how to make an academic presentation

Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

How to Make a Successful Research Presentation

Turning a research paper into a visual presentation is difficult; there are pitfalls, and navigating the path to a brief, informative presentation takes time and practice. As a TA for  GEO/WRI 201: Methods in Data Analysis & Scientific Writing this past fall, I saw how this process works from an instructor’s standpoint. I’ve presented my own research before, but helping others present theirs taught me a bit more about the process. Here are some tips I learned that may help you with your next research presentation:

More is more

In general, your presentation will always benefit from more practice, more feedback, and more revision. By practicing in front of friends, you can get comfortable with presenting your work while receiving feedback. It is hard to know how to revise your presentation if you never practice. If you are presenting to a general audience, getting feedback from someone outside of your discipline is crucial. Terms and ideas that seem intuitive to you may be completely foreign to someone else, and your well-crafted presentation could fall flat.

Less is more

Limit the scope of your presentation, the number of slides, and the text on each slide. In my experience, text works well for organizing slides, orienting the audience to key terms, and annotating important figures–not for explaining complex ideas. Having fewer slides is usually better as well. In general, about one slide per minute of presentation is an appropriate budget. Too many slides is usually a sign that your topic is too broad.

Limit the scope of your presentation

Don’t present your paper. Presentations are usually around 10 min long. You will not have time to explain all of the research you did in a semester (or a year!) in such a short span of time. Instead, focus on the highlight(s). Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

You will not have time to explain all of the research you did. Instead, focus on the highlights. Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

Craft a compelling research narrative

After identifying the focused research question, walk your audience through your research as if it were a story. Presentations with strong narrative arcs are clear, captivating, and compelling.

• Introduction (exposition — rising action)

Orient the audience and draw them in by demonstrating the relevance and importance of your research story with strong global motive. Provide them with the necessary vocabulary and background knowledge to understand the plot of your story. Introduce the key studies (characters) relevant in your story and build tension and conflict with scholarly and data motive. By the end of your introduction, your audience should clearly understand your research question and be dying to know how you resolve the tension built through motive.

• Methods (rising action)

The methods section should transition smoothly and logically from the introduction. Beware of presenting your methods in a boring, arc-killing, ‘this is what I did.’ Focus on the details that set your story apart from the stories other people have already told. Keep the audience interested by clearly motivating your decisions based on your original research question or the tension built in your introduction.

• Results (climax)

Less is usually more here. Only present results which are clearly related to the focused research question you are presenting. Make sure you explain the results clearly so that your audience understands what your research found. This is the peak of tension in your narrative arc, so don’t undercut it by quickly clicking through to your discussion.

• Discussion (falling action)

By now your audience should be dying for a satisfying resolution. Here is where you contextualize your results and begin resolving the tension between past research. Be thorough. If you have too many conflicts left unresolved, or you don’t have enough time to present all of the resolutions, you probably need to further narrow the scope of your presentation.

• Conclusion (denouement)

Return back to your initial research question and motive, resolving any final conflicts and tying up loose ends. Leave the audience with a clear resolution of your focus research question, and use unresolved tension to set up potential sequels (i.e. further research).

Use your medium to enhance the narrative

Visual presentations should be dominated by clear, intentional graphics. Subtle animation in key moments (usually during the results or discussion) can add drama to the narrative arc and make conflict resolutions more satisfying. You are narrating a story written in images, videos, cartoons, and graphs. While your paper is mostly text, with graphics to highlight crucial points, your slides should be the opposite. Adapting to the new medium may require you to create or acquire far more graphics than you included in your paper, but it is necessary to create an engaging presentation.

The most important thing you can do for your presentation is to practice and revise. Bother your friends, your roommates, TAs–anybody who will sit down and listen to your work. Beyond that, think about presentations you have found compelling and try to incorporate some of those elements into your own. Remember you want your work to be comprehensible; you aren’t creating experts in 10 minutes. Above all, try to stay passionate about what you did and why. You put the time in, so show your audience that it’s worth it.

For more insight into research presentations, check out these past PCUR posts written by Emma and Ellie .

— Alec Getraer, Natural Sciences Correspondent

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 Academic Presentations

Academic presentations are an integral part of university study and assessment. Academic presentations may be presented individually or as a group activity but both require the key skills of planning and structuring key information. The key difference between an academic presentation and a general presentation is that it is usually quite formal and includes academic research to evidence the ideas presented. The presentation will include references to credible sources and demonstrate clearly your knowledge and familiarity of the topic.

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Giving a good academic presentation

• Think about the aim of your presentation and what you want to achieve.
• Concentrate on your audience: who   they are and  what   they (want to) know.
• Choose the topic that interests you: involvement and motivation are key to confidence.
• Give your presentation a  clear   and  logical   organization so that everyone can follow.
• Present information  visually : this adds interest to your talk and makes it easier to follow.
• Practise giving your presentation until you are familiar with the key points; this way you may discover any potential problems and check the timing. Besides, practice will also make you feel more confident.

Basic outline / structure

• Introduction: introduce the topic, some basic background, thesis (your stance or argument).
• Outline: provide basic bullet points on the key parts of the presentation.
• Main body: divide the main body into sections.
• Evaluation: always include evaluation. This can be a separate section or part of the main body.
• Conclusion: summarise key points, restate the thesis and make a recommendation / suggestion / prediction.
• Reference list: create one slide with all your sources.
• Questions : be prepared to answer questions.
• Cope with nerves: breathe deeply; it calms you down and stops you from talking too quickly.
• Control your voice: speak clearly and try to sound interesting by changing intonation and rhythm.
• Watch your body language: try to give the impression that you are relaxed and confident.
• Maintain eye contact with your audience: it keeps them interested in what you are saying. For this reason, you should not read.
• Provide visual information, but do not give too many facts at a time. Give your audience enough time to take them in.
• Keep attention by asking rhetorical questions.

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Presentation Speaking Criteria

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An Introduction to Academic Presentations

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Suitable phrases to use for greeting, structuring, examples, transitions summarising and  concluding .

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Improve your Presentation PowerPoint Slides

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A Basic PPT Presentation

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Academic  Presentation Marking Criteria

A basic criteria that can be used to assess and grade a students’s presentation – full criteria in paid version (below).

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How to make a scientific presentation

Scientific presentation outlines

Questions to ask yourself before you write your talk, 1. how much time do you have, 2. who will you speak to, 3. what do you want the audience to learn from your talk, step 1: outline your presentation, step 2: plan your presentation slides, step 3: make the presentation slides, slide design, text elements, animations and transitions, step 4: practice your presentation, final thoughts, frequently asked questions about preparing scientific presentations, related articles.

A good scientific presentation achieves three things: you communicate the science clearly, your research leaves a lasting impression on your audience, and you enhance your reputation as a scientist.

But, what is the best way to prepare for a scientific presentation? How do you start writing a talk? What details do you include, and what do you leave out?

It’s tempting to launch into making lots of slides. But, starting with the slides can mean you neglect the narrative of your presentation, resulting in an overly detailed, boring talk.

The key to making an engaging scientific presentation is to prepare the narrative of your talk before beginning to construct your presentation slides. Planning your talk will ensure that you tell a clear, compelling scientific story that will engage the audience.

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to make a good oral scientific presentation, including:

• The different types of oral scientific presentations and how they are delivered;
• How to outline a scientific presentation;
• How to make slides for a scientific presentation.

Our advice results from delving into the literature on writing scientific talks and from our own experiences as scientists in giving and listening to presentations. We provide tips and best practices for giving scientific talks in a separate post.

There are two main types of scientific talks:

• Your talk focuses on a single study . Typically, you tell the story of a single scientific paper. This format is common for short talks at contributed sessions in conferences.
• Your talk describes multiple studies. You tell the story of multiple scientific papers. It is crucial to have a theme that unites the studies, for example, an overarching question or problem statement, with each study representing specific but different variations of the same theme. Typically, PhD defenses, invited seminars, lectures, or talks for a prospective employer (i.e., “job talks”) fall into this category.

➡️ Learn how to prepare an excellent thesis defense

The length of time you are allotted for your talk will determine whether you will discuss a single study or multiple studies, and which details to include in your story.

The background and interests of your audience will determine the narrative direction of your talk, and what devices you will use to get their attention. Will you be speaking to people specializing in your field, or will the audience also contain people from disciplines other than your own? To reach non-specialists, you will need to discuss the broader implications of your study outside your field.

The needs of the audience will also determine what technical details you will include, and the language you will use. For example, an undergraduate audience will have different needs than an audience of seasoned academics. Students will require a more comprehensive overview of background information and explanations of jargon but will need less technical methodological details.

Your goal is to speak to the majority. But, make your talk accessible to the least knowledgeable person in the room.

This is called the thesis statement, or simply the “take-home message”. Having listened to your talk, what message do you want the audience to take away from your presentation? Describe the main idea in one or two sentences. You want this theme to be present throughout your presentation. Again, the thesis statement will depend on the audience and the type of talk you are giving.

Your thesis statement will drive the narrative for your talk. By deciding the take-home message you want to convince the audience of as a result of listening to your talk, you decide how the story of your talk will flow and how you will navigate its twists and turns. The thesis statement tells you the results you need to show, which subsequently tells you the methods or studies you need to describe, which decides the angle you take in your introduction.

➡️ Learn how to write a thesis statement

The goal of your talk is that the audience leaves afterward with a clear understanding of the key take-away message of your research. To achieve that goal, you need to tell a coherent, logical story that conveys your thesis statement throughout the presentation. You can tell your story through careful preparation of your talk.

Preparation of a scientific presentation involves three separate stages: outlining the scientific narrative, preparing slides, and practicing your delivery. Making the slides of your talk without first planning what you are going to say is inefficient.

Here, we provide a 4 step guide to writing your scientific presentation:

• Outline your presentation
• Plan your presentation slides
• Make the presentation slides
• Practice your presentation

Writing an outline helps you consider the key pieces of your talk and how they fit together from the beginning, preventing you from forgetting any important details. It also means you avoid changing the order of your slides multiple times, saving you time.

Plan your talk as discrete sections. In the table below, we describe the sections for a single study talk vs. a talk discussing multiple studies:

The following tips apply when writing the outline of a single study talk. You can easily adapt this framework if you are writing a talk discussing multiple studies.

Introduction: Writing the introduction can be the hardest part of writing a talk. And when giving it, it’s the point where you might be at your most nervous. But preparing a good, concise introduction will settle your nerves.

The introduction tells the audience the story of why you studied your topic. A good introduction succinctly achieves four things, in the following order.

• It gives a broad perspective on the problem or topic for people in the audience who may be outside your discipline (i.e., it explains the big-picture problem motivating your study).
• It describes why you did the study, and why the audience should care.
• It gives a brief indication of how your study addressed the problem and provides the necessary background information that the audience needs to understand your work.
• It indicates what the audience will learn from the talk, and prepares them for what will come next.

A good introduction not only gives the big picture and motivations behind your study but also concisely sets the stage for what the audience will learn from the talk (e.g., the questions your work answers, and/or the hypotheses that your work tests). The end of the introduction will lead to a natural transition to the methods.

Give a broad perspective on the problem. The easiest way to start with the big picture is to think of a hook for the first slide of your presentation. A hook is an opening that gets the audience’s attention and gets them interested in your story. In science, this might take the form of a why, or a how question, or it could be a statement about a major problem or open question in your field. Other examples of hooks include quotes, short anecdotes, or interesting statistics.

Why should the audience care? Next, decide on the angle you are going to take on your hook that links to the thesis of your talk. In other words, you need to set the context, i.e., explain why the audience should care. For example, you may introduce an observation from nature, a pattern in experimental data, or a theory that you want to test. The audience must understand your motivations for the study.

Supplementary details. Once you have established the hook and angle, you need to include supplementary details to support them. For example, you might state your hypothesis. Then go into previous work and the current state of knowledge. Include citations of these studies. If you need to introduce some technical methodological details, theory, or jargon, do it here.

Conclude your introduction. The motivation for the work and background information should set the stage for the conclusion of the introduction, where you describe the goals of your study, and any hypotheses or predictions. Let the audience know what they are going to learn.

Methods: The audience will use your description of the methods to assess the approach you took in your study and to decide whether your findings are credible. Tell the story of your methods in chronological order. Use visuals to describe your methods as much as possible. If you have equations, make sure to take the time to explain them. Decide what methods to include and how you will show them. You need enough detail so that your audience will understand what you did and therefore can evaluate your approach, but avoid including superfluous details that do not support your main idea. You want to avoid the common mistake of including too much data, as the audience can read the paper(s) later.

Results: This is the evidence you present for your thesis. The audience will use the results to evaluate the support for your main idea. Choose the most important and interesting results—those that support your thesis. You don’t need to present all the results from your study (indeed, you most likely won’t have time to present them all). Break down complex results into digestible pieces, e.g., comparisons over multiple slides (more tips in the next section).

Summary: Summarize your main findings. Displaying your main findings through visuals can be effective. Emphasize the new contributions to scientific knowledge that your work makes.

Conclusion: Complete the circle by relating your conclusions to the big picture topic in your introduction—and your hook, if possible. It’s important to describe any alternative explanations for your findings. You might also speculate on future directions arising from your research. The slides that comprise your conclusion do not need to state “conclusion”. Rather, the concluding slide title should be a declarative sentence linking back to the big picture problem and your main idea.

It’s important to end well by planning a strong closure to your talk, after which you will thank the audience. Your closing statement should relate to your thesis, perhaps by stating it differently or memorably. Avoid ending awkwardly by memorizing your closing sentence.

By now, you have an outline of the story of your talk, which you can use to plan your slides. Your slides should complement and enhance what you will say. Use the following steps to prepare your slides.

• Write the slide titles to match your talk outline. These should be clear and informative declarative sentences that succinctly give the main idea of the slide (e.g., don’t use “Methods” as a slide title). Have one major idea per slide. In a YouTube talk on designing effective slides , researcher Michael Alley shows examples of instructive slide titles.
• Decide how you will convey the main idea of the slide (e.g., what figures, photographs, equations, statistics, references, or other elements you will need). The body of the slide should support the slide’s main idea.
• Under each slide title, outline what you want to say, in bullet points.

In sum, for each slide, prepare a title that summarizes its major idea, a list of visual elements, and a summary of the points you will make. Ensure each slide connects to your thesis. If it doesn’t, then you don’t need the slide.

Slides for scientific presentations have three major components: text (including labels and legends), graphics, and equations. Here, we give tips on how to present each of these components.

• Have an informative title slide. Include the names of all coauthors and their affiliations. Include an attractive image relating to your study.
• Make the foreground content of your slides “pop” by using an appropriate background. Slides that have white backgrounds with black text work well for small rooms, whereas slides with black backgrounds and white text are suitable for large rooms.
• The layout of your slides should be simple. Pay attention to how and where you lay the visual and text elements on each slide. It’s tempting to cram information, but you need lots of empty space. Retain space at the sides and bottom of your slides.
• Use sans serif fonts with a font size of at least 20 for text, and up to 40 for slide titles. Citations can be in 14 font and should be included at the bottom of the slide.
• Use bold or italics to emphasize words, not underlines or caps. Keep these effects to a minimum.
• Use concise text . You don’t need full sentences. Convey the essence of your message in as few words as possible. Write down what you’d like to say, and then shorten it for the slide. Remove unnecessary filler words.
• Text blocks should be limited to two lines. This will prevent you from crowding too much information on the slide.
• Include names of technical terms in your talk slides, especially if they are not familiar to everyone in the audience.
• Proofread your slides. Typos and grammatical errors are distracting for your audience.
• Include citations for the hypotheses or observations of other scientists.
• Good figures and graphics are essential to sustain audience interest. Use graphics and photographs to show the experiment or study system in action and to explain abstract concepts.
• Don’t use figures straight from your paper as they may be too detailed for your talk, and details like axes may be too small. Make new versions if necessary. Make them large enough to be visible from the back of the room.
• Use graphs to show your results, not tables. Tables are difficult for your audience to digest! If you must present a table, keep it simple.
• Label the axes of graphs and indicate the units. Label important components of graphics and photographs and include captions. Include sources for graphics that are not your own.
• Explain all the elements of a graph. This includes the axes, what the colors and markers mean, and patterns in the data.
• Use colors in figures and text in a meaningful, not random, way. For example, contrasting colors can be effective for pointing out comparisons and/or differences. Don’t use neon colors or pastels.
• Use thick lines in figures, and use color to create contrasts in the figures you present. Don’t use red/green or red/blue combinations, as color-blind audience members can’t distinguish between them.
• Arrows or circles can be effective for drawing attention to key details in graphs and equations. Add some text annotations along with them.
• Write your summary and conclusion slides using graphics, rather than showing a slide with a list of bullet points. Showing some of your results again can be helpful to remind the audience of your message.
• If your talk has equations, take time to explain them. Include text boxes to explain variables and mathematical terms, and put them under each term in the equation.
• Combine equations with a graphic that shows the scientific principle, or include a diagram of the mathematical model.
• Use animations judiciously. They are helpful to reveal complex ideas gradually, for example, if you need to make a comparison or contrast or to build a complicated argument or figure. For lists, reveal one bullet point at a time. New ideas appearing sequentially will help your audience follow your logic.
• Slide transitions should be simple. Silly ones distract from your message.
• Decide how you will make the transition as you move from one section of your talk to the next. For example, if you spend time talking through details, provide a summary afterward, especially in a long talk. Another common tactic is to have a “home slide” that you return to multiple times during the talk that reinforces your main idea or message. In her YouTube talk on designing effective scientific presentations , Stanford biologist Susan McConnell suggests using the approach of home slides to build a cohesive narrative.

To deliver a polished presentation, it is essential to practice it. Here are some tips.

• For your first run-through, practice alone. Pay attention to your narrative. Does your story flow naturally? Do you know how you will start and end? Are there any awkward transitions? Do animations help you tell your story? Do your slides help to convey what you are saying or are they missing components?
• Next, practice in front of your advisor, and/or your peers (e.g., your lab group). Ask someone to time your talk. Take note of their feedback and the questions that they ask you (you might be asked similar questions during your real talk).
• Edit your talk, taking into account the feedback you’ve received. Eliminate superfluous slides that don’t contribute to your takeaway message.
• Practice as many times as needed to memorize the order of your slides and the key transition points of your talk. However, don’t try to learn your talk word for word. Instead, memorize opening and closing statements, and sentences at key junctures in the presentation. Your presentation should resemble a serious but spontaneous conversation with the audience.
• Practicing multiple times also helps you hone the delivery of your talk. While rehearsing, pay attention to your vocal intonations and speed. Make sure to take pauses while you speak, and make eye contact with your imaginary audience.
• Make sure your talk finishes within the allotted time, and remember to leave time for questions. Conferences are particularly strict on run time.
• Anticipate questions and challenges from the audience, and clarify ambiguities within your slides and/or speech in response.
• If you anticipate that you could be asked questions about details but you don’t have time to include them, or they detract from the main message of your talk, you can prepare slides that address these questions and place them after the final slide of your talk.

➡️ More tips for giving scientific presentations

An organized presentation with a clear narrative will help you communicate your ideas effectively, which is essential for engaging your audience and conveying the importance of your work. Taking time to plan and outline your scientific presentation before writing the slides will help you manage your nerves and feel more confident during the presentation, which will improve your overall performance.

A good scientific presentation has an engaging scientific narrative with a memorable take-home message. It has clear, informative slides that enhance what the speaker says. You need to practice your talk many times to ensure you deliver a polished presentation.

First, consider who will attend your presentation, and what you want the audience to learn about your research. Tailor your content to their level of knowledge and interests. Second, create an outline for your presentation, including the key points you want to make and the evidence you will use to support those points. Finally, practice your presentation several times to ensure that it flows smoothly and that you are comfortable with the material.

Prepare an opening that immediately gets the audience’s attention. A common device is a why or a how question, or a statement of a major open problem in your field, but you could also start with a quote, interesting statistic, or case study from your field.

Scientific presentations typically either focus on a single study (e.g., a 15-minute conference presentation) or tell the story of multiple studies (e.g., a PhD defense or 50-minute conference keynote talk). For a single study talk, the structure follows the scientific paper format: Introduction, Methods, Results, Summary, and Conclusion, whereas the format of a talk discussing multiple studies is more complex, but a theme unifies the studies.

Ensure you have one major idea per slide, and convey that idea clearly (through images, equations, statistics, citations, video, etc.). The slide should include a title that summarizes the major point of the slide, should not contain too much text or too many graphics, and color should be used meaningfully.

• Research toolkit

10 tips for delivering an academic presentation with impact

Professor dawid hanak.

• July 27, 2022
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Have you ever done an academic presentation? I bet you did. Powerpoint presentations are widely used to share your research with others during academic conferences, progress review meetings, PhD viva examinations and so on. 

I do believe that with so many presentation tools available right now, we tend to overuse PowerPoint or Keynote in our work. You may be familiar with the term death by PowerPoint slides. If you aren’t, here’s a definition by TechTarget that I like the most: 

“ Death by PowerPoint is a phenomenon caused by the poor use of presentation software. 

Key contributors to death by PowerPoint include confusing graphics, slides with too much text and presenters whose idea of a good presentation is to read 40 slides out loud. Death by PowerPoint is easily recognized by observing the audience members’ glazed eyes, furtive use of smartphones and trips to the bathroom.”

It is not the type of academic presentation delivered by Motivated Academics ! As motivated academics, we aim to inspire our audience with our research and give them a gift of knowledge. We’re not doing our presentation during an academic conference for the sake of ticking the box for our professional development reviews or promotion cases. We’re doing this because we want to share our research and share our findings with others.

You may, however, wonder why presentation skills are important? Maybe you haven’t presented at an academic conference or had a progress review meeting yet. Maybe you detest delivering academic presentations and feel anxious about standing in front of other people. 

I get you – I was there myself. And let me reassure you, this is a normal feeling. Not each one of us was born a speaker. I wasn’t definitely and still remember my first conference presentation when I struggled to get any words out of my mouth. I stuttered, sweated and felt embarrassed afterwards. That was during my MSc programme when I was presenting my extracurricular research on heat pumps. 

But guess what.

The more presentations I did over the past years, the more presentation slides I’ve developed, the easier it got. Now I’m actually looking forward to doing a conference presentation, whether face-to-face or online. I even started doing live events on LinkedIn and recorded online courses . 

Why was I able to develop presentation skills? I knew these were crucial for building a successful academic career. 

That’s why I reflected on my approach to preparing academic presentations and will share my tips on how you can prepare a good academic presentation. I do trust my presentation guidelines for students and researchers will be useful for you and will help you advance your academic career.

This article will not tell you how to do the presentation in PowerPoint or Keynote, but I am happy to put a workshop together on this topic if this would be of interest. So now let’s move to academic presentation tips! 

Table of Contents

Academic presentation tip #1: Keep your presentation slides tidy and clear

The key piece of advice I usually give to my students and researcher is that a good academic presentation is tidy, concise and doesn’t abuse the creative features of PowerPoint or Keynote. 

I know there are many presentation designs and templates available free of charge on the internet. These tend to include lots of features, like text transitions, audio, videos and so on. Although a good video can add value to your presentation, a presentation that zooms in and out may make your audience nauseous.

Similarly, too many transitions and too much text on your presentation slides may make it look unprofessional and may distract your audience from the key messages that you are presenting. Therefore, keep your presentation design neat and simple to maximise impact. 

Academic presentation tip #2: Use consistent presentation colour palette

In addition to having a clean and neat presentation design, you may want to use a consistent presentation palette. This can be based on the colour palette provided by your university or the academic conference organiser. 

I understand that this may be surprising, but if you want to deliver a good academic presentation, you want to ensure it is consistent. You would be surprised how many times I saw a conference presentation that looked like a composition of several different presentations. It was apparent that someone stitched together different presentation slides, and didn’t bother to make them consistent. 

As a Motivated Academic, you want your academic presentation to be consistent. The easiest way to do it is to develop your own academic presentation template that you will use throughout your academic career. 

Academic presentation tip #3: Start with a strong presentation opening statement 

One of the crucial decisions that you will need to make when developing your presentation is to decide how to start a presentation speech. Why is this important? Well, the way you start your presentaiton will either capture your audience and will give them a promise of valuable content, or will lead them to the conclusion that it is not worth focusing on your presentation. 

Of course, you want them to focus on what you have to say! That’s why the first presentation opening lines play a crucial role in how other people receive your presentaiton. Therefore, I strongly encourage you to think about how you can engage your audience from the very beginning of your presentation. For example, your presentation starting words may focus on the research question or exciting results you obtained in your research, even before introducing yourself.

Academic presentation tip #4: How to design an interesting presentation first page

Building on the above, you may use the presentation first slide design that promotes engagement and stimulates interest. There are many presentation templates on Canva or PowerPoint that can help you achieve this. But the rule is simple. Please don’t follow the conventional way people prepare their conference presentation slides. 

What does this mean? Well, if you attended any conference recently, you’d see that most speakers include the title of their speech and their contact details. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it is kind of… boring? I’ve been doing this myself! 

A good first slide design should help you grab the attention of your audience. Therefore, instead of simply stating the title of your presentaiton or research, you may include an intriguing research question and you may give a hint about the answer. You may also include a picture summarising your results or showing your experimental facility. Think about how you could summarise the exciting aspects of your research in a single sentence or picture, and include it on the first slide. 

Academic presentation tip #5: End with exciting and actionable presentation conclusions

Another critical part of each academic presentation is the ending. Why? Because your audience will most likely remember the last couple of slides that you will present in your speech. That is why you need to decide on how to close and conclude your presentation. 

One of the most common mistakes researchers make is to end their presentations with the “thank you” slide. I did this too, but then I realised that the last thing people see during my conference presentation is the “thank you” slide. It is OK, but it didn’t help me to convey my message to the fullest extent. 

That’s why you should end your presentation with a summary of the most exciting outcomes of your research and a list of actionable conclusions from your work. 

Academic presentation tip #6: Design captivating presentation ending slide

It brings me to the last slide of the presentation. As I mentioned above, the “thank you” slide is the common way researchers end their presentations. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it presents a missed opportunity. 

That is why I design the last slide in one of two ways for most of my academic presentations, depending on what I want to achieve with it.

If I want people to contact me after the presentation, I leave my contact details with the call to action to contact me on the last slide of presentation.

Suppose I want people to remember specific aspects of my presentation. In that case, I design the last slide of my presentation as a list of 3-5 bullets that summarise the key messages I want them to remember. This is one of the best academic career tips I received during my postdoc. Why? Well, frequently during the conference Q&A sessions, you see the “thank you” slide displayed and may not remember what the presentation was exactly about – especially if it wasn’t particularly well-delivered or designed.

On the other hand, a good academic presentaiton that displays the summary slide at the end may lead to more discussion and engagement from the audience during the Q&A session. This is because the audience can quickly remind themselves what the presentation was about and engage with the speaker.    

Academic presentation tip #7: Draft presentation speech script early

One of the key reasons why your audience may lose interest in your presentation is lack of clarity and lack of logical flow of information. These can easily confuse and, as you may know, confused minds won’t retain information. This is important not only in the context of your next academic conference but your entire academic career, so write it down! 

How can you sort this out? Well, the easiest way to ensure your presentation flows well is to develop a presentation script outline before you start putting together your slide deck. It will allow you to maintain the focus of your presentation, include the key information to share with your audience, and remove the unnecessary fluff. The last thing you want in your academic presentation is content that will distract people from the key outcomes of your research. 

Academic presentation tip #8: Prepare presentation cue cards to reduce anxiety

I mentioned earlier in this article that I was really anxious about giving presentations at the very beginning of my academic career. I would expect this is a normal response of our body to stress – it’s stressful to be in the spotlight! However, till today I sometimes feel anxious about doing lives or presenting in front of the audience. As an introvert, it’s been a difficult part of my academic career.

The good thing is that it gets easier with practice. Presentation skills are something that each one of us can develop, by doing more and more and even more presentations. 

But how to manage anxiety and deliver a good academic presentation at the same time? During my masters, I learnt about cue cards and these saved me from getting crazy. In short, cue cards are small pieces of paper that include a high-level summary of the key points you want to discuss. These usually include a list of 3-6 bullet points. 

Depending on how long your presentation is, you would use several cue cards for the entire presentation or one cue card for each slide. You can develop your cue cards based on your presentation script outline. 

Academic presentation tip #9: Practice before presenting to keep your anxiety under control 

I believe this is something that all of us do but I wanted to emphasise the importance of practising your presentation before presenting your work at a conference or project report. 

By practising your presentation, you will be able to iron out any bumps and humps in your delivery and use of cue cards. Ideally, you’d present your work in front of colleagues so that you could test how your presentation opening statement, presentation flow and the last slide of presentation resonate with them. 

But the most important benefit of practising before presenting is that you will be able to keep your anxiety under control. 

Academic presentation tip #10: Prepare PPT presentation and PDF backup copy to reduce anxiety 

A final tip that I’d like to share with you here is about the format of your presentation. I remember that I was delivering a presentation at an academic conference couple of years ago. Halfway through the presentation, I realised that my figures were displayed incorrectly, making my presentation look unreadable and providing no value to the audience. 

Luckily I had a PDF version of my PPT presentation on my memory stick and I was able to quickly change to the PDF format for the remaining part of my presentation. As a result, something that could have easily led to anxiety was one of the turning points for my academic career and approach to academic presentations. 

That’s why I strongly encourage you to have backup copies of your presentations in the PDF version, even if the organisers request you to send the PPT presentation. 

Conclusions

If you want to succeed in an academic career, you need to develop strong presentation skills. Being able to deliver a good academic presentation will take away anxiety associated with presenting your work, regardless of whether you deliver a conference presentation or progress review presentation. I trust the tips I shared here with you are helpful and will support you in delivering better academic presentations. 

What is the best tip that you received to improve your academic presentation skills?

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Ten smart ways to ace your next academic presentation

Using examples and practical tips, Dorsa Amir explains the techniques that ensure your presentation communicates its message effectively – from slide design to structuring your talk

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As a presenter, your main job is to guide the audience through your argument in the clearest, most engaging, most efficient way possible. You must respect the audience’s time and attention. This means being mindful of how long your presentation is, what you’re including in your slides, and importantly, how it is all packaged and presented.

A great presenter is one who is intentional: each element in the presentation serves a clear function and is intended to support the audience’s understanding of the content.

Here are 10 tips to keep in mind to ensure your presentation hits the mark

1. Any time you put something on your slides, its primary purpose is to help the audience, not you

Many presenters will add copious text or other elements to help themselves remember points they want to make. However, this is usually less helpful for the audience (most of this information belongs in presenter notes, and not on the slides). Think of yourself like a director of a movie. What do you want the audience to focus on at any given moment? What features on your slides will enhance the verbal point you are making and which will distract from it? Be intentional about what you include on your slides, and only include elements that serve a clear and helpful function for the audience.

2. Condense text to the main question or key points of the slide

It may be tempting to write out snippets of the script wholesale and add them to the slides, but this often results in PowerPoint karaoke, where the audience is simply watching you read the text out loud to them. While text is certainly useful for helping to concretise points or make slides more accessible, be judicious about what you include. Each slide should make one or two clear points. It’s better to have more slides with less content than fewer slides that are jam-packed. Of course, the amount of text you include will also be determined by the type of presentation you are giving. If students will be using your slides as a study aid, for example, you may want to include more information than if you are creating a research talk for a conference.

3. Avoid using too many colours, fonts or animations

Consider elements such as fonts, colours and animations as tools in your presentation toolkit. These elements should be used sparingly and only when they serve a clear purpose. I’m sure you’ve all attended a talk with colours bright enough to burn your retinas or crammed with “fun” fonts such as Comic Sans. Try to refrain from doing that. Animations that allow certain elements to appear or disappear along with your presentation — such as bullet points that appear as you say them — can help direct the attention of the audience. Colour contrasts are primarily helpful for visual segmentation or bringing attention to particular elements. Fonts, colours or flashy animations that are purely decorative are more distracting than helpful.

4. Avoid colour combinations that are hard to read

Be mindful of how colours interact with each other to either facilitate or inhibit comprehension. White text on black (or the reverse) is often a safe bet. Don’t overdecorate! (See above).

5.  If you’re showing a graph, orient the audience to the axes before plotting the data and make sure they can actually see all of it

I typically show the axes and labels first, making sure to orient everyone to the variables and how they are going to be visualised, and then I reveal the data. This ensures that everyone understands how to interpret the visualisation they are about to see. It is also helpful to restate the key prediction and tell the audience what they should expect to see if the prediction is true, and then plot the data. Use large sizes and clear fonts. I’ve heard way too many people say things like: “You probably can’t read this but…” To that, I want to say: “But you’re the one making the slide! You did this to us!” Don’t be that person.

6.  Use high-resolution images or videos

This is especially true for presentations that will be projected onto a larger surface. If it’s fuzzy on your computer screen, it will look even fuzzier when magnified and projected. Try to integrate high-resolution images and vector graphics to avoid this. When your images contain text, delete those portions and re-enter the text in text boxes that will scale up much more clearly when magnified.

7. When illustrating results, identify one or two key graphs to make your point

The temptation is often to show the audience every single result you found, but this dilutes the overall message you are trying to send. There’s no need to visualise everything: you should focus on the key graphs that tell most or all of the story. If you have built up the presentation in the right way, when the audience see your data visualisation, they will immediately understand what you found and whether it supports your hypothesis. That’s how clear and accessible the graph should be.

8.  Don’t overload the audience with unnecessary complex jargon or acronyms

Every time you introduce a new term or a brand new acronym (BNA), you are asking the audience to do you a favour and commit this new item to working memory. The audience doesn’t know your presentation; they don’t know what’s going to be important later and what isn’t. They’re trusting that you are only presenting information to them that is relevant and they’re doing their best to follow along. Make this process as easy and enjoyable as possible for them. Be judicious with what you ask them to remember or commit to memory. If you can explain a concept without jargon, avoid the jargon!

9. Enhance accessibility

The Web Accessibility Initiative has a great set of guidelines that I will summarise here. Use easy-to-read fonts in large sizes. Make sure there is enough contrast between colours to make them discernible. When giving virtual talks, consider turning on automatic closed captioning. If it’s feasible, provide annotated slide handouts. During the presentation itself, speak clearly and loudly, avoiding unnecessarily complex vocabulary or culturally specific idioms. Where possible, use a microphone. You should also try to verbally describe pertinent parts of visual information on your slides, such as graphics or videos.

10. Use outline slides and marker slides to segment information

Research shows that we understand and remember information better when it comes in bite-size pieces; think of chapters in a book. To incorporate this structure into your talk, break apart the presentation into smaller pieces. Always incorporate an outline slide that previews the structure of the talk and gives the audience a sense of what to expect. Also, use marker slides to communicate that a new section is beginning. And make sure to wrap up each section with a summary slide.

Dorsa Amir is a postdoc in the department of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

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How to Give a Good Academic Paper Presentation

• Post author By Maria Angel Ferrero
• Post date August 17, 2020
• No Comments on How to Give a Good Academic Paper Presentation

The art of pitching your academic research

So, you’re about to present your first academic paper? You are preparing to defend your thesis? You are about to present your research to a bunch of experts?

But, you don’t know where to start? or, how to start?

That’s ok, you are in the right place.

In this short post, I’m going to show you how to do a good academic research presentation so that your audience actually understands and appreciates it.

The main goal of an academic research presentation — like any other type of presentation — is to carry your audience through a story and grab their attention during the whole story. But no matter how good a story is, if it’s not told properly it’ll lose its audience at the very first words.

And every good story needs a good structure, otherwise, your audience will get lost in a dead-end.

To avoid getting into that dead-end and losing your audience, you should structure your presentation around 5 main questions:

• Who are you and what’s your story about?
• Why should your audience — or anyone — care about your story, and why is it relevant to tell that story now?
• How did you get to write your story? Who are the main characters?
• What happens in the story? What happens to the characters?
• So, What? Why this ending is better? Why should I wait for a new episode?

The order in which these questions are answered throughout your presentation can vary. Good stories might also start at the end and crawl back to its beginnings. Play with the order and see what suits best your story, only you know better what works for your research.

So let’s go now through each of the questions, shall we?

Who are you and what’s your research about?

Introduce yourself — unless you have already been introduced. Sometimes we are so impatience to give our presentation that we forget the basics.

Many times when we choose a book to read we ask ourselves about the human that wrote the book. And, as any writer researchers should include a short biography of themselves in the presentation.

And this is not to brag about yourself or your experience, but to give a human touch to the research itself. Before anyone wants to hear your story — your research — you need to tell them why they should be listening to you.

A short introduction of 30 seconds will do, your name, your background, why you are here in this room presenting and anything else that might be relevant to the research you are doing.

Give a context to your story, a kind of foreword to your research. State your thesis clearly and tell your audience why the topic you are going to address is relevant. And why they should care.

Give a hook. Start with a kind of provocation to instill curiosity and need. Try to think out of the box and talk about something your audience will found interesting. Use analogies too much known or simpler things that everyone in the room would be able to understand. Don’t talk to the experts, they already know it.

To give you an example, this is how I started one of my papers on overconfidence and innovation:

If you had to choose between The Joker and Batman, who would you want to be?

My paper was nothing to do with superheroes — at least not in a common way — but I wanted to talk about the dual personality innovators have, thus The Joker vs Batman analogy.

Once you have given your hook and presented yourself, give your audience an idea of what you are going to talk about and what awaits them during the following minutes.

Give them a roadmap of the talk, even if it seems redundant to you. This doesn’t mean you have to list your table of contents, just a prelude of your story.

In total, one minute and one slide are enough.

Why should your audience care about your Research, and why is it relevant now?

The next 2 or 3 slides should introduce the subject to the audience. Very briefly. Usually, research presentations last between 10 to 15 minutes, but many are shifting to the startup pitch format of 3 to 5 minutes. So being concise and direct to point is quite important.

Telling your audience why the topic you are researching about is important and relevant it’s essential, but should not take all time. This is just the introduction, you need to save time for the main story.

There are mainly 6 elements that make a good introduction:

• Define the Problem:  Many speakers forget this simple point. No matter how difficult and technical the problem you are addressing is there is certainly a way to explain it concisely and clearly in less than one minute. Explain your problem as if your audience were 5 years old children, not because they are not smart or respectable, but because the simpler you get to explain a complex problem the more it shows your mastery and preparation. If the audience doesn’t understand the problem being attacked, then they won’t understand the rest of your talk, and you’ll lose them before you get to your great solution. For your slides, condense the problem into a very few carefully chosen words.  An example here again from my research: Is being extremely confident in ourselves good or bad for innovation?
• Motivate the Audience:  Explain why the problem is so important. How does the problem fit into the larger picture(e.g. entrepreneurship ecosystem, neuroscience,…)? What are its applications? What makes the problem nontrivial? If no one has done this research, why is it relevant now to do it? What are the circumstances that make it relevant now more than ever? Avoid broad statements such as  “Innovation is what drives economic growth, but there are few innovative individuals, so how can we encourage people to become innovators?”  Rather, focus on what really matters: “ universities are investing millions to develop entrepreneurship education program, still students graduating from these programs aren’t starting any venture.”
• Introduce Terminology:  scientific jargon is boring and complex, it should be kept to a minimum. However, sometimes is almost impossible not to refer to specific scientific terms. Any complex jargon should be introduced at the beginning of the presentation or when each term is introduced for the first time during the presentation. To avoid losing time tot his, you can prepare a short document with all the terms and definitions to hand out to the participants in the audience.
• Discuss Earlier Work: Do your research, you are not reinventing the wheel.  There is nothing more frustrating than listening to a talk that covers something that has already been published without making reference tot hose studies. It not only shows that you didn’t do your research and that you are underprepared, but it shows you don’t know how to conduct research. This doesn’t mean that you should have read and cited ALL the works and papers that talk about the topic of your research. This is only useful if you are doing a systematic review. But you have to be sure that you know, read and cite those that really matter. You have to explain why this work is different from past wor, or how you are improving or continuing the research.
• Emphasize the Contributions of the Paper:  Make sure that you explicitly and succinctly state the contributions made by your paper. That is the so what?. Give just a quick glimpse of your contributions and implications for the research and the practice. The audience wants to know this. Often it is the only thing that they carry away from the talk.
• Consider putting your Conclusion in the Introduction : Be bold. Let everyone know from the start where you are headed so that the audience can focus on what matters.

How did you get to your results? How did you conduct your study?

There should be 1 or 2 methods slides that allow the audience to understand how the research was conducted. You might include a flow chart describing the main ingredients of the methods used. Do not put too many details, just what it’s needed to understand the study. Many of the details are appropriate for the manuscript but not for the presentation. If the audience wants to have more details on the methods they can always read your full paper, or you can prepare backup slides with this information to share during the Q&As session. For example, you could just say:  “During 4 weeks we conducted semi-structured interviews with top managers and employees from different organizations. Our final sample was composed of 30 individuals, from which 10 were top managers and 15 were female and aged between 25 and 60 years.”  Further details are presented in backup slides or in the manuscript.

What did you find, what happened?

The next 3 slides should show the main results obtained with your research. If appropriate, it is nice to start with a slide showing the basic phenomena being studied (e.G. the process of innovation and how). It reminds your audience about the variables used and manipulated and the role they have in the situation being studied.

Next, show figures, pictures, or graphs that clearly illustrate the main results. Do not show charts and tables of raw data. No one is able to read an excel table on a presentation, if only it gives the creeps. So instead of putting large and ugly tables, no one is going to read, use beautiful and meaningful graphs and figures.

You can use free infographic apps to build awesome visual representations of your data. Apps like  Canva ,  Venngage , or  Piktochart  work great.

All figures should be clearly labeled. When showing figures, be sure to explain the figure axes before you talk about the data (e.g., “the X-axis shows time. The Y-axis shows economic profit).

When presenting the data try to be as simple as possible, this is the most complex part of your research. You might be an expert, but your audience probably is not and they need to understand your results if you want to convenience them with your research.

So, What? What are the outcomes, implications and future steps?

The last 2 slides are probably the most important section of your presentation. It’s the denouement of your story, and it should be good.

Nothing is more frustrating than reading or listening to a good story to arrive to a disappointing end. All the effort you did to tell the good story is lost if you don’t curate appropriately the ending.

Some people be distracted during the whole presentation and would only pay attention to your conclusions, so those conclusions better are good.

Before getting to your end, sum up what your study was about, your research questions and objectives, and then go to the conclusion. In this way, the lousy distracted audience will also get most of your research.

List the conclusions in clear, easy to understand language. You can read them to the audience. Also give one or two sentences about what this likely means — your interpretation — for the big picture, go back to the context and motives of your research. Explain how your results improve our understanding and contribute to theory and practice.

Don’t be afraid to talk about the flaws and limitations of your study. Not only this shows you are humble but that you are prepared enough and that you are aware that things can be improved. Remember that having contradictory results to what you expected is not a bad thing, they are still results, you need to find an explanation to this.

Once you know your limitations, tell your audience how can this be improved in future research. How can other scholars address the problems and flaws, what are the next steps, and what future research should focus on?

Your job as a presenter is to not only present the paper but also lead a discussion with your audience about your research. Talk about its strengths, weaknesses, and broader implications. To help focus the class discussion, end your presentation with a list of approximately three major questions/issues worthy of further discussion.

Please finalize your presentation with at least two or three major things that should be discussed. Discussion with the audience should be especially encouraged at this point, but you should be prepared to foster this by raising these issues.

So, when preparing your presentation think like one of the people in your audience. Think about what they would ask? What would they like to discuss further? What are the points that might trigger confusion or disagreement?

If you have these questions in mind you can prepare to give appropriate answers and be less stressed out by the uncertainty of your audience reaction. You can then prepare a couple of backup slides that will help you give responses to the questions being asked and that will help you make your point.

Final thoughts

Reading and understanding academic research papers can be a tough assignment, especially because it can be very specific and you might not know or understand many terms, methodologies, or even statistical models and analysis. So preparing a presentation of an academic paper, whether is yours or others’ work, takes time and must be taken seriously.

When you are preparing your draft for the presentation, keep in mind that your audience will rely on listening comprehension, not reading comprehension. That means that your ideas need to be clear and to the point, and organized in a way that makes it possible for your audience to follow you.

And since understanding was difficult for you who had the time to read and discuss the paper with your team, you can imagine how difficult it might be for an audience that hasn’t read the paper and moreover has no expertise (or not much) on the research topic you are presenting.

So you have to be very careful about how you present your article so that your audience understands what you are saying, feel involved and curious, and off course don’t sleep while you talk.

Scientific oral presentations are not simply readings of scientific manuscripts, so being in front of an audience reading scientific terms and statistical models and equations is out of the picture. You need to provoke curiosity and engagement so that at the end of your presentation people want to know more about your research.

Don’t forget that time is precious, and not everyone is ready to give their time to listen to things they don’t find amusing or intriguing. Being concise and simple is not an easy exercise, but is crucial for passing by a message.

Follow simple presentation rules:

• 1 slide takes 1 minute to present, so if you have 10 minutes to present don’t do more than 10 slides.
• Don’t use small size fonts, the minimum readable size is 20pt.
• Don’t use text when you don’t need it, the text should be only be used to highlight things that you want your audience to remember
• Use pictures whenever you can but don’t overuse them. Pictures have to be relevant to your speech.
• Be careful with grammar and errors. Read your slides thoroughly a couple of times before submitting them for a presentation. And ask someone else to read them also, they are more likely to find mistakes than you are as they are less biased and less attached to your topic.
• Finally, prepare, prepare, and prepare. Mastery is only possible through training. No matter how good you are at improvising, preparing for a presentation is key for succeeding at it.

And that’s it. Good luck!

• Tags Research , Research Paper , Science , Scientific Paper

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Academic presentations: Structure

• Presentation Design
• Slide design
• Conferences
• Group presentations

Jump to content on this page:

“A solid structure is the foundation of a coherent presentation, and shows the relationship between the parts and whole.” Nancy Duarte,  Resonate

A presentation that has a strong, clear structure is a presentation that is easy to follow. Without structure, a presentation can be confusing to an audience. How do they know if you are going to cover what they need to know? How can they tell which slides contain the most important points? This page considers some ways that you can organise your slides to give shape to your presentation as a whole.

Basic presentation structure

Every presentation should flow like a good story. It should involve  the audience directly.

• The  beginning  section is where you hook them. Start with the general picture then explain the specific problem and how by listening to your presentation you can solve it for them.
• The  middle  section should contain the main detail of your presentation, and can be organised in a number of ways (two good ones are explained below).
• Finally your  end  section should summarise the presentation and lead the audience to the next step.

Design your slides so that these sections  look distinctive  and any  key points  stand out.

Beginning section

This section is all about drawing the audience in; giving them a reason to want to listen to the main part of your presentation.

You can include any or all of the following:

• A really well designed title slide that grabs the attention
• A slide that gives the audience the big picture
• A slide that shows what you will be focusing on
• A slide that uses the word 'you' or 'your' in the title to connect with the audience
• A slide that tells the audience what is to come in your presentation (its structure)

After your title slide, you need slides covering these areas

Middle section structure option 1 - key points

Several authors suggest using a structure that involves an introduction followed by a middle section containing key point slides (usually 3).

The ideas is that there is a  hierarchy  of slides so that after each key point you have other slides that explain or add detail to that key point.

Cliff Atkinson (writer of the book  Beyond Bullet Points ) suggested using a table in MSWord (similar to the one in the template that is available to download at the bottom of this page) to help you structure and plan your presentation before you even open PowerPoint. This means you can concentrate on your story before getting distracted by design and content issues. We have copy of the book in our library: Beyond Bullet Points:  Beyond Bullet Points .

Middle section option 2 - sparkline

For her book  Resonate  Nancy Duarte looked in detail at the structure of successful presentations throughout history (even back to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address). She discovered that many have the same structural form which she calls a 'sparkline'.

This structure makes a clear distinction between  what is  (the position before the presentation is seen and acted upon) and  what could be  (the position after the presentation is seen and acted upon). The audience is introduced to the what is  state at the beginning of the presentation and then switched back and forth between  what could be  and  what is  several times before ending in the  what could be  condition, which she calls  Reward:New Bliss .

Nancy explains this better here:  Sparkline Overview .

In terms of academic work the  what is  is the current level of knowledge or previous thinking on a subject and the  what could be  is the new knowledge or new thinking. The  new bliss  is what the audience could do or learn next now that they are aware of the change. 

End section

The end of your presentation is a very powerful part because it contains your final words, the ones that the audience will take away with them. After you have finished your middle section, have at least one slide that summarises your main points  and one slide that leaves the audience with  the most important point  of your presentation - the one you would like them to remember even if they forget everything else.

Include slides that show these in your end section

DO NOT  finish with a slide that says  Any Questions?  or  Thanks for Listening  as this a waste of your final slide and does not need a visual image to help the audience understand your words. This slide could potentially be viewed longer than any other slide (whilst you answer your questions or receive feedback) and so you want to make sure it contains something that is important to both you and the audience.

These slides are a waste of your last slide - use the final slide for your most important point not a throwaway.

Template for structuring an academic presentation

This MSWord document is a template for structuring a typical academic presentation, it can be adapted and changed if necessary depending on how long the presentation you need to give is. Try to fill it in using full sentences as these will become your slide titles .

The blue sections are optional. The NEED and TASK sections are most suited to research presentations.

This is designed for a presentation between 20-30 minutes long. Shorter presentations will have no explanatory points and longer presentations will need more explanatory points.

This is adapted from Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points template. See the link to the book above.

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How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

By Krystle Wong , Jul 20, 2023

A top-notch presentation possesses the power to drive action. From winning stakeholders over and conveying a powerful message to securing funding — your secret weapon lies within the realm of creating an effective presentation .  

Being an excellent presenter isn’t confined to the boardroom. Whether you’re delivering a presentation at work, pursuing an academic career, involved in a non-profit organization or even a student, nailing the presentation game is a game-changer.

In this article, I’ll cover the top qualities of compelling presentations and walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to give a good presentation. Here’s a little tip to kick things off: for a headstart, check out Venngage’s collection of free presentation templates . They are fully customizable, and the best part is you don’t need professional design skills to make them shine!

These valuable presentation tips cater to individuals from diverse professional backgrounds, encompassing business professionals, sales and marketing teams, educators, trainers, students, researchers, non-profit organizations, public speakers and presenters. 

No matter your field or role, these tips for presenting will equip you with the skills to deliver effective presentations that leave a lasting impression on any audience.

Click to jump ahead:

What are the 10 qualities of a good presentation?

Step-by-step guide on how to prepare an effective presentation, 9 effective techniques to deliver a memorable presentation, faqs on making a good presentation, how to create a presentation with venngage in 5 steps.

When it comes to giving an engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression, it’s not just about the content — it’s also about how you deliver it. Wondering what makes a good presentation? Well, the best presentations I’ve seen consistently exhibit these 10 qualities:

1. Clear structure

No one likes to get lost in a maze of information. Organize your thoughts into a logical flow, complete with an introduction, main points and a solid conclusion. A structured presentation helps your audience follow along effortlessly, leaving them with a sense of satisfaction at the end.

Regardless of your presentation style , a quality presentation starts with a clear roadmap. Browse through Venngage’s template library and select a presentation template that aligns with your content and presentation goals. Here’s a good presentation example template with a logical layout that includes sections for the introduction, main points, supporting information and a conclusion: 

2. Engaging opening

Hook your audience right from the start with an attention-grabbing statement, a fascinating question or maybe even a captivating anecdote. Set the stage for a killer presentation!

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

3. Relevant content

Make sure your content aligns with their interests and needs. Your audience is there for a reason, and that’s to get valuable insights. Avoid fluff and get straight to the point, your audience will be genuinely excited.

4. Effective visual aids

Picture this: a slide with walls of text and tiny charts, yawn! Visual aids should be just that—aiding your presentation. Opt for clear and visually appealing slides, engaging images and informative charts that add value and help reinforce your message.

With Venngage, visualizing data takes no effort at all. You can import data from CSV or Google Sheets seamlessly and create stunning charts, graphs and icon stories effortlessly to showcase your data in a captivating and impactful way.

5. Clear and concise communication

Keep your language simple, and avoid jargon or complicated terms. Communicate your ideas clearly, so your audience can easily grasp and retain the information being conveyed. This can prevent confusion and enhance the overall effectiveness of the message. 

6. Engaging delivery

Spice up your presentation with a sprinkle of enthusiasm! Maintain eye contact, use expressive gestures and vary your tone of voice to keep your audience glued to the edge of their seats. A touch of charisma goes a long way!

7. Interaction and audience engagement

Turn your presentation into an interactive experience — encourage questions, foster discussions and maybe even throw in a fun activity. Engaged audiences are more likely to remember and embrace your message.

Transform your slides into an interactive presentation with Venngage’s dynamic features like pop-ups, clickable icons and animated elements. Engage your audience with interactive content that lets them explore and interact with your presentation for a truly immersive experience.

8. Effective storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story? Weaving relevant anecdotes, case studies or even a personal story into your presentation can captivate your audience and create a lasting impact. Stories build connections and make your message memorable.

A great presentation background is also essential as it sets the tone, creates visual interest and reinforces your message. Enhance the overall aesthetics of your presentation with these 15 presentation background examples and captivate your audience’s attention.

9. Well-timed pacing

Pace your presentation thoughtfully with well-designed presentation slides, neither rushing through nor dragging it out. Respect your audience’s time and ensure you cover all the essential points without losing their interest.

10. Strong conclusion

Last impressions linger! Summarize your main points and leave your audience with a clear takeaway. End your presentation with a bang , a call to action or an inspiring thought that resonates long after the conclusion.

In-person presentations aside, acing a virtual presentation is of paramount importance in today’s digital world. Check out this guide to learn how you can adapt your in-person presentations into virtual presentations . 

Preparing an effective presentation starts with laying a strong foundation that goes beyond just creating slides and notes. One of the quickest and best ways to make a presentation would be with the help of a good presentation software . 

Otherwise, let me walk you to how to prepare for a presentation step by step and unlock the secrets of crafting a professional presentation that sets you apart.

1. Understand the audience and their needs

Before you dive into preparing your masterpiece, take a moment to get to know your target audience. Tailor your presentation to meet their needs and expectations , and you’ll have them hooked from the start!

2. Conduct thorough research on the topic

Time to hit the books (or the internet)! Don’t skimp on the research with your presentation materials — dive deep into the subject matter and gather valuable insights . The more you know, the more confident you’ll feel in delivering your presentation.

3. Organize the content with a clear structure

No one wants to stumble through a chaotic mess of information. Outline your presentation with a clear and logical flow. Start with a captivating introduction, follow up with main points that build on each other and wrap it up with a powerful conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Delivering an effective business presentation hinges on captivating your audience, and Venngage’s professionally designed business presentation templates are tailor-made for this purpose. With thoughtfully structured layouts, these templates enhance your message’s clarity and coherence, ensuring a memorable and engaging experience for your audience members.

Don’t want to build your presentation layout from scratch? pick from these 5 foolproof presentation layout ideas that won’t go wrong. 

4. Develop visually appealing and supportive visual aids

Spice up your presentation with eye-catching visuals! Create slides that complement your message, not overshadow it. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you need to overload your slides with text.

Well-chosen designs create a cohesive and professional look, capturing your audience’s attention and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your message. Here’s a list of carefully curated PowerPoint presentation templates and great background graphics that will significantly influence the visual appeal and engagement of your presentation.

5. Practice, practice and practice

Practice makes perfect — rehearse your presentation and arrive early to your presentation to help overcome stage fright. Familiarity with your material will boost your presentation skills and help you handle curveballs with ease.

6. Seek feedback and make necessary adjustments

Don’t be afraid to ask for help and seek feedback from friends and colleagues. Constructive criticism can help you identify blind spots and fine-tune your presentation to perfection.

With Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature , receiving feedback and editing your presentation is a seamless process. Group members can access and work on the presentation simultaneously and edit content side by side in real-time. Changes will be reflected immediately to the entire team, promoting seamless teamwork.

7. Prepare for potential technical or logistical issues

Prepare for the unexpected by checking your equipment, internet connection and any other potential hiccups. If you’re worried that you’ll miss out on any important points, you could always have note cards prepared. Remember to remain focused and rehearse potential answers to anticipated questions.

8. Fine-tune and polish your presentation

As the big day approaches, give your presentation one last shine. Review your talking points, practice how to present a presentation and make any final tweaks. Deep breaths — you’re on the brink of delivering a successful presentation!

In competitive environments, persuasive presentations set individuals and organizations apart. To brush up on your presentation skills, read these guides on how to make a persuasive presentation and tips to presenting effectively . 

Whether you’re an experienced presenter or a novice, the right techniques will let your presentation skills soar to new heights!

From public speaking hacks to interactive elements and storytelling prowess, these 9 effective presentation techniques will empower you to leave a lasting impression on your audience and make your presentations unforgettable.

1. Confidence and positive body language

Positive body language instantly captivates your audience, making them believe in your message as much as you do. Strengthen your stage presence and own that stage like it’s your second home! Stand tall, shoulders back and exude confidence. 

2. Eye contact with the audience

Break down that invisible barrier and connect with your audience through their eyes. Maintaining eye contact when giving a presentation builds trust and shows that you’re present and engaged with them.

3. Effective use of hand gestures and movement

A little movement goes a long way! Emphasize key points with purposeful gestures and don’t be afraid to walk around the stage. Your energy will be contagious!

4. Utilize storytelling techniques

Weave the magic of storytelling into your presentation. Share relatable anecdotes, inspiring success stories or even personal experiences that tug at the heartstrings of your audience. Adjust your pitch, pace and volume to match the emotions and intensity of the story. Varying your speaking voice adds depth and enhances your stage presence.

5. Incorporate multimedia elements

Spice up your presentation with a dash of visual pizzazz! Use slides, images and video clips to add depth and clarity to your message. Just remember, less is more—don’t overwhelm them with information overload. 

Turn your presentations into an interactive party! Involve your audience with questions, polls or group activities. When they actively participate, they become invested in your presentation’s success. Bring your design to life with animated elements. Venngage allows you to apply animations to icons, images and text to create dynamic and engaging visual content.

6. Utilize humor strategically

Laughter is the best medicine—and a fantastic presentation enhancer! A well-placed joke or lighthearted moment can break the ice and create a warm atmosphere , making your audience more receptive to your message.

7. Practice active listening and respond to feedback

Be attentive to your audience’s reactions and feedback. If they have questions or concerns, address them with genuine interest and respect. Your responsiveness builds rapport and shows that you genuinely care about their experience.

8. Apply the 10-20-30 rule

Apply the 10-20-30 presentation rule and keep it short, sweet and impactful! Stick to ten slides, deliver your presentation within 20 minutes and use a 30-point font to ensure clarity and focus. Less is more, and your audience will thank you for it!

9. Implement the 5-5-5 rule

Simplicity is key. Limit each slide to five bullet points, with only five words per bullet point and allow each slide to remain visible for about five seconds. This rule keeps your presentation concise and prevents information overload.

Simple presentations are more engaging because they are easier to follow. Summarize your presentations and keep them simple with Venngage’s gallery of simple presentation templates and ensure that your message is delivered effectively across your audience.

1. How to start a presentation?

To kick off your presentation effectively, begin with an attention-grabbing statement or a powerful quote. Introduce yourself, establish credibility and clearly state the purpose and relevance of your presentation.

2. How to end a presentation?

For a strong conclusion, summarize your talking points and key takeaways. End with a compelling call to action or a thought-provoking question and remember to thank your audience and invite any final questions or interactions.

3. How to make a presentation interactive?

To make your presentation interactive, encourage questions and discussion throughout your talk. Utilize multimedia elements like videos or images and consider including polls, quizzes or group activities to actively involve your audience.

In need of inspiration for your next presentation? I’ve got your back! Pick from these 120+ presentation ideas, topics and examples to get started. 

Creating a stunning presentation with Venngage is a breeze with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and professionally designed templates for all your communication needs. 

Here’s how to make a presentation in just 5 simple steps with the help of Venngage:

Step 1: Sign up for Venngage for free using your email, Gmail or Facebook account or simply log in to access your account. 

Step 2: Pick a design from our selection of free presentation templates (they’re all created by our expert in-house designers).

Step 3: Make the template your own by customizing it to fit your content and branding. With Venngage’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can easily modify text, change colors and adjust the layout to create a unique and eye-catching design.

Step 4: Elevate your presentation by incorporating captivating visuals. You can upload your images or choose from Venngage’s vast library of high-quality photos, icons and illustrations. 

Step 5: Upgrade to a premium or business account to export your presentation in PDF and print it for in-person presentations or share it digitally for free!

By following these five simple steps, you’ll have a professionally designed and visually engaging presentation ready in no time. With Venngage’s user-friendly platform, your presentation is sure to make a lasting impression. So, let your creativity flow and get ready to shine in your next presentation!

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February 20th, 2015

How to win at academic presentations: top tips on what to say and how to say it..

13 comments | 44 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

You really can’t escape presentations as a researcher. If you want to submit your work to a conference, then you’ll need to be willing to present (unless you only ever want to do posters. In which case what on earth is wrong with you?). Most job or training interviews will ask you to deliver a presentation. You’ll also quite often give less formal presentations as part of project meetings. And of course lots of researchers also ‘present’ when they’re teaching.

Despite this, how to give a good presentation is something you’re typically left to work out for yourself. It’s similar to ‘how to write well’ which you also just have to try to pick up as you go along. I do wonder if perhaps this explains why lots of academics are quite poor writers – and, yes, poor presenters. Both presenting and writing are skills, and mastering them takes time. But I do think there’s some general advice that can be helpful when thinking about presentations. This is developed both from my experience of presenting and also my experience of being in the audience, for both good and bad talks.

Image credit: Pixabay  binpage  CC0 Public Domain

Before I start though, I think any advice should come with two caveats:

1. Your best presentation style will be the one you’re most comfortable with.

This might mean that some of the advice below just doesn’t work for you. If you feel much more confident with text heavy slides and you struggle to make slides more visual without losing the flow of your argument, then by all means stick to this. What I would suggest is that it’s worth at least experimenting with the tips below. Volunteer for an internal presentation (journal or methods clubs are good for this) and have a go at presenting in a different way to usual.

2. All advice is easier said than done, and I’m sure I don’t follow my own recommendations half the time!

This is perhaps less a caveat than a confession. I really just want to acknowledge that presenting can be hard, that it’s not a skill we get a lot of explicit guidance on as researchers, and that often we’re just doing the best we can in the time available. The tips below are meant to be helpful suggestions, and not a critique of anyone who does things differently.

So, here’s my top tips for academic presentations:

What to say

• There are three things you must do: Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you’ve told them.
• Do not miss any of the above steps!
• The first part should be actually telling them something about the content – “I’m going to talk to you today about why we’re missing the potential of eHealth by ignoring user needs” for example. Not one of those slides that just reads “OVERVIEW: Introduction. Methods. Results. Conclusions.” That’s not actually telling them anything, and it’s dull dull dull.
• The recap is your chance to hammer your point (or what you hope is your point) home. What’s the take home titbit that you want the audience to remember? If they were to go up to their colleagues tomorrow and say “I saw an interesting talk yesterday that showed ….” – what do you want that last part to be?
• Talks, like research papers and essays, are not a detective novel. You don’t have to make the audience wait until the end to find out what the conclusion is. This is actually more true the shorter the presentation is. If you’ve only got 5 minutes, you need to give them the take home message really really soon.
• Only include data and diagrams you will explain. This goes for both qualitative and quantitative. If you are going to present huge tables of analyses, then at least be nice enough to highlight the bits you expect the audience to look at. Sometimes I get the impression people just stick these in to prove they did them. If you’re going to include big chunks of transcripts from interview data, then again make sure you highlight the main points.
• Don’t fill your talk with bits that are anticipated question rebuttals. I get this impression a lot in PhD student talks (though possibly the fault is their supervisors from over use of the “your reviewer will pick that up as a problem!!!” refrain). This is when people go into huge detail about a particular method or finding, or a very defensive justification of a theory or interpretation. If someone wants to critique you on these issues, let them do so in the Q&A (this doesn’t stop you preparing for them. You can still write notes for yourself about how to respond to possible comments, which can be very helpful). Don’t however mess up the flow of your talk or take time away from more interesting parts just because you want to nervously pre-empt someone picking a hole in your methodology.

How to say it

• Within the time limit! Lots of people seem to struggle with this (if the number of people going over time at conferences is anything to go by). I think sticking to time is less about it being a good talk (though probably the two correlate) and more about respecting both your audience and the other speakers whose time you’re cutting into. This is another good reason to use the “state the findings first” approach mentioned above, as then even if you have to skip your final slides you’ve already made your point.
• If you’re really fretting about the idea of skipping to your last slides to quickly summarise the conclusions, just think of it this way: you’re immediately making your Q&A part easier on yourself, as pretty much whatever someone asks you can say “Well actually that was something I was going to cover in slide 7” and then go back to that and discuss it. That’s kind of cheeky though, so don’t tell anyone I told you…
• Visual! The slide should not be your exact talk, in text form, while you stand and read it out. There should be some kind of added value of me coming to hear you speak, or at the very least you shouldn’t bore me to death by just reading word-for-word from a slide that I finished reading in 30 secs but you’ll be reading out loud for 3 minutes. Similarly, put as little text on as possible – just the headlines if you can. It can be hard in academic talks to go easy on the text, but you can try at least to split up the text heavy slides with a few images, and white space on the slides will make what you do include much easier to absorb!
• You don’t automatically have to use PowerPoint, though I’d probably advise caution until academic conferences catch up with the times and offer stable internet connections/ anything other than archaic laptops and projectors. I’ve seen quite a few presentations using  Prezi , and my issue in most cases has been Why are you using this instead of PowerPoint ? Specifically, Prezi enables non-linear presentations – and I can think of lots of great uses for this, such as showing a changing process, showing how certain things nest inside others, covering different spots before swooping out to the big picture and so on. But quite often people still do a standard linear presentation – they just give the audience mild motion sickness while doing so. Think about the platform you’re using and whether it adds anything. I’ve seen someone do a great presentation just using  Stich It  for example, which is a programme that stitches together different webpages into a slideshow. This worked because the format matched and aided the talk, which was going through different representations of work online.
• Watch this.  You Suck at Powerpoint: 5 Shocking Design Mistakes You Need To Avoid. It’s brilliant.

Finally, I think the most important thing I can say is “ You are a better speaker than you think you are, and no-one thinks you look nervous. ” Practically everyone I know has said at some point “ Oh that went really badly, I bet everyone could tell I was nervous ” and genuinely in not a single case has that been true. Remember you are far more aware of your body and any slight differences in your voice than anyone else in the audience. They are also far more interested in the talk and the slides than wondering if you look a bit peaky. And even if they do, if anything I think it can make them more sympathetic! We’ve all been there after all.

The other fear I know everyone has is that someone in the audience will make their life miserable during the Q&A. Again, most audiences I’ve known are friendly. Most conferences now have half a dozen parallel sessions competing for audience interest, so remember that if they’ve turned up to yours it’s because they are genuinely interested in what you have to present. Yes, they might ask hard questions, but because they really want to know the answer – they think the work you do is important and so we should ask important questions about it. There’s also nothing wrong with saying “I hadn’t thought about that.” Maybe follow with “That’s really useful to bring up thank you – could we perhaps a quick chat about it after the talk?” This stops you getting embroiled in a live debate on stage (if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t enjoy that!), will probably flatter the person asking the question, and best of all gives you an opportunity to have a proper discussion with someone who might be able to help you.

I guess it’s possible that there could be a conference where your boss’s worst enemy is there and deliberately attempting to trip you up or humiliate you. If this ever does happen though, be assured that the rest of the audience can spot it a mile off, and insolent people like me are probably already making disparaging comments about them on twitter.

This piece originally appeared on the author’s personal blog and is reposted with permission.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our  Comments Policy  if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

About the Author

Sarah Knowles is a Research Fellow with the NIHR School for Primary Care Research. She currently works in the Centre for Primary Care at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on mental health, and she works on a variety of randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews and qualitative studies to evaluate mental health treatments. Her main research interests are e-health and mental health technologies, co-morbidity of mental and physical health problems, user-led design and patient and public involvement in research. She tweets @dr_know.

About the author

13 Comments

• Pingback: From my inbox, "How to win at academic presentations: top tips on what to say and how to say it" | patrick r. lowenthal
• Pingback: How to win at academic presentations: top tips on what to say and how to say it. | Nader Ale Ebrahim
• Pingback: How to win at academic presentations: top tips on what to say and how to say it. | MULD

Great presentation tips – as I also found the academic environment does not typically give good evaluative feedback on presentations. My other tip would be to join a local Toastmasters club – they are international. I found the club immensely helpful beyond just supporting my communication skills, they also have a leadership track.

• Pingback: 20 Tips for Top Academic Presentations | Jographies
• Pingback: SimonIanCook: 20 Tips for Top Academic Presentations | SCGRG RGS-IBG Postgrad Blog
• Pingback: How to win at academic presentations: top tips on what to say and how to say it. | Erik Champion

Good summary. I would add a couple of things: Consider carefully beforehand who your audience is and what they need to know or (should) want to know about the topic. Don’t just tell people what you want to tell them, tell them something they need to know. In addition, think of your presentation in terms of a STORY. Tell a good story. This engages your audience. Part of the hard part of presentations is figuring out what the story really is, and again, why the audience needs to know this story. And go from there. I also recommend the book “Slideology” by Nancy Duarte. A must read for giving excellent presentations.

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Thank you Sarah, terrific blogpost! It has made me really love presenting for a change. Any advice on how to get around thinking you might forget something and freeze during the presentation because it wasn’t written on the slide??

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What Are Effective Presentation Skills (and How to Improve Them)

Presentation skills are essential for your personal and professional life. Learn about effective presentations and how to boost your presenting techniques.

At least seven out of 10 Americans agree that presentation skills are essential for a successful career [ 1 ]. Although it might be tempting to think that these are skills reserved for people interested in public speaking roles, they're critical in a diverse range of jobs. For example, you might need to brief your supervisor on research results.

Presentation skills are also essential in other scenarios, including working with a team and explaining your thought process, walking clients through project ideas and timelines, and highlighting your strengths and achievements to your manager during performance reviews.

Whatever the scenario, you have very little time to capture your audience’s attention and get your point across when presenting information—about three seconds, according to research [ 2 ]. Effective presentation skills help you get your point across and connect with the people you’re communicating with, which is why nearly every employer requires them.

Understanding what presentation skills are is only half the battle. Honing your presenting techniques is essential for mastering presentations of all kinds and in all settings.

What are presentation skills?

Presentation skills are the abilities and qualities necessary for creating and delivering a compelling presentation that effectively communicates information and ideas. They encompass what you say, how you structure it, and the materials you include to support what you say, such as slides, videos, or images.

You'll make presentations at various times in your life. Examples include:

Making speeches at a wedding, conference, or another event

Making a toast at a dinner or event

Explaining projects to a team 

Delivering results and findings to management teams

Teaching people specific methods or information

Proposing a vote at community group meetings

Pitching a new idea or business to potential partners or investors

Why are presentation skills important? 

Delivering effective presentations is critical in your professional and personal life. You’ll need to hone your presentation skills in various areas, such as when giving a speech, convincing your partner to make a substantial purchase, and talking to friends and family about an important situation.

No matter if you’re using them in a personal or professional setting, these are the skills that make it easier and more effective to convey your ideas, convince or persuade others, and experience success. A few of the benefits that often accompany improving your presentation skills include:

Enriched written and verbal communication skills

Enhanced confidence and self-image

Boosted critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities

Better motivational techniques

Increased leadership skills

Expanded time management, negotiation, and creativity

The better your presenting techniques, the more engaging your presentations will be. You could also have greater opportunities to make positive impacts in business and other areas of your life.

Effective presentation skills

Imagine yourself in the audience at a TED Talk or sitting with your coworkers at a big meeting held by your employer. What would you be looking for in how they deliver their message? What would make you feel engaged?

These are a few questions to ask yourself as you review this list of some of the most effective presentation skills.

Verbal communication

How you use language and deliver messages play essential roles in how your audience will receive your presentation. Speak clearly and confidently, projecting your voice enough to ensure everyone can hear. Think before you speak, pausing when necessary and tailoring the way you talk to resonate with your particular audience.

Body language

Body language combines various critical elements, including posture, gestures, eye contact, expressions, and position in front of the audience. Body language is one of the elements that can instantly transform a presentation that would otherwise be dull into one that's dynamic and interesting.

Voice projection

The ability to project your voice improves your presentation by allowing your audience to hear what you're saying. It also increases your confidence to help settle any lingering nerves while also making your message more engaging. To project your voice, stand comfortably with your shoulders back. Take deep breaths to power your speaking voice and ensure you enunciate every syllable you speak.

How you present yourself plays a role in your body language and ability to project your voice. It also sets the tone for the presentation. Avoid slouching or looking overly tense. Instead, remain open, upright, and adaptable while taking the formality of the occasion into account.

Storytelling

Incorporating storytelling into a presentation is an effective strategy used by many powerful public speakers. It has the power to bring your subject to life and pique the audience’s curiosity. Don’t be afraid to tell a personal story, slowly building up suspense or adding a dramatic moment. And, of course, be sure to end with a positive takeaway to drive your point home.

Active listening

Active listening is a valuable skill all on its own. When you understand and thoughtfully respond to what you hear—whether it's in a conversation or during a presentation—you’ll likely deepen your personal relationships and actively engage audiences during a presentation. As part of your presentation skill set, it helps catch and maintain the audience’s attention, helping them remain focused while minimizing passive response, ensuring the message is delivered correctly, and encouraging a call to action.

Stage presence

During a presentation, projecting confidence can help keep your audience engaged. Stage presence can help you connect with your audience and encourage them to want to watch you. To improve your presence, try amping up your normal demeanor by infusing it with a bit of enthusiasm. Project confidence and keep your information interesting.

Watch your audience as you’re presenting. If you’re holding their attention, it likely means you’re connecting well with them.

Self-awareness

Monitoring your own emotions and reactions will allow you to react well in various situations. It helps you remain personable throughout your presentation and handle feedback well. Self-awareness can help soothe nervousness during presentations, allowing you to perform more effectively.

Writing skills

Writing is a form of presentation. Sharp writing skills can help you master your presentation’s outline to ensure you stay on message and remain clear about your objectives from the beginning until the end. It’s also helpful to have strong writing abilities for creating compelling slides and other visual aids.

Understanding an audience

When you understand your audience's needs and interests, you can design your presentation around them. In turn, you'll deliver maximum value to them and enhance your ability to make your message easy to understand.

Learn more about presentation skills from industry experts at SAP:

How to improve presentation skills

There’s an art to public speaking. Just like any other type of art, this is one that requires practice. Improving your presentation skills will help reduce miscommunications, enhance your time management capabilities, and boost your leadership skills. Here are some ways you can improve these skills:

Work on self-confidence.

When you’re confident, you naturally speak more clearly and with more authority. Taking the time to prepare your presentation with a strong opening and compelling visual aids can help you feel more confident. Other ways to improve your self-confidence include practicing positive self-talk, surrounding yourself with positive people, and avoiding comparing yourself (or your presentation) to others.

Develop strategies for overcoming fear.

Many people are nervous or fearful before giving a presentation. A bad memory of a past performance or insufficient self-confidence can contribute to fear and anxiety. Having a few go-to strategies like deep breathing, practicing your presentation, and grounding can help you transform that fear into extra energy to put into your stage presence.

Learn grounding techniques.

Grounding is any type of technique that helps you steer your focus away from distressing thoughts and keeps you connected with your present self. To ground yourself, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and imagine you’re a large, mature tree with roots extending deep into the earth—like the tree, you can become unshakable.

Learn how to use presentation tools.

Visual aids and other technical support can transform an otherwise good presentation into a wow-worthy one. A few popular presentation tools include:

Canva: Provides easy-to-design templates you can customize

Powtoon: Animation software that makes video creation fast and easy

PowerPoint: Microsoft's iconic program popular for dynamic marketing and sales presentations

Practice breathing techniques.

Breathing techniques can help quell anxiety, making it easier to shake off pre-presentation jitters and nerves. It also helps relax your muscles and get more oxygen to your brain.  For some pre-presentation calmness, you can take deep breaths, slowly inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.

While presenting, breathe in through your mouth with the back of your tongue relaxed so your audience doesn't hear a gasping sound. Speak on your exhalation, maintaining a smooth voice.

Gain experience.

The more you practice, the better you’ll become. The more you doanything, the more comfortable you’ll feel engaging in that activity. Presentations are no different. Repeatedly practicing your own presentation also offers the opportunity to get feedback from other people and tweak your style and content as needed.

Tips to help you ace your presentation

Your presentation isn’t about you; it’s about the material you’re presenting. Sometimes, reminding yourself of this ahead of taking center stage can help take you out of your head, allowing you to connect effectively with your audience. The following are some of the many actions you can take on the day of your presentation.

Arrive early.

Since you may have a bit of presentation-related anxiety, it’s important to avoid adding travel stress. Give yourself an abundance of time to arrive at your destination, and take into account heavy traffic and other unforeseen events. By arriving early, you also give yourself time to meet with any on-site technicians, test your equipment, and connect with people ahead of the presentation.

Become familiar with the layout of the room.

Arriving early also gives you time to assess the room and figure out where you want to stand. Experiment with the acoustics to determine how loudly you need to project your voice, and test your equipment to make sure everything connects and appears properly with the available setup. This is an excellent opportunity to work out any last-minute concerns and move around to familiarize yourself with the setting for improved stage presence.

Listen to presenters ahead of you.

When you watch others present, you'll get a feel for the room's acoustics and lighting. You can also listen for any data that’s relevant to your presentation and revisit it during your presentation—this can make the presentation more interactive and engaging.

Use note cards.

Writing yourself a script could provide you with more comfort. To prevent sounding too robotic or disengaged, only include talking points in your note cards in case you get off track. Using note cards can help keep your presentation organized while sounding more authentic to your audience.

Learn to deliver clear and confident presentations with Dynamic Public Speaking from the University of Washington. Build confidence, develop new delivery techniques, and practice strategies for crafting compelling presentations for different purposes, occasions, and audiences.

Article sources

Forbes. “ New Survey: 70% Say Presentation Skills are Critical for Career Success , https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2014/09/25/new-survey-70-percent-say-presentation-skills-critical-for-career-success/?sh=619f3ff78890.” Accessed December 7, 2022.

Beautiful.ai. “ 15 Presentation and Public Speaking Stats You Need to Know , https://www.beautiful.ai/blog/15-presentation-and-public-speaking-stats-you-need-to-know. Accessed December 7, 2022.

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How To: Give an Academic Presentation

As referenced in the topic on how to write a paper, the last phase of the usual process is actually presenting the work! But since the presentation is a required component for this class, I’m describing it now.

Why a presentation?

For conference papers, you submit the paper, have it accepted (hopefully), then show up to present it. But the paper is more comprehensive than the presentation. Why, then, have the presentation?

The answer to this question is actually very important to how you structure your presentation. The most common mistake I see people make in real academic presenting is that their presentation is basically just a section-by-section summary of the paper itself. That is not what a presentation of the paper needs to be.

To understand why we have a presentation, both in academia and in this class, it’s important to consider what the goal of the presentation is.

What is the goal of a presentation?

There are actually three potential goals of an academic presentation. Which goal you select for yourself will dictate how you structure your presentation.

The goals I generally notice are:

• Make the listener want to read the paper. A presentation is typically ~10 minutes (conferences can be longer, but 10 minutes is usually plenty), and the engagement from the audience is more passive: they just sit back and listen. Reading the paper probably takes closer to ~30 minutes, and it’s more active, deliberate engagement. In the 10 minutes in which you have a captive audience, you’re not going to cover everything that the paper covers. Instead, focus on covering enough so that the listener wants to go and read the full paper. Think of the presentation like a trailer: it advertises the full paper. Focus on the story and the results, and if they want to know more about the related work and methodology, they can go read about them.
• Help the listener decide if they want to read the paper. This is the slightly more honest version of the above. Instead of treating the presentation like a trailer, treat it like an abstract. There are people in the audience who won’t be interested in your work simply because it doesn’t align clearly with theirs. That’s fine. The focus of your presentation is on giving them the information they need to decide if they want to read more. Here, you’d focus more on the related work and the results: related work to help them connect their interests to yours (if such connections are present), and results to help them know if they care how you achieved those results.
• Seed the conversation. The other major difference with the presentation is that you have everyone in the room with you. They’re going to be there when you’re done. You’re going to chat over coffee and lunch. Your goal with your presentation is to give y’all something to talk about after the talk is done. If this is your focus, then you’ll emphasize more the kinds of feedback you want: you’ll ask direct questions about what you should do next, or what might explain the results that you have. Under this goal, you know that you already got the paper accepted: you don’t need to defend it anymore. Instead, here, you’re using the time to make your future work even better.

You’re welcome to choose any of these goals for how you orient your presentation in this class, of course. The main thing is: consider your listener. You’re not just checking off boxes on a rubric (we don’t have a rubric for assessing your presentation). Your goal is for the presentation to be interesting to the viewer.

What are some common mistakes?

So, what are the common mistakes people make? Here are five I’ve seen most often:

• Restate the paper. I referenced this above, but it’s worth repeating. You have only 10 minutes to talk about your work. Focus on your work. You don’t need to spend a lot of time on the related work section, or even the methodology unless it’s particularly novel. Those are the pieces of your work that get the paper accepted, but they’re not particularly crucial for the presentation itself.
• Stick to the original content exclusively. This one doesn’t really apply to this class’s papers, but it’s worth mentioning anyway. In academic publishing, there’s typically a long (5-10 month) lag time between when you submit a paper and when you present it. You do a lot of work in that time. I’ve seen a lot of presentations where the presenter will mention off-handedly, “Oh yes, since we submitted the paper, these things have changed.” If they’ve changed, include that in your presentation. Some of the best presentations I’ve seen have said, “The paper covers the Fall 2016 data, but I’m going to talk about the Spring 2017 data that wasn’t available at the time.” That keeps the presentation current.
• Under-rehearse. Few things are more painful than watching someone get up and present who isn’t familiar with what they’re presenting. Make an outline, make a loose script, run through it a couple times. You have even less excuse for this in this class because you get to record it: if your first version is under-rehearsed, then make that your rehearsal and record it again.
• Over-rehearse. This one is riskier in this class. Few things are more boring than listening to someone just read a script. If you’re just reading a script, you may as well just be sending the paper and putting it into a text-to-speech machine. The presentation ought to be a little more spontaneous and natural. The viewer wants to hear your excitement, your confusion, your frustration. This sort of context is what makes a presentation more dynamic than a paper: we see the human behind the work, not just the work. That’s a liability in the peer review process, but you’ve already passed that: now it’s an asset.
• Interpret questions/critiques as challenges. Again, less relevant in this class, but highly relevant in real presentations. One thing we see a lot, especially among first-time presenters, is a tendency to view questions as challenges. The natural response tends to be to defend the work. Most questions, however, are just that: questions. “Why dd you use methodology A instead of B?”, for example, can be interpreted as suggesting, “B is better”, but it more likely means, “There are probably interesting details of this work that led you to choose A, and I’m curious what they are.” Your audience knows your work is never done, and it’s totally fine to say “I don’t know” or “That’s next!”

For this Class

A lot of those details are for real academic publishing, which ideally we’re preparing you for. However, this presentation is also first and foremost a class assignment. So, more specifically, what function does it serve in  this class?

The final video is a chance to present your work in a more accessible, easily-consumable way. Papers can be hard to read, especially when they include a lot of detail (as papers in this class likely will). Presentations lends themselves to the more informal dialog and presentation style. So, in your presentations, you’re looking at about 5-10 minutes (for your mentor’s sanity, keep it under 10 minutes) to relatively quickly cover the motivation behind your work, what you decided to do, and how it turned out. The goal of this is to give an easier anchor for your classmates to be able to browse and consume what went on in this class this semester. The main focus of this is community-building.

The presentation should be organized, but it doesn’t have to be super-formal. You’re welcome to include a video demo, for example, and you don’t have to worry about editing in super-clean transitions — it’s fine, for example, to start off in a PowerPoint presentation and switch to a demo without editing out closing PowerPoint. Imagine you’re standing at a podium: we’d expect you to close PowerPoint and switch over to a browser, so that can be in your video as well.

Most importantly, the goals stated above still apply to this class. Maybe your goal is to get the viewer to read the paper. Maybe it’s just to give them the information necessary to decide if they should read the paper. Maybe it’s to spark good discussion and reviews, and to get you feedback for future work in this area. Selecting a goal will make your presentation far more engaging.

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How to give a great academic presentation.

Read a summary or generate practice questions using the INOMICS AI tool

Whether you’re a graduate student giving a presentation for a course or a researcher presenting at a conference, being able to give an engaging and well-prepared presentation is a valuable skill for anyone in academia – in COVID times it is invaluable . Today, hardly a talk is given without an accompanying PowerPoint presentation full of flashy graphs, images, exploding sub-titles, and often far too many bullet points.

In this post, we will offer you specific tips on how to hone your presentation and sharpen your speech in order to give an interesting, memorable and overall successful academic presentation. Building on past blog articles including  Dress Code for Academic Conferences  and  How to Write a Cover Letter , this post will offer you advice that can be applied across a range of situations that you will face time and again throughout your career. So, without further ado.

1. Tailor your talk to your audience

Although you never want to underestimate the intelligence and experience of your audience, you also need to be aware of the specific crowd to which you are speaking. If you are at a highly technical conference for researchers in your subfield, going into great detail and skipping over any basic background research would be a good idea. If you are attending an interdisciplinary seminar the following month, however, simply adapting the same presentation is not a good idea.

Take the time to make sure your presentation reflects the education level, interests and general make-up of your audience, and your talk will necessarily have a better reception.

2. Keep text to a minimum

The idea of a visual aid is that it should accompany your presentation, not replace it. Thus, your slides should offer complementary information, rather than forcing your audience to try to simultaneously read and listen to you talk.

Always use a font that is easy to read and keep the size large enough so that even those at the back of the room or lecture hall can see every word. However, images and graphs are always better than words – a simple slide accompanied by a great verbal description is your best option. Check out more tips for designing a persuasive presentation .

3. Practice, practice, practice

Even if you feel completely confident in your presentation skills, it’s always a good idea to rehearse in order to give the best talk possible. Through practice you become more comfortable each element of your presentation and are less likely to forget small but important things such as an introduction of who you are and where you work or study.

By practicing you can make sure that your slides are organized in such a way as to create a good flow for your points, you become more comfortable with all of the transition points and you have the chance to make any necessary changes before you find yourself on stage.

4. Harness your nerves

Even if you’ve practiced like crazy, it’s normal to still feel nervous. If you make the conscious choice to channel that nervous energy into enthusiasm, you can actually boost your own performance and simultaneously build confidence. Taking long pauses and deep breaths are fine practices, and if done in a controlled manner they can add emphasis to specific points within your talk while also calming you down.

5. Respect your time limit

It is natural to get caught up in your talk and forget to keep track of time. A presentation that drags on forever invariably loses favor with the audience, however, so it’s important to keep to the schedule. Setting a watch or clock on the podium is one way to give yourself a physical reminder of the time without being too obvious about it.

Another option is to ask a friend or colleague to give you a reminder when you’ve hit the halfway point or when you only have five minutes remaining of your allotted time. If you choose to use a reminder, remember not to speed up or rush even if you feel like you’re running out of time and still have lots to say. Prepare for this scenario ahead of time and choose which slides you could skip if need be. Regardless of whether you’ve had to skip certain sections, always have a strong conclusion planned. People tend to remember the beginning and end of events the best, so going out strong is important. Finally, always thank your audience and your host before leaving the stage.

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How To Make Your Academic Presentations More Engaging

• Post author By Kay Woot
• Post date August 10, 2022
• No Comments on How To Make Your Academic Presentations More Engaging

Are you tired of making dry, boring academic presentations? Do your audiences seem to lose interest halfway through your talk? If so, it might be time to try some new strategies to make your presentations more engaging. In this blog post, we will discuss five ways to make your presentations more interesting and engaging for your listeners. Keep reading to learn more!

Table of contents

How to make your academic presentations more engaging

1. Start with a bang

The first few minutes of your presentation are crucial in setting the tone and grabbing your audience’s attention. So make sure you start strong! An engaging opening anecdote, an interesting statistic or a thought-provoking question are all great ways to get your audience’s attention from the get-go.

2. Keep it relevant

Your audience wants to know why your presentation is relevant to them. So make sure you explain early on in your talk how your research relates to their interests, work or lives. By doing this, you’ll ensure that your audience stays engaged throughout your talk.

3. Make it visual

People are more likely to remember information if it is presented visually. So incorporating images, diagrams and charts into your presentation can be a great way to engage your audience and help them to understand and remember your key points.

4. Use stories

Stories are a powerful way to engage an audience. If you can weave a personal story or case study into your presentation, you’ll not only engage your audience but also make your points more memorable.

5. Keep it simple

Don’t try to pack too much information into your presentation. Instead, focus on delivering a few key messages that you want your audience to remember. By keeping your presentation concise and to-the-point, you’ll engage your audience more effectively.

6. Leave time for questions

Make sure you leave plenty of time at the end of your presentation for questions from your audience. This not only shows that you’re open to feedback and discussion, but also gives your audience a chance to further engage with your research.

Ways to make your speeches or papers more interesting for your audience

1. Use strong language:

Use powerful words and phrases to convey your message clearly and effectively. Avoid using filler words or platitudes that will make your audience tune out.

2. Be engaging:

Make sure to keep your audience engaged by making eye contact, using facial expressions, and speaking with enthusiasm. You want people to be interested in what you’re saying, so it’s important to appear engaged yourself.

3. Use examples:

Providing concrete examples will help your audience to understand your points more clearly. Whether you’re using real-life examples or hypothetical ones, make sure they’re relatable and easy to follow.

4. Be concise:

Don’t try to cram too much information into your speech or paper. Be clear and concise in your delivery, and focus on the most important points that you want to get across.

5. End with a bang:

Just as you start your presentation with an attention-grabbing opening, you’ll want to finish strong as well. Leave your audience with something memorable, whether it’s a thought-provoking question or a powerful call to action.

Tips for delivering an engaging and effective presentation

1. Start with a strong opening.

Your opening should grab your audience’s attention and give them a sense of what your presentation will be about. A good way to do this is to start with a story, joke, or interesting statistic.

2. Make sure your slide deck is visually appealing.

Your slides should be clear, concise, and easy on the eyes. Avoid using too much text or putting too much information on each slide.

3. Use PowerPoint (or another presentation software) wisely.

PowerPoint (or another presentation software) can be a great way to add visual interest to your presentation and help you deliver your message more effectively. However, it’s important to use PowerPoint wisely. Overusing animation and transitions can be distracting, and using too many slides can make your presentation seem like a sales pitch.

4. Practice, practice, practice.

One of the best ways to ensure that your presentation is engaging and effective is to practice it several times before you deliver it. This will help you become more comfortable with your material and help you make any necessary adjustments.

5. Be prepared for questions.

Questions from the audience can be a great way to engage them in your presentation. However, they can also be scary if you’re not prepared for them. It’s important to anticipate questions that your audience may have and to have answers prepared.

The importance of eye contact and body language in presentations

Some people may think that the most important thing when giving a presentation is the verbal content. However, research has shown that nonverbal cues, such as eye contact and body language, are actually more important in conveying your message.

Eye contact is essential in making sure that your audience is engaged with what you’re saying. It helps to create a connection and builds trust. Additionally, it allows you to gauge the reactions of your audience and make any necessary adjustments to your presentation.

Your body language is also important in making sure that your presentation is effective. Make sure that you use open and confident body language. This will help to make your audience feel more comfortable and will make it more likely that they will pay attention to what you’re saying.

How to use humor effectively in academic presentations

Some academics believe that humor should never be used in presentations, while others believe that it can be useful in certain situations. However, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question – it depends on the audience, the topic, and the presenter’s personal style.

If you do decide to use humor in your presentation, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, make sure that your jokes are appropriate for the audience. If you’re presenting to a group of scholars, avoid using toilet humor or crude jokes. Second, don’t use humor as a crutch – if your presentation is weak, adding a few jokes won’t make it better. Finally, be aware of your own personal style – some people are naturally funny, while others are not. If you’re not sure whether you can pull off a joke, it’s probably best to avoid it.

Overcoming stage fright when giving academic presentations

Firstly, it is important to understand what is causing your stage fright. Once you know what is triggering your anxiety, you can start to address it. Common causes of stage fright include worries about the content of your presentation, fears of public speaking, and nervousness about being judged by your peers. Once you know what is causing your stage fright, you can begin to work on overcoming it.

The role of audience interaction in making academic presentations more engaging

Academic presentations can often be seen as dry and dull, with little interaction between the presenter and the audience. However, research has shown that incorporating audience interaction into your presentation can make it more engaging and interesting for both the presenter and the audience.

There are a few different ways that you can incorporate audience interaction into your presentation. One way is to ask the audience questions throughout the presentation and then encourage them to discuss the answers amongst themselves. This not only gets the audience more involved in the presentation, but it also allows you to gauge their understanding of the material.

Another way to incorporate audience interaction is to use group work or activities during your presentation. This can be something as simple as having the audience brainstorm solutions to a problem or discuss a controversial topic. By involving the audience in these activities, you will again get them more engaged with the presentation and ensure that they are taking something away from it.

Making use of technology to enhance engagement in academic presentations

Academic presentations can often be quite dry and boring, especially if they are simply a lecture format. However, by making use of technology, you can easily engage your audience and make your presentation more interactive.

There are a few different ways that you can use technology to engage your audience. One way is to use PowerPoint or another presentation software to create slides that are interactive. For example, you can insert questions into your slides and ask your audience to answer them. You can also use PowerPoint or another presentation software to create polls and surveys that your audience can participate in.

Another way to engage your audience is to use social media. You can live tweet during your presentation or post updates to Facebook or another social media platform. You can also use social media to ask your audience questions or get their feedback on your presentation.

Finally, you can use technology to create an interactive experience for your audience by using virtual reality or augmented reality.

Considerations for designing engaging and visually appealing PowerPoint slides

1. Use high-quality images

When selecting images for your PowerPoint slides, it’s important to choose ones that are high quality and visually appealing. Blurry or low-resolution images will make your slides look unprofessional, so be sure to use images that are crisp and clear. Additionally, try to use images that are relevant to the topic of your presentation.

2. Use slide templates

One way to make sure your PowerPoint slides look professional is to use slide templates. There are many different templates available online, or you can create your own. Using a template will help ensure that your slides have a consistent look and feel.

3. Limit the text on each slide

If you have too much text on a slide, it can be overwhelming for your audience. Try to limit the amount of text on each slide, and use bullet points instead of long paragraphs. Additionally, make sure the font size is large enough to be easily readable.

4. Use colors wisely

When choosing colors for your PowerPoint slides, it’s important to use them wisely. Using too many colors can be distracting, so try to limit yourself to two or three colors. Additionally, make sure the colors you use are easy to read and not too bright.

5. Use animations and transitions sparingly

Animations and transitions can be a great way to add interest to your PowerPoint slides. However, it’s important to use them sparingly. Too many animations and transitions can be distracting and make your presentation seem cluttered.

6. Proofread your slides

Before you finalize your PowerPoint slides, be sure to proofread them for any typos or grammatical errors. Nothing will make your presentation look more unprofessional than errors in your slides.

Best practices for structuring and delivering an engaging academic presentation

– Start with a strong introduction that will grab the attention of your audience and give them an overview of what you will be talking about.

– Organize your presentation in a logical way, using signposting to help guide your audience through your argument.

– Use a variety of delivery methods throughout your presentation, such as slides, video, or interactive activities, to keep things interesting.

– Make sure to practice your presentation beforehand so that you are familiar with the material and can delivery it confidently.

Have you tried any of these tips to make your academic presentations more engaging? What worked well for you? Let us know in the comments below.

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

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How to Create Slides That Suit Your Superiors: 11 Tips

When you’re pitching ideas or budgets to execs in your organization, you need to deliver slides that fit those particular people just right. This checklist identifies the key considerations.

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I recently interviewed 20 of my customers, all in senior roles at Fortune 100 companies, and asked them their biggest pain point in presenting to higher-ups and even colleagues. What I heard consistently was that it can feel like Goldilocks bouncing from one option to the next, testing to figure out what’s “just right.” Does the audience want deep reports? Sparse slides? Something in between? Like … what?

Teams often come to presentation meetings with vast amounts of backup content just in case an exec wants to take a deep dive on any given point. There’s often a struggle to anticipate every direction attendees might want to go. It’s frustrating, and it’s not efficient.

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There are many ways to build slides. I’m not just talking about crafting them well versus poorly. I’m talking about all of the important decisions regarding how to organize them, how much text to use, when to lean into a chart, the best ways to use bullets and color, and whether to include an appendix with additional information. Before you make your next proposal or request of the executive team, use this list of 11 tips for your next set of slides as a guide.

Four Things You Must Have in Every Exec’s Slides

Before we drill down into the harder aspects, the ones where your executives’ tastes may vary widely, let’s quickly cover four aspects that you can consider the building blocks — the basics you should never proceed without.

Start with an executive summary. Begin the slide deck with a tight executive summary that follows a three-act structure. First, start with stating the current realities. Second, clearly state the problem or opportunity your idea addresses and its potential impact. Third, explain how your recommendation solves the problem or exploits the opportunity and the next steps you’re proposing.

Have a logical organization. The arc of the deck — the package from beginning to end — should make sense. If your audience reads only the headline of every slide, the order should be coherent and make most of the case for you. The content below each slide’s headline must support the statement made in the title. Remove everything that doesn’t support your point; as writers will tell you, you sometimes need to “kill your darlings” when you’re editing.

Begin the slide deck with a tight executive summary that follows a three-act structure.

Make it skimmable. Help your audience to quickly grasp the point without getting bogged down in details. Create a clear visual hierarchy. Guide the reader’s eye through the content: Use bold headings, bullet points, and numbered lists to break down information into digestible pieces. Highlight key takeaways or conclusions in a different color or font size to draw attention to these critical points.

Focus on concise insights. Succinct statements with clear insights are everyone’s jam. Every slide should serve a purpose and contribute directly to the decision-making process. Distill complex information. Don’t use 100 words when 20 words will nail it. If you’re having difficulty trimming, consider using company-approved AI tools to help you take out the fluff.

Five Preferences to Confirm With the Person You Want to Reach

Now we’ll delve into what your particular audience does and does not want. If you haven’t yet, start by asking the person you’re presenting to what they generally prefer. They probably know themselves well but have not been asked to articulate how they like to receive information.

Ask how dense is too dense. Some executives prefer detailed slides with comprehensive data. Others favor a more high-level approach. You’re weighing how to balance informative content with readability, ensuring that slides are not overloaded yet are sufficiently detailed to support decision-making.

Confirm the delivery format and timing. Some execs like information presented to them. Others prefer a pre-read of the material followed by a discussion. I always recommend our tool Slidedocs (I’ve written a free e-book on them), which are visual documents using both words and images. The templates help presenters organize their thoughts into a document for a pre-read or a read-along. They are designed to be skimmable and able to travel through your organization without the help of a presenter.

I’m a huge fan of pre-reads and prefer to use my time in meetings to ask questions and build alignment. If your audience didn’t review your material in advance, ask at the top of the meeting whether they would like you to present it or would prefer to read through it and then discuss it.

Find out how much data visualization they prefer. Charts, graphs, photos, and illustrations often communicate complex data more clearly than words alone. When execs can see what you’re saying, they often can better understand the impact of your idea. Does the exec want to understand exact numbers? Bar charts allow them to move their eyes across a series of specifics. Does the exec want to know the shape of a trend over time? Line charts can show the pattern. (See “Classic Charts Communicate Data Quickly.”) Some prefer charts with annotations that draw attention to what you think is the most important point. Others want to make their own conclusions from the data.

One of my clients, the CEO of a massive commercial real estate company, doesn’t want anything visualized. He prefers numbers, only in a table, and only in two colors — black and red. You might think this is archaic. But the fact that he’s clear to his teams about what he wants takes all the mystery out of how to communicate with him.

When the stakes are high, have a conceptual thinker help with diagrams and concepts. If you don’t have one on your team, and when it’s high stakes, find an internal designer to help you or hire one. You can’t afford to have the baby (your idea) thrown out with the bathwater (terrible slides).

Identify which details need spelling out. How well do the people you’re presenting to know the landscape and function of the company and products you’re talking about? For example, if your engineering team threw a slide into a deck about an issue that requires executive approval, do the execs all speak geek? Or do you need to explain the technology so that they will really understand the ask? Either eliminate internal jargon and acronyms or unpack those bits, especially if your proposal deeply involves expertise outside of the executives’ domain.

Ask whether appendices will be useful. When you’re organizing a presentation, you often troll data, read through complicated reports, and even hire external experts to figure out what’s best for the company. Do your execs want access to that supporting data? You can add a document to the end of the presentation as an appendix to show all of the data and source material. This allows the main content of the slides to remain focused and accessible while still providing comprehensive background information for those who want more.

Two Tips to Improve Your Presentation Skills

Getting materials in place is the biggest step. They will be your best tools for selling your ideas. But there are two extra areas to pay attention to as a presenter: how you handle questions and how you use every experience to improve.

Anticipate questions, and practice your answers. Before you have your meeting, gather a small team to challenge every point you make. Invite colleagues you trust to role-play as “a rapidly inquisitive exec” or “the doubting naysayer exec” so you are prepared to present your idea well. They’re gonna grill you, and practicing will help you remain unruffled when it happens.

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Ask for feedback after the presentation. Establish a feedback loop with those you presented to. Ask what worked well and how you can improve. If attendees don’t have the time, find people who have had their ideas funded and talk to them about what they did that worked. Advice and some perspective will help you nail your performance even better next time.

Empathetically understanding your audience members and how they process information, whether it’s executives or peers, sets up your ideas for success. Clarity creates efficiency. When a presentation fits just right, you’ve given your great thinking the best chance of moving through your organization and having maximum impact.

About the Author

Nancy Duarte is CEO of Duarte Inc. , a communication company in the Silicon Valley. She’s the author of six books, including DataStory: Explain Data and Inspire Action Through Story (Ideapress Publishing, 2019).

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