Presenting to an academic audience

1. Presenting to an academic audience Associate Professor Jeanne Dawson The Learning Centre

2. Some facts about presenting in public: • Most people find speaking in front of an audience intimidating (not just you!) • In surveys of what people fear most, public speaking is mentioned more often than any other fear (including flying, poisonous snakes, or death).

3. HOWEVER • The individual strategies and skills involved in presenting in public require no special talent, just careful planning and practice.

4. You can tame the presentation process by breaking it into three areas: • WHO (engagement with the audience) • WHAT (the content and organisation) • HOW (the presentation performance)

5. 1.WHO?

6. Who is your audience and what are their needs?

7. Communicating with an audience –

8. academic/peer audiences • Want to hear what you have to say • Have an interest in (and probably some background knowledge of) your topic • Tend to be constructively critical • Don’t have time to waste • Expect to be engaged rather than lectured to

9. Communicating with an audience – Remember that listening is not like reading.

10. Communicating with an audience – Use your HEAD and your HEART Cool head,warm heart

11. 2.WHAT?

12. Content and structure • Organise your content into clear, easy-to-follow sections. • Identify a few key points as the framework for your presentation (3 is a ‘magic’ number for balance and retention of ideas and concepts). • Too much detail is distracting (use handouts for highly detailed information, figures, or statistics, so the audience can study details in more depth after the presentation).

13. Content and structure • Frame your presentation with an introduction and conclusion. Tell them what you’re going to tell them (introduction) tell them; (the body) tell them what you’ve told them (the conclusion)

14. The introduction • is brief • aims to catch the audience’s attention • clearly identifies the topic • includes a preview of the presentation • offers a ‘roadmap’ of where you will take the audience • is your first contact with the audience – use the opportunity to build personal rapport

15. The body • develops the theme • provides supporting information • informs, persuades, and/or entertains the audience • needs to be well-structured and sign-posted for the audience to follow • needs to be interesting (never over-estimate the audience’s attention span)

16. The conclusion • contains no new material • recapitulates what you promised in the introduction and delivered in the body • reinforces the main points • gives the audience a second chance to hear ideas presented earlier. • signals end of the presentation (with phrases like ‘in closing’, ‘summarising, then’, etc.)

17. Signposting • Use transition markers to signpost shifts in topics and sub-topics. Example: ‘…that covers the key aspects of the theory. Now let’s look at how the theory may be applied and how it operated in practice….’

18. TIME MANAGEMENT

19. Time Management • Factor the time allowance into initial planning. • Never go over the time allowance. • It’s easier to slow down delivery than to speed it up. • Allow audience time to process audiovisual material.

20. Time Management • Time your presentation when you rehearse, then add 20% - presenting to an audience slows down your delivery (especially if you achieve good rapport). • Appreciate the power of the pause.

21. 3.HOW?

22. Why is presenting to peers so stressful?

23. Managing the situation • Define your role. • Give! • Cool head, warm heart.

24. All performance is stressful! It’s normal to feel anxious.

25. BUT you can turn anxiety into EUSTRESS

26. Eustress is healthy stress.

27. EUSTRESSis the sensation that athletes experience before the big race and musicians experience before the big performance.

28. Eustress is made up of excitement, anticipation, and awareness.

29. EUSTRESS helps give you the adrenaline surge to perform at your optimum effectiveness.

30. Suggestions for turning stress into ‘EUSTRESS’

31. Before the performance • Find out about your audience, their interests, level of knowledge, needs. • Know and believe in your topic. • Rehearse, if possible in the venue where you’ll be presenting. • Build in a time cushion. • Check out equipment.

32. Immediately before the performance • Take some physical exercise. • Yawn, stretch, roll head, massage earlobes. • Meditate. • Visualise yourself giving a brilliantpresentation!

33. Immediately before the performance • Take some physical exercise. • Yawn, stretch, roll head, massage earlobes. • Meditate. • Go to the toilet. • Check appearance. • Drink some water. • Stay cool!

34. During the performance • Claim your space – you are entitled to speak. • Establish eye contact with sympathetic or interested members of the audience. • Use relaxed ‘open’ gestures to connect with your audience. • Smile. (This not only encourages reciprocal smiles from the audience but also reduces facial tension.)

35. During the performance • Remember that the audience do not want you to fail. • Audiences are tolerant of ‘glitches’ in your presentation – if you make a mistake, apologise, forget about it, and move on.

36. During the performance • Remember that as a presenter you are acting in a particular role that is separate from your personal self; the audience’s attention is on you as a presenter of information, not you personally. • Use the audience’s criticism constructively – there’s no gain without pain!

37. Final Reflection ‘Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.’ (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 – 1900)