ASSET Independent Research Slide Presentation Template (replace this title with the title of your work!) Authors’ names, affiliations, funding sources, as needed

General Guidelines In general, a picture is worth a thousand words (so please excuse these slides!). Your slides should clearly explain your research and provide the information needed for your audience to understand and appreciate your work. When possible, use pictures, graphs, charts and diagrams that YOU can explain to pictorially represent your findings. Your audience should be listening to you and looking at your slides, not reading your slides and ignoring you. Don’t use small or fancy fonts. Generally, something without serifs and over 24- point will work. Make sure that your slides tell the story of your experiment in words and pictures, while you narrate them in words. To do this, your slideshow should include the same general sections as a paper or poster.

Title Should be on your first slide and should tell your audience what the presentation is about. This could be the title of your paper, but sometimes research paper titles can belong and unwieldy. Consider your audience and your topic. Will your presentation be viewed only by content-area specialists? Perhaps then it might be ok to use a longer title with lots of specific jargon. Will your presentation be displayed to a more general scientific audience? If so, consider abridging your title or replacing esoteric words with more generally-understood ones.

Background Here again you need to consider your audience. The background section should provide your reader with enough information so that all the other sections make sense. If there is a particular technique, piece of equipment or concept that it is important to know about before understanding the rest of the presentation, that information should go here. In addition, the motivations behind your experiment should be explained, so that the reader knows how your topic fits into the larger body of work on the subject. This section should be tailored to your audience, so you don’t provide too much or too little information. Consider showing pictures of the organism you used, the apparatus that you used, or general information needed to understand technical aspects of your work.

Materials and Methods This section should provide an overview of what you did and how you did it. Because you are present to explain the experiment, it is not necessary to make a full methods section as you might in a paper. You should limit your methods section to a short overview, but make sure to touch on any materials or processes that are uncommon or integral to your work. You should not list all of the materials that you used, but a very brief description of unusual or complex materials that are key to your experiments will help your audience understand what you did. Pictures of the equipment that you used or of data collection in progress can be helpful.

Results and Data This section should show your data, in the form of well-designed graphs and charts. Avoid putting in too much supporting data (such as longer data tables) in favor of figures that clearly summarize your findings. This is the place to show what information your research has generated, in a very clear and concise fashion. Raw data is often hard to understand and will confuse your audience. Use URLs or QR codes for other data. Make sure that the labels, legends, axis titles, and numbers of all tables, charts, graph are readable. This should be the heart of your presentation. Make sure your graphs and charts are clear and that you can easily explain what the data presented. The data you present should directly relate to your hypothesis and background information.

Conclusions This section should tell the reader what you conclude from your research – what does your data tell you how do you interpret your results how do your findings relate to the previous work described in your introduction what implications do your results have for your field of research or other fields ideas and directions for future research that grow from this work Your conclusions should be drawn from the data that you presented and the background information that you provided. Try to use graphics or pictures to convey your conclusions when possible. Flowcharts, graphs, or tables showing relationships between your work and that of others may be useful.

References It may sometimes be helpful to include a few key references, particularly if you are going to your presentation or post it on a website. If you can, provide links to your references. You might also consider adding other videos or supporting information if your audience wants to take a more in-depth look at your work.

Acknowledgments You should acknowledge those who have helped you organize, plan, and carry out your research (teachers, librarians, other students, others) and any funding sources that have provided resources or materials for your work. List names and affiliations and verbally acknowledge what they did (very briefly).