Checklist: Preparing your presentation

VOICEOVER: We previously talked in the video about these four key steps in any academic presentation and offered some of our tips for delivering presentations. What this video will do, will take you through some of the preparation, structure and practice techniques we would also recommend and show you how some of the next steps will really help you out with that. We said preparing your presentation is a really important part of the process as it helps replace those nerves that you might have with a confident performance. It also ensures that not only are you confident, but that what you’re saying is of the highest quality possible.

We always find it helpful, much like with having a research log of some kind, to have a tick list for thinking about your presentation. We’ve put one together in one of the latest steps, which you might like to use. One of the first things on that list is to refine and narrow your project, working out exactly which points in your project you want to draw out and talk about. Part of this is working out how to order or structure them.

This very closely resembles the structure that we suggested in week seven, by beginning with an introduction where you tell the audience exactly what you’re planning to tell them, perhaps by giving an overview of your presentation like I did at the beginning of this one. You would then go on to the main body of your presentation. Decide upon the points you want to make, picking the relevant evidence you’d like to support them as you did in your write up. And then I would try to go over the three point per 10 minute rule. Obviously, if you’ve got less time, you might just want to be more concise.

Then comes the conclusion, where you just summarise what you’ve said and make your overall judgement. Whatever style you choose to adopt, or presentation software you decide to use is completely up to you. And that’s part of the checklist. And some of the next steps will offer some assistance with that. We did say in the video that practise and delivery can’t be taught, but, like delivery, there are some pointers I would like to share Do have a go at practicing within your time limit and considering your pace. If you run over time, be brutal and cut stuff out. Or get somebody else to have a look over it and see what they think is relevant or not.

Just don’t try and wiz through things by talking quicker. If you can see the venue of your talk so that you know where you might be standing and the presentation facilities then that’s great. If you have the opportunity to practice there, that’s even better. It would just help calm those nerves again. If you’re going to be delivering as part of a group research project, make sure you know the order people are speaking in and how you’re laid out. There’s nothing worse than seeing people looking at each other down a line trying to work out whose talking next and exactly what they’re going to be saying.