1. Making a Research Presentation
Research talk 101
Making a Research Presentation

2. Purpose of a research talk
It is not to
Impress the audience
Tell them all you know about a subject
Present every single detail of your work
It is to
Give the audience a basic description of your work
Make them want to read your research
Get feedback on the work you present

3. Know your audience Who will be there?
Researcher expert in your field?
Researchers not expert in your field?
Other Students?
Non-experts?
Who knows?
Try to find out in advance what the group will mainly be composed of

4. Know your audience Keep in mind
They might be tired
They can bored 
They are thinking “Why should I listen to this?”
What can you do to make your talk interesting?

5. What can you do? Provide a motivation
at the beginning provide an easy to understand reason why you picked a topic/question
You may choose to state the conclusion
State your results early and in simple terms
Or you can keep this to the very end
Use Visuals
Are there images and diagrams that help to explains what you want to say?

6. Picture

7. What should your audience learn by the end of the presentation?
They should understood what the research question is and why it is important
Understand what your answer is
Be convinced that you knows the literature

8. Use examples Examples are very helpful to an audience
Motivate your work
Illustrate the basic intuition
Help to explain your answer
Highlight extreme cases or shortcomings in your answer

9. Where were you? People will get lost during your talk
Introduction
Research Question
Methodology
Data and Analysis
Results and Conclusions
Where were you?
People will get lost during your talk
Even those who are fully listening
a running outline of main steps can be useful
You can use section break slides to divide up your talk

10. Related Research work Be familiar with all related work
But don’t list every paper you read
You never have the time to do this
Only mention results of other research that is immediately related to what you did
A “references” slide at the end of the talk
On your title slide include your name
and the name of co-authors if several people were involved

11. Technical details: in or out?
There is a fine line between providing too little and too much detail in your presentation
Present a specific aspect – the “meat” of your work
Don’t fill up your slides with lots of equations
Don’t fill up your slides with lots of texts
Prepare back-up slides to answer questions. Leave them at the end of the presentation

12. The skeleton of a research talk
Cover Slide with a Title and your name
What is the research question?
Motivation and goals of the research
Relevant state of the art
Relevant previous research
Where/how did you get your data?
How did you analyse the data?
What did you conclude?

13. Preparing the presentation
Make key bullet points on each slide
not long paragraph
Use colour to emphasize some points
but limit this to 2 or 3 colours maximum
Font size and font colour. Be consistent!
use the same color font size/font type
Space out your text
don’t cram it in to half the slide

14. Preparing the presentation
Make key bullet points on each slide
not long paragraph
Use colour to emphasize some points
but limit this to 2 or 3 colours
Font size and font colour. Be consistent!
use the same color font size/font type
Space out your text
don’t cram it in to half the slide

15. Slide layout – Bad Example
This page contains too many words for a presentation slide. It is not written in point form, making it difficult both for your audience to read and for you to present each point. Although there are exactly the same number of points on this slide as the previous slide, it looks much more complicated. In short, your audience will spend too much time trying to read this paragraph instead of listening to you.

16. More on Slide layout Use main points and sub points
Sub-points in smaller font than main points
Will help audience concentrate on what you are saying

17. Fonts - Good Use a font size that is appropriate
If screen is small you will need larger font size
Try to standardise the size of fonts
Different size for main points and secondary points
this font is 28-point,
the main point font is 32-point,
the title font is 44-point
Use a standard font (Times Roman or Arial)

18. Fonts - Bad CAPITALIZE ONLY WHEN NECESSARY. IT IS DIFFICULT TO READ
If you use a small font, your audience won’t be able to read what you have written
CAPITALIZE ONLY WHEN NECESSARY. IT IS DIFFICULT TO READ
Don’t use a complicated font

19. Colour - Good
Use font color that contrasts sharply with the background
Blue font on white background
Use color to reinforce the logic of your structure
Ex: light blue title and dark blue text
Use color to emphasize a point
But only use this occasionally

20. Color - Bad
Using a font color that does not contrast with the background color is hard to read
Using color for decoration is distracting and annoying.
Using a different color for each point is unnecessary
Same for secondary points
Trying to be creative can also be bad

21. Background Colour - Good
Use relatively plain backgrounds
such as this one
attractive but simple
Use backgrounds which are light coloured
Dark coloured backgrounds are not recommened
Use the same background consistently
Right throughout your presentation

22. Background – Bad
Avoid backgrounds that are distracting or difficult to read from
Always be consistent with the background that you use

23. Graphs - Good Use graphs rather than just words only
data in graphs can be easier to understand
better than data in tables (for powerpoint)
Trends are easier to visualize in graph form
Always title your graphs and the axes
A graph with no main title is useless
A graph with no axes titles is useless

24. Graphs - Good

25. Graphs - Bad

26. Graphs - Bad Minor gridlines are normally unnecessary Font too small
Colors are badly chosen
Shading is distracting
Title is missing
Axes titles are missing

27. Table - Bad

28. Table - Good
Phones Sold in Q1 of 2016 (000’s)

29. Preparing the presentation
Prepare the slides in advance
Show them to friends
When you think you are finished, read them again
Try to view them on a big screen
Viewing on big screen can helps to find mistakes/typos
Check all slides for animations
If you don’t want animation turn it on
If you don’t want animation turn it off

30. Preparing the presentation
Practice
Give a practice talk to a general audience
Time your presentation
is it too short or too long, or just right?
Always assume technology will fail you
Projector might not work, USB might not work
your presentation to yourself
Have a paper backup
a printed copy of your slides
maybe 4 or 6 slides to a page (handouts option)

31. Delivering the talk Be enthusiastic!
If you aren’t why should the audience be?
Make eye contact with the audience
Which screen should you look at?
Computer screen or Big screen
Take care not to have your back to audience
they may not hear you
Look for “nodders” in the audience and speak to them
If you focus on people who are asleep you will lose confidence
Watch for questions or insist they wait until the end
Especially if you feel they are irrelevant

32. Delivering the talk In you need to point, then point at big screen
not at the computer screen
Try not to read words directly from the PPT
or your notes
this may be difficult and it is why you practice
Finish in time

33. Handling questions Questions come in different types
and each type may need to be handled differently
Four main types of questions
Request for clarification (something they did not understand)
Suggest something helpful for your work
Assholes: Out to show that they are better than you
Want to engage in further discussion (collaboration?)
Ways to prepare answers for questions
Make additional slides that are not part of the presentation
These can help you answer questions

34. It’s hard: How can I get better?
Practice
Observe others and learn from them
Some people are really good presenters
Adopt their habits
Other people are really bad presenters
Avoid their mistakes
Seek comments from friends and mentors
Ask them to be honest with you

35. Useful Links How to give a great Research Talk
How to give a good Research Talk

36. Your Assignment Powerpoint presentation of your group
Should be submitted to dropbox
folder MSR2016 (invitation has been sent to your s)
By 08:00 on Tuesday Nov 15 (tomorrow)
Presentation should include
Cover slides with a title
Names of each person in the group
Filename should indicate group number

37. Running Order for Tomorrow
Sequence
Group Number 1 11 2 10 3 4 14 5 9 6 13 7 8 12