How to Give an Oral Presentation

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How to Give an Oral Presentation

• CURO Symposium Workshop

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Outline

• Basic Rules of 15-Minute Presentation
• Purpose and Audience
• Content and Organization
• Visual Presentation
• Oral Presentation
• PRACTICE

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Basic Rules of 15-Minute Presentation

• 15 minutes per speaker
• 2 minutes for convener/faculty to introduce
• 10 minutes for presentation
• 3 minutes for questions
• Average 1 slide per minute, for a total of about
  10 slides

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Purpose and Audience

• SURP/CURO Purpose Multidisciplinary forum to
  share research
• YOUR Purpose To share your research in this
  forum
• To achieve YOUR purpose, you must convey your
  research to the multidisciplinary forum (general
  audience)

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Content and Organization
Introduction and Background
Hypothesis
Methodology - Picture, Diagram, Schematic
Results - Graph, Picture, Chart, Table
Conclusions and Future Directions
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Introduction and Background

• Introduction
• State of the field OR context of topic
• Terminology and vocabulary
• Questions addressed by research
• Background
• All relevant information needed to understand
  questions
• Purpose and significance of research

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Hypothesis or Thesis

• Central point around which your presentation
  pivots
• Clear and concise statement
• Ifthen statements
• Question
• Topic/comment

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Methodology

• Present as few experiments at a time as possible
• Clear description of the methods used to obtain
  results

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Methodology

• All pertinent information to experimental
  procedure is given
• Purpose
• Controls
• Independent/dependent variables
• Unimportant conditions or variables are excluded
• Diagrams/flow charts/graphics are better than text

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Protocol
Bad Method Slide Example

• Pathogen and normal flora cultures were grown in
  appropriate media.
• 9.0-9.9 ml of cell suspension was mixed with
  0.1-1ml amounts of stock psoralen to give final
  psoralen concentrations of 1,3,5,7, and 10 mg/L.
• Mixtures were allowed to sit for 10min and placed
  under UVA lamp.
• Number of surviving cells were determined at 20s
  intervals by removing 0.1ml with a Gibson pipette
  and preparing serial dilutions in MRD.
• After last extraction, survival of the cells was
  calculated using n/no x 100.
• nnumber recovered at time t
• noinitial number

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Good Method Slide Example
The Efficacy of Psoralen Assay
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Results

• Concise description of results/discussion
• Graphical/visual representation with appropriate
  labels
• End with the summary of results

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Conclusions and Future Directions

• Answer questions asked in introduction
• Relate results/conclusions with hypothesis
• Identify new questions created by your research

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In a nutshell

• Tell them what youre going to tell them
• Tell them
• Tell them what you told them

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Visual Representation

• No more than 6 lines of text per slide
• Bullet points, not sentences
• Font no smaller than 20
• Use as many figures, diagrams, and illustrations
  as possible
• Keep slides simple and clear
• REMEMBER TO CITE when appropriate

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Oral Presentation

• Project voice
• Pace
• Enunciate
• Body control, placement, and language
• Eye contact
• Laser pointer usage

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Practice, Practice, Practice!

• Check equipment
• Backups of presentation
• Check slides for errors and formatting
• Practice with live audience
• Get feedback
• Answer questions
• Practice in room of presentation if possible

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Things to remember

• You are the expert on your research.
• Its okay to say I dont know.
• Its okay to postulate as long as you make it
  clear you are doing so.
• Special thanks to
• Patrick Curtis
• Anita DeRouen
• Emily DeCrescenzo Henriksen
• Ivy Holliman
• Cynthia McMeekin
• Marie Milward