Guidelines for Student Presentations

Guidelines for Graduate Student Presentations

Choice of Topics

As indicated in the syllabus for this course, our objectives are to develop skills needed to present and participate in oral presentations of research. To that end selection of a topic becomes extremely important. The topic should be current, timely, and offer a fresh approach to a subject of interest and value to students and faculty. In order to stimulate discussion, your topic should be controversial or perhaps one in which conflicting or incomplete information is available concerning the mechanisms involved in a clinical observation. Your topic should be chosen in consultation with your major professor or another faculty member and the instructor for F+N 695 and needs to be approved by the instructor of F+N 695. The topic can be related to your research topic but we do not want this to be merely a review of literature for your thesis.

Presentation Notice and Abstract

A notice of your presentation shall be prepared and circulated to faculty, staff, and students. The notice should contain:

Your name
Title of your presentation
Date, time, and place of your seminar
Abstract of your presentation (You will need to work with the instructor and your major professor to write the abstract)

The presentation notice/abstract shall be distributed to faculty and students at least one week prior to the seminar date. (A mailing list will be made available.)

Outline

Students are strongly encouraged to prepare a detailed outline of your presentation, with the appropriate references, for use in preparation as well as presentation. The outline will be used in all facets of development of your talk as well as being a useful tool to keep one organized, focussed, and on schedule. It will also serve as a starting point for selection and production of visual aids.

Oral Presentation

Organization: Your presentation should be organized into the following major headings

Title
Introduction: Present the outline of your seminar, briefly describing what you are going to talk about. Then describe the background of your presentation.
Hypothesis: Clearly state your hypothesis at the conclusion of your introduction.
Presentation of research: Review publications needed to present background for discussion of your hypothesis. Make sure methodological details are included when needed and results are presented with appropriate statistics.
Summary and discussion of all research presented (significance of results taken as a whole, future work, etc.). Make sure to revisit your hypothesis and present your evaluation of your hypothesis.

Presentation Style: The following suggestions may help as you prepare your presentation

Visual Aids:

You should all have received training in the use of Power Point or some other software as a means of preparing visuals. You may prepare 35mm slides, transparencies, or use the computer to project your visuals. As a rule-of-thumb, each slide takes two minutes to explain, title slides/overheads will take less time.
Pay careful attention to the content of your visuals. Avoid putting too much information on one slide. Slides/overheads should not be cluttered. Letters, numbers, diagrams, etc. should be large enough to be read easily. Use graphs rather then tables whenever possible. Graphs should be clearly labeled with the title, axes, statistical significance, and reference. Do not use complex tables with more than 12 to 14 numbers. Use diagrams to help explain complex concepts, models, and relationships. The presentations are intended for you to give the audience a summary of results, trends, or major responses, not detailed data from a single study or from a limited number of experiments.
Do not use original figures/tables unless they can be reproduced with good quality and/or there is no other means to convey the results.
When presenting a slide/transparency talk about information that is on the visual, allowing enough time for those in the audience to digest what they are seeing and hearing.

Presentation:

Speak clearly and loudly.
Talk to the audience, not to the screen, blackboard, or overhead. If you are using the overhead projector, position yourself so you are facing the audience.
Make eye contact with individuals in the audience.
Practice using a pointer so you can use it effectively during your presentation.
Do not make the room too dark.
Organize your talk such that the listener can easily follow your thoughts, e.g., enumerating items for discussion or using summary slides.

General Comments:

Appropriate dress is important
Brevity is important in any presentation. Presenting sufficient information to allow the listener to be involved in your discussion without getting bogged down in nonessential details is an art that we need to develop for any presentation.

Remember, you are the teacher! You are the expert. The audience is made up of those who want to learn about your subject. The information and focus of your presentation needs to be made as clear as possible so that the audience can understand. The purpose is not to baffle those in attendance or to impress them with your intelligence by presenting something in terms only you can understand. A well-presented talk is easy to follow and informative, and will generally spark the interest of the audience.

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