Effective Presentation Skills: Content, Design, and Delivery

1. Presenting Your ProposalBIOS 587Mary Puruggananmaryp@rice.edu

2. Goals for session • Selecting content • Designing slides • Delivering your presentation • Handling questions • Critiquing samples

3. Content • Consider your audience • State problem / hypothesis clearly & early • Include significance • Keep background relevant • State aims and how experiments will address aims • What, why, how • Explain methods when appropriate • Plan a conclusion

4. Purpose of visual aids • Create a slide show with storyboards, not a script • Use the slide show... • to select important topics and issues • to organize content • to create a hierarchy

5. Designing Your Slides To select a design, ask yourself: • What professional image do I want to project? • In what type of room will I give my talk? • Well-lit room: use light background / dark text and visuals • Dimly-lit room: use dark background / light text and visuals

6. Project a clear font • Serif fonts • Times New Roman, et al. • Easy to read in printed documents • Sans serif fonts • Arial, Helvetica • Easy to see projected across the room

7. Choose color carefully

8. Choose color carefully • “Gradient fill” allows you to change color • Down your slide • From left to right • On the diagonal • From the corner

9. Use grammatical parallelism • Not Parallel: • Lyse cells in buffer • 5 minutes in centrifuge • Supernatant is removed • Parallel: • Lyse cells in buffer • Centrifuge for 5 minutes • Remove supernatant

10. Simplify & draw attention http://www.indstate.edu/thcme/mwking/tca-cycle.html

11. Delivery • Stance • Body language • Handling notes • Gestures • Eye contact • Voice quality • Volume • Pace

12. Handling questions • LISTEN • Repeat or rephrase • Watch body language • Don’t bluff

13. Sample Slides and Videoclips