# 13. Presenting your research

How to prepare

Practice. Multiple times.

Make sure you know how the equipment works.

Keep it short. Stay within the time limit.

Reserve time for questions.

Think about what you want from the audience.

Your presentation

On your slides, use a large font size, preferably more than 24 pt.

DO NOT USE ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME – IT BLURS THE ATTENTION OF YOUR AUDIENCE.

On each slide, present only a few bits of information, preferably less than 5 ‘bullets’.

Use the same font and the same design of slides throughout your presentation.

Use images and graphics.

…..in such a way that they do not divert the attention of the audience to your message.

Don’t let the text of your slides “fly in”. You can let them appear.

Make sure your presentation file is compatible with the equipment in the room. If you don’t know what kind of equipment is available, also save your presentation as a pdf file.

In the room

Put your presentation on the system and check if it’s working properly.

In Acrobat Reader, press CTRL-L to display your file on a LARGE screen. In PowerPoint, press F5 or Shift-F5 to start.

Creating your presentation

Put your main result in the title.

Start with your research question.

Wake up the audience with an anecdote, a cartoon or something funny.

Do not present the structure of your presentation on a separate slide. The audience will find out what the structure is along the way.

If you have an empirical paper:

- Focus on the results.
- Spend less time on the hypotheses.
- Don’t show tables of results. Select the most relevant coefficients and present those in a graph. Add a note disclosing the data source and model estimated, including a list of variables that you included as covariates in the analysis (if any).

Put questions or findings as titles above your slides, not topics.

Use metaphors that spark the imagination.

You can suggest questions for discussion to the audience. What do you want to know from or discuss with the audience?

Put additional results, examples, and references on extra slides that you can show in response to questions from the audience.

How to present

Vary the tone of your voice.

Stand up. Don’t sit down.

Present. Don’t read your paper.

Look at people in the audience.

Avoid looking at one and the same person all of the time. Look around.

Be friendly. You’re not at war.

Watch this TED talk by Will Stephen for suggestions on how to convince your audience: http://boingboing.net/2016/03/14/will-stephen-gives-a-ted-talk.html

If you present your research on a poster, follow advice by Colin Purrington: https://colinpurrington.com/tips/poster-design/