Scientific Presentations: Do's and Don'ts (Part 1)

• Presentation covers the do's and don'ts of scientific presentations - Part 1
• It is a seminar for F298 class by Lhumen A. Tejano, M.Sc., Asst. Prof, IFPT-CFOS at UP Visayas, Miagao, Iloilo, [email protected]/092984456466

Presentations

• Provides wider dissemination of scientific outputs
• Gives a chance to exhibit works that may not be published in written form (Borne, 2007)
• It is a skill that every scientist must master for greater academic success, but not all are naturally born communicators (Leira, 2019)

Why an Audience Gets Distracted

• The speaker lives in their own little world of research
• The speaker uses long, complicated sentences with unnecessary jargon, abbreviations, or difficult words
• Audiences experience information overload when speakers read speeches
• Monotonous sentences, spoken too fast or slow, a lack of emphasis, and unclear pronunciation all make it difficult for listeners to stay attentive

Preparing an Effective Presentation

• Know your audience and prepare presentations that address the target audience
• Organize your thoughts by starting with an outline and developing good transitions between sections
• Design PowerPoint slides well by including only necessary slides to improve communication with the audience
• Time yourself, timing is necessary
• Create effective notes for yourself that you can read, but don't write out the entire talk
• Practice, practice, practice to make it better and do it again

How to Organize Your Presentation

• Title slide should be informative and brief, including group members' names and institutions
• Use a nice photo related to your project as a backdrop, but keep it visually simple
• You may not need to read the title word for word, but you should at least paraphrase it

Introduction

• Put your issue in the context of several already published articles
• Avoid slides with a lot of text by using bulleted statements
• Limit each slide to 3-4 points, or risk losing the audience’s attention
• Show nice photographs or schematic drawings of your subject
• Provide a clear statement of the questions and hypotheses

Materials and Methods

• This portion of a presentation is generally less detailed than it would be in a written report, but it should be clear and concise
• If you have multiple parts to your experiment, it is more effective to present methods and results for the first part, then do methods and results for the second part, etc
• Show more visuals of the organism/study sites and justify why your experimental organism or study site is appropriate for addressing your research questions
• Present your experimental design with text and a schematic diagram
• Show experimental equipment and methods, if possible, and mention statistical analyses that were used and how they address the hypotheses
• Avoid slides with a lot of text

Results

• Remind audience of your specific hypotheses
• Present a figure (graph) that clearly illustrates your main results
• Walk your audience through each figure
• When describing results, focus on describing the biological patterns, not the statistics
• End with brief summary slide of main results

Discussion

• Integrate your results and state your conclusions regarding your original hypotheses
• Discuss why your results are sound and interesting
• Describe the relevance of your findings to published work and include citations
• Mention any caveats about your results or areas in which your study could be improved or expanded
• Talk about future directions this research project could take
• Finish with a statement of your overall conclusion

Acknowledgment and Parting Slide

• List names of people who helped you with this study
• Close with a slide showing "for more information" such as suggestions for further reading
• Use a nice picture of your site, organism, or a related image for your parting slide
• Avoid sunset pictures if they are not relevant

Layout and Design

• Construct all slides in "landscape" orientation
• Keep the important information away from the margins of the slide area, especially the bottom 10%
• Use a consistent and not overly complicated color scheme for the slide background
• Choose your fonts carefully, as not all appear "smoothed" when projected
• Do not use more than 2 or 3 typefaces in a presentation
• Delete any text that is not essential, as your audience will read 100% of the text on a slide
• Minimize your use of abbreviations, or avoid them altogether; always define an abbreviation the first time you use it
• Do not use transition fades, bouncing text, or swooshing noises
• Avoid, if possible, mixing green and red on a figure, as members of your audience may be red/green colorblind
• Graph titles may be used
• Use arrows to direct the audience's attention to particular parts of figures
• Make sure that the outputs are legible in PowerPoint when using figures created in Excel or other graphing programs and then exported to PowerPoint
• Never display two-dimensional data in three dimensions

Delivery of Presentation

• Do not rely on your notes
• Look at your audience (not your slides) as much as possible as you speak
• Do not simply "read" your slides to your audience; they can read them
• Use a pointer to briefly orient the audience when verbally referring to a specific portion of a slide
• Do not distract the audience by playing with the pointer
• Do not chew gum, fiddle with your jewelry, or wear a hat, even if these things comfort you
• Do not draw more attention to bad slides by apologizing for them
• Resist puns, obvious jokes, and overly rehearsed humor; some humor is okay, but strive to give a professional talk
• Minimize your use of crutches, such as "OK," "like," "sort of," "ya know," and "kind of"
• Adjust your speed or ask whether there are any questions if you notice confused looks
• If people are falling asleep, it is a sign that you are boring them; speak up and become more dynamic without getting carried away
• Repeat the question loudly for the benefit of all when responding to questioners with faint voices
• If you are unsure of the answer to a question, say so, but then give it your best try
• Ensure that your presentation will run on the machines before giving your presentation, do this before the last minute