide. See more ways you can create successful presentations .

Tell your story with captivating presentations

Powerpoint empowers you to develop well-designed content across all your devices

Tips for turning your paper into a presentation

• Understand your audience: Whether the people you’re presenting to come from a technical background, or you’re introducing a new subject to an audience that might be unfamiliar with your topic, knowing who you are speaking to will guide your content choices, tone, and overall approach to your presentation.
• Know what to read aloud: The key difference between a paper and a presentation is that you’ll be reading the latter out loud, usually in a natural and conversational tone. This means that you’ll need to pay attention to what you need to say out loud, which can entail rewriting major passages, condensing text into talking points, and eliminating jargon so you won’t stumble over your words.
• Summarize key points : Understanding the gist and overall point of each section of your paper is key to knowing how to divide your paper into different slides. Start with the headers for each section of your paper, which is an easy shortcut to summarizing your topics per slide.
• Develop a structure: A paper and a presentation have different ways of conveying information, and a presentation needs to capture attention in more direct ways—especially if your audience is unfamiliar with your subject. Begin with an introduction that grabs your audience’s attention, followed by the main body containing your key points, and conclude with a summary or call to action.
• Use speaker notes: In PowerPoint, you can add speaker notes to the bottom of a slide that can help you remember what you need to cover. These will show up on your device or monitor, but they won’t appear to your audience. Therefore, they can be immensely helpful to store talking points that you might otherwise forget. You can put elements of your paper in here that might be too unwieldy to mention out loud here, which can also demonstrate how well-versed in the subject you are.
• Add visuals and interactive elements: One of the most effective ways to captivate your audience is through compelling visuals. Create slides that complement your key points with images, graphs, and charts. These might be taken from your paper itself, or you can take the chance to reinterpret your data into graphs that can illustrate your point more effectively than in your text.
• Seek feedback: Unlike turning in a paper, when you deliver a presentation, you have the unique opportunity to seek feedback from your peers and audience. Take constructive criticism with valuable insights that can generate feedback to iterate and refine your presentations.

Turning a paper into a presentation allows you to summarize key points, add visuals that enhance your work, and allow you to reach a wider audience. Presenting takes a wide variety of skills, so it’s worth checking out presentation tips on how to handle public speaking , design captivating presentations , or use common guidelines to create a compelling presenting session .

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100+ Presentation Topics for Inspiration (+ Free Templates)

Looking for some fresh inspiration for your next presentation? Look no further! In this article, we've compiled a comprehensive list of over 100 presentation topics that are sure to engage your audience.

Whether you're looking for something to educate, entertain, or spark inspiration, we've it all covered. Plus, we've included free, customizable presentation templates. You can easily customize them online to create a visually stunning slideshow.

Let’s dive in and elevate your presentations to new heights!

Table of Content

How to Choose a Good Presentation Topic?

Presentation topics for fun, general topics for presentation, 5-minute presentation topics, easy presentation topics for kids, presentation topics for high school students, presentation topics for college students, presentation topics for work, presentation topics about self-development, the bottom line.

Choosing the right topic is the first step in delivering an excellent presentation. Here are some tips to help you select a good presentation topic.

1. Define the goal of your presentation

Think about the goal of your presentation. Are you aiming to share your knowledge or skill, educate your audience on a new concept, or simply share a fun and light-hearted talk? Make sure to choose a topic that aligns with your purpose.

2. Understand your audience

Who are you presenting to? Classmates, colleagues, industry professionals, or a general audience? Make sure your presentation topic is relevant to their interests, knowledge level, and expectations. Consider the location too! A casual gathering allows for more flexibility than a formal conference.

3. Brainstorm and research

Spark some ideas! Brainstorm ideas that you are enthusiastic and knowledgeable about. Your passion will make the presentation more engaging. Write down a list of potential presentation topics that both interest you and your audience.

4. Test Your Topic

Share your presentation topic with your trusted friends, teachers, or colleagues. Get feedback on its clarity, relevance, and potential interest. Be open to refining your topic based on feedback or further research.

5. Prepare and Practice

Develop a clear and logical outline for your presentation. Highlight key points, supporting evidence, and a compelling introduction and conclusion. Remember, practice makes perfect. Rehearse your presentation to ensure smooth delivery and maximum impact.

Presentations don't have to be stuffy! Spice up your next gathering with a lighthearted presentation. Use these funny presentation topics to inject a dose of laughter.

• The 10 Most Pointless Inventions Ever Created : Share hilarious product failures and share their stories, leaving your audience wondering "Who came up with this?"
• The Do's and Don'ts of Workplace Emojis : Share some funny stories about using Emojis in business emails. Guide your audience on the proper use of emojis in the workplace.
• The Art of Procrastination : Share relatable stories of procrastination to lighten the mood and spark laughter.
• Dad Jokes (or Mom Jokes) : Share fun stories of your family members, encouraging lighthearted participation and shared groans.
• The Science Behind Why Cats are Better Coworkers Than Humans : Explore the humorous reasons (and surprisingly scientific) why cats make great work companions. Compare feline coworkers to human ones in a lighthearted way.
• Optical Illusions: Tricking Your Mind and Eyes : Showcase mind-blowing optical illusions. Explain the science behind how these visual tricks work in an engaging way.
• The Funniest Laws Around the World : Provide examples of funny regulations from around the world and their origins.
• The Unexpected Perks of Becoming a Professional Pillow Tester : Or pet food tester, lego builder, mermaid, etc. Choose an unconventional career and delve into the funny behind-the-scenes stories about these unusual jobs.
• Adulting: Nailed It... (Mostly) : Delve into the relatable everyday challenges of adult life. Make your audience laugh and see themselves in the story.
• Hilarious Travel Experience : Share entertaining stories from your travels.
• Phobias You Won't Believe Exist : Introduce some truly strange phobias that people actually have. Let your audience be both amused and amazed.
• Funny Cultural Misunderstandings: Explore the humor in cultural misunderstandings! Share some amusing or embarrassing mix-ups you've had with foreign friends.
• History's Funniest Moments : Uncover some absurd and unbelievable events in history that seem too strange to be true.
• Hilarious Fashion Trends from the Past : Take a look at fashion fads from previous decades. Showcase some outlandish and hilarious trends.
• Weird Traditions from Around the World : Present some of the most unusual and quirky customs practiced in different cultures.
• The Weirdest Foods Eaten Around the World : Share some bizarre and exotic foods from different cultures. Discuss the cultural significance of these foods and their unique flavors, all while keeping the tone light and humorous.

Click to customize this presentation template online for free 

Feeling stuck with presentation ideas? A range of general presentation topics that can be adapted to any audience and interest. Feel free to pick one that ignites your passion, and prepare to wow your audience.

• Data-driven decisions: How to use data analytics to improve decision-making
• 10-minute morning routine: How to start a more productive day
• Friend or foe: Willai take your job?
• The minimalist lifestyle: Living more with less
• Healthy eating hacks for busy bees
• Mindfulness and meditation: Techniques for stress reduction
• Be open and celebrate cultural diversity
• Language learning hacks: Quick strategies to accelerate language learning
• Saving seas, preserving life
• From procrastination to progress: Practical strategies to get things done
• Never stop learning: Learning a new skill at any age

A compelling 5-minute presentation can be just as impactful as a longer one. These 5-minute presentation topics offer a variety of options to engage your audience in a short timeframe. Have your audience hooked from start to finish, and deliver an unforgettable talk!

• Do schools kill creativity
• Freelance freedom: How to build a career on your own terms
• Advocating for a 4-day work week: Benefits and challenges
• 5 Tips to kickstart an honest conversation at work
• The hidden costs of our fast-paced world
• Help me, help you: How to ask for help and get a “yes”
• Is your partner ‘the one’? Why that’s the wrong question
• Magic and wonder in the age of AI
• How to learn something fast
• Fuel your day: Simple and nutritious meal recipes
• How to maintain work-life balance
• 5-minute mindfulness practice: How to find calm in the chaos
• Time management hacks for busy lives
• The power of saying no: Protecting your time and energy

Making presentations can be a great way to develop communication skills, and build confidence for kids. Here are some engaging and age-appropriate simple presentation topics that will spark a child's curiosity and encourage them to share their knowledge. Empower your little ones to become confident presenters!

• Why reading is fun: My favorite book
• Fun facts about my favorite season
• How plants grow: From seed to plant
• The importance of brushing your teeth
• My awesome family: Who we are and what we love
• The life cycle of a butterfly
• How to take care of a pet (e.g., dog, cat, fish)
• Space explorers: A tour of our solar system
• Explore different types of dinosaurs
• The importance of friendship
• The history of my favorite holiday
• How to make new pals
• The different parts of a flower and their functions
• A fun day at the park: What to do and see
• How to make a simple birdhouse
• My favorite outdoor adventure
• Why rainbows appear after the rain
• How a tornado forms: The science behind storms

High school is a time of exploration and discovery. Here is a diverse range of good presentation topics for students. From science and history to social issues and more. Feel free to pick a topic that resonates with you. Make an engaging and informative presentation to impress your classmates and teachers.

• Trending social media challenges
• The psychology of color: How colors our emotions and behavior
• Climate change: Local impacts and what students can do
• Future careers: What jobs will exist in 2050?
• The science behind video games
• Data privacy: How to stay secure in a digital world
• Public speaking: Tips for overcoming stage fright
• Artificial intelligence: How AI is changing our everyday life
• Cultural diversity: Celebrating our differences
• Fast fashion: The environmental cost of fashion
• The psychology of procrastination: Why we delay and how to conquer it?
• Renewable energy solutions: Solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear
• Vrtual influencers: The rise of the digital stars

College presentations offer a chance to showcase your academic passions and research skills. This section provides a rich resource of presentation ideas. Whether you're diving into a captivating research project or leading a group discussion, a well-crafted presentation can showcase your knowledge and leave a lasting impression on professors and peers. Here are some unique topics for presentation in college.

• The latest discoveries in [your field of study]
• The influencer effect: How social media influencers change consumer behavior
• The evolution of language: How words and phrases change over time
• The global refugee crisis: Causes, consequences, and potential solutions
• Sustainable living: Practical tips for reducing your carbon footprint
• Hip-Hop: From the streets to the mainstream
• Generative AI: Theory, applications, and challenges
• Big data analytics: Challenges and opportunities
• Personal branding in the digital age
• The sharing economy: Benefits and challenges
• The power of music: Explore music therapy for mood, memory, and overall wellness
• Storytelling for success: How storytelling can power up business
• How to travel on a student budget: Explore the world and expand your horizons
• The debate on gun control in the United States
• Space exploration: The future of humans beyond Earth

Crafting a work presentation can feel daunting. Worry not! We curate a diverse range of ideas suitable for everyone in the workplace, from the seasoned leader to the eager new hire. These ppt topics will help you stand out in the conference room and engage your colleagues. Use presentations to effectively communicate your ideas, demonstrate your expertise, and leave a lasting impression.

• Time management hacks for increased productivity
• Talking about anxiety at work: Why it’s important
• Effective communication skills for teamwork
• The importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace
• Strategies for conflict resolution and mediation
• Work-life harmony: How to achieve a healthy balance
• Dream big, do More: Why businesses need a dreamer’s magic and a doer’s realism
• Project management best practices
• The role of emotional intelligence in leadership
• Thinking Outside the Box: Innovative problem-solving techniques
• The impact of technology on modern workplaces
• Career development and continuing education
• How to leverage social media for brand growth
• Remote work: Challenges and opportunities
• Build your network: Effective networking skills for career success
• Customer service excellence: Strategies for success
• Agile methodologies in project management
• Effective presentation skills: Captivating your audience
• The power of feedback: Giving and receiving constructive criticism
• Adapting to market changes: Strategies for business resilience
• The role of corporate social responsibility in modern business

Investing in yourself is a lifelong journey. Explore some presentation topics that can empower individuals to overcome challenges and inspire personal growth. From the power of positive thinking to effective time management strategies, our presentation topics cover a diverse range of areas. Get ready to spark meaningful conversations and ignite a journey of self-discovery.

• The power of positive thinking: From self-doubt to self-belief
• Mindfulness & meditation: Your toolkit for inner peace
• Self-confidence: Unlock your inner strength
• How to overcome procrastination
• Gratitude: The secret weapon for happiness
• The benefits of journaling
• Effective strategies for stress management
• Building bridges, not walls: Communication skills for healthy relationships
• The art of letting go: How to release negative emotions and move forward
• Bounce back like a boss: Building resilience in the face of failure
• How to stay focused and motivated
• The importance of self-belief: How confidence can shape your success
• How to build deeper connections and relationships

Say goodbye to the struggle of coming up with a perfect presentation topic. Here are over 100 presentation topics to spark your creativity. Remember, this is just a starting point. Get creative and experiment with different ideas to craft a perfect presentation.

Thanks for reading. Hope this article helps you!

AI Make PPT for Non-Designers

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In today's digital age, AI-driven slide design is revolutionizing the way non-designers approach presentation creation. Gone are the days when crafting visually appealing and impactful slides required extensive design skills or expensive software. With the advent of artificial intelligence, individuals from various professional backgrounds can now produce stunning presentations effortlessly.

These innovative AI tools analyze content, understand context, and generate visually striking slides that effectively communicate ideas. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, these platforms offer intelligent suggestions for layouts, color schemes, and typography, ensuring a polished and professional look. As a result, non-designers can focus on their message while the AI handles the aesthetics, democratizing the art of presentation design and empowering users to create compelling visual narratives with ease.

The Power of AI in Presentation Design

AI-driven slide design is revolutionizing the way non-designers approach presentation creation. Gone are the days of struggling with complex design software or settling for bland, uninspiring templates. With advanced algorithms and machine learning capabilities, AI tools can now analyze content, understand context, and generate visually appealing slides in minutes.

These intelligent systems offer a range of features that simplify the design process for users without graphic design expertise. From automatically selecting color schemes that complement your brand to suggesting layout options that enhance readability, AI-powered presentation tools take the guesswork out of slide creation. They can even recommend relevant images, icons, and data visualizations to illustrate key points effectively. By leveraging these AI-driven design capabilities, non-designers can produce professional-looking presentations that engage audiences and convey information clearly, all without the need for extensive design skills or time-consuming manual adjustments.

How AI Transforms Presentation Design Tools

AI-driven slide design tools are revolutionizing the way non-designers approach presentation creation. These innovative platforms harness the power of artificial intelligence to simplify complex design processes, making it possible for anyone to craft visually stunning presentations with ease.

By analyzing vast amounts of design data and user preferences, AI algorithms can generate professional-looking slides that adhere to best practices in visual communication. These tools often offer features like automatic color scheme suggestions, intelligent layout recommendations, and even content optimization based on the presentation's topic. As a result, individuals without formal design training can now produce polished, engaging presentations that rival those created by experienced graphic designers, saving time and resources while maintaining a high standard of visual appeal.

Why Non-Designers Benefit from AI-Driven Slide Design

AI-driven slide design is revolutionizing the way non-designers approach presentations. Gone are the days when creating visually appealing slides required extensive graphic design skills or hours of painstaking work. With AI-powered tools, even those without design expertise can now produce professional-looking presentations effortlessly.

These intelligent systems analyze content, suggest layouts, and automatically generate visually striking slides. They consider design principles, color theory, and typography to create cohesive and engaging presentations. Non-designers benefit from this technology by saving time, reducing stress, and producing high-quality materials that effectively communicate their message. As AI continues to advance, it's empowering individuals across various fields to create impactful visual content without the need for specialized design knowledge.

Key Features of AI-Powered PPT Tools

AI-driven slide design tools are revolutionizing the way non-designers approach presentation creation. These innovative platforms harness the power of artificial intelligence to streamline the design process, offering a range of key features that make professional-looking presentations accessible to everyone.

One standout feature is automated layout suggestions. By analyzing the content and purpose of your slides, AI algorithms can propose visually appealing arrangements that enhance readability and impact. Another crucial element is intelligent color palette selection, which ensures your slides maintain a cohesive and polished look throughout. Additionally, many AI-powered tools offer smart image recommendations, pulling from vast libraries to suggest relevant visuals that complement your content. These features work in tandem to elevate the quality of presentations, allowing non-designers to create compelling slides with minimal effort and maximum impact.

AI-Driven Slide Design Customizations and Templates

AI-driven slide design has revolutionized the way non-designers approach presentation creation. With intuitive templates and customization options, these tools empower users to craft visually stunning slides effortlessly. The process typically involves selecting a template that aligns with the presentation's theme and purpose.

Once a template is chosen, AI algorithms analyze the content and suggest appropriate layouts, color schemes, and font pairings. Users can then fine-tune these elements to match their preferences or brand guidelines. Advanced features like automatic image suggestions and data visualization tools further enhance the design process. By leveraging AI capabilities, even those without graphic design skills can produce professional-looking presentations that effectively communicate their message and engage their audience.

Automated Content Suggestions and Enhancements

AI-driven slide design is revolutionizing the way non-designers approach presentation creation. With intelligent algorithms and machine learning capabilities, these tools can automatically generate visually appealing slides based on content input. Users simply provide their key points, and the AI suggests layouts, color schemes, and even relevant images to enhance the overall presentation.

One of the most significant advantages of AI-powered slide design is its ability to adapt to different presentation styles and themes. Whether you're preparing a business pitch, academic lecture, or creative showcase, the AI can tailor its suggestions to suit your specific needs. This adaptability ensures that even those without formal design training can produce professional-looking presentations that effectively communicate their message and engage their audience.

Conclusion: Embracing AI in PPT Design for Everyone

As we conclude our exploration of AI-driven slide design, it's clear that this technology is revolutionizing the way we create presentations. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, even those without design expertise can now produce visually stunning and impactful slides. This democratization of design empowers professionals across various fields to communicate their ideas more effectively.

Looking ahead, the future of presentation creation appears bright and inclusive. AI-powered tools will continue to evolve, offering even more sophisticated features and intuitive interfaces. As these technologies become more accessible, we can expect to see a rise in the overall quality of presentations across industries. Ultimately, AI-driven slide design is not just a tool for non-designers; it's a catalyst for clearer communication and more engaging storytelling in the digital age.

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