What should a presentation have

For more ideas, see our page on Coping with Presentation Nerves. If you can bring yourself to relax, you will almost certainly present better. If you can actually start to enjoy yourself, your audience will respond to that, and engage better. Your presentations will improve exponentially, and so will your confidence.

Follow our guide to boost your presentation skills learning about preparation, delivery, questions and all other aspects of giving effective presentations. Start with: What is a Presentation? Search SkillsYouNeed:. We'll never share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Finding The Story Behind Your Presentation To effectively tell a story, focus on using at least one of the two most basic storytelling mechanics in your presentation: Focusing On Characters — People have stories; things, data, and objects do not. For example… Did hazardous road conditions inspire you to build a rugged, all-terrain jeep that any family could afford?

Did a complicated and confusing food labelling system lead you to establish a colour-coded nutritional index so that anybody could easily understand it? This is like the Methods and Results sections of a manuscript. Keep a clear focus on what is important and interesting to your audience. Don't fall into the trap of feeling that you have to present every single thing that you did. Finally, summarize your main results and discuss their meaning.

This is your opportunity to give the audience a strong take-home message and leave a lasting impression. When crafting your take-home message, ask yourself this: If my audience remembers one thing from my talk, what do I want it to be? When you are considering how long each section should be, it is helpful to remember that the attention of the audience will usually wane after 15—20 minutes, so for longer talks, it's a good idea to keep each segment of your presentation to within this amount of time.

Switching to a new section or topic can re-engage people's interest and keep their attention focused. Visual materials, probably in the form of PowerPoint slides, are likely to be a vital part of your presentation. It is crucial to treat the slides as visual support for your audience, rather than as a set of notes for you.

A good slide might have around three clear bullet points on it, written in note form. If you are less confident speaking in English, you can use fuller sentences, but do not write your script out in full on the slide.

As a general rule, avoid reading from your slides; you want the audience to listen to you instead of reading ahead. Also, remember that intonation can be 'flattened' by reading, and you don't want to put the audience to sleep. However, if you need to rely on some written text to explain some difficult points and calm your nerves, make sure you pause and look at the audience between these points; then go back to talking and not reading the next slide.

Ideally, the slides should focus on relevant visual material, such as diagrams, microscope images, or chemical structures.

A good diagram can be far easier for people to understand than words alone. Make sure that you point to the slides as you talk. This will help guide the audience's attention to the correct part of the slide, and can keep them engaged with what you are explaining. Make sure your visual materials are easy to read. Use dark lettering on a pale background for maximum visibility; pale lettering on a dark background can be difficult to read.

Choose a standard clear font, like Arial or Times New Roman, and make sure that the size is large enough to be seen from the back of the room. Lay out the slides so that the elements are properly spaced. It is better to split a slide into two or three separate slides instead of overfilling one slide. This is where you explain your topic and present all your information.

Arrange your points in a logical order and then provide information to support each of them. There are many different ways to organize your key points, for example:. A good conclusion summarizes the key points you made or highlights what the audience should have learned. It clarifies the general purpose of your presentation and reinforces the reason for viewing it.

Here are the slides you may want to include:. When working with a large PowerPoint presentation PPT , you can create sections that can be collapsed and expanded. This will help you keep slides organized and facilitate navigation in editing mode.

To do that, follow these steps:. This kind of segmentation is a great way to overview the logical flow of your slides all at once and see if there are any changes required. For example, you may decide to break one slide into two or three, or the other way around.

One other way to structure a PowerPoint presentation in the editing mode is to use Outline View. You can choose it from the VIEW tab. Here you can go through the entire text and edit it instantly. You can also work with text on the left and slides on the right simultaneously, as the latter is shown on the right side of your screen. Note that, to be displayed in an outline, text needs to be typed in a text placeholder, not a text box.

You can also use Outline View to promote bullet text to titles and the other way around. To do that, right-click on a relevant title or text and select the Promote or Demote options. Be attentive about demoting a title, as this will delete the original slide and move its title and text to the adjacent slide. PowerPoint only allows users to promote and demote text, not entire slides. All the aforementioned tips help you organize a presentation when formatting it.

One sure way to provide them with this opportunity is to create an interactive and structured table of contents. Faculty Resources. Oral Communication Center Tutoring Services. Seven Cardinal Virtues of Oral Presentation. Speaking Competitions.

Social Innovation. Student Resources. QSR Requirement. Language Center Peer Tutoring. About Us. Wellin Museum of Art. Using Powerpoint or Prezi Effectively View pdf Powerpoint and Prezi presentations are meant to serve as visual aids that can enhance audience engagement and their understanding of your speech. You should not have full sentences on PowerPoint or Prezi because they distract from your speech and you want your audience to listen, not read. Use short fragments or keywords to keep your presentation organized.

Have a backbone slide. Have a slide that demonstrates the direction your presentation will have by outlining the major elements of your speech. It may look nice, but it can also be a distraction.

Only use them if they play an essential role in your presentation such as concealing a bullet point for a later point in the presentation. Make sure the text is visible. Your text should be large enough to be visible from the back of the room for someone with average eye sight. Sometimes, the text may get lost in the background of the slide especially if the background includes a picture or the text color is too close to the background color.