Making presentations

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Making presentations

• Psych 231 Research Methods in Psychology

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Presentations

• Presenting your research
• Posters
• Talks
• Papers

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Why do presentations?

• To present your work/theory/research
• Get feedback
• It is an opportunity for peers to ask you
  questions about your work
• For you to ask them questions
• You want your audience to walk away remembering a
  few key points
• So your goal is to be as clear as possible

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Rough sketch of a presentation
Broad

• Introduction of the issue
• Background information
• Specific hypotheses
• Design
• Results
• Interpret the results
• General Conclusions

Specifics of your study
Broad
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Preparation

• Consider your audience
• - who are they, what do they want, what do they
  already know
• Start collecting the things that you think that
  youll need
• - graphs, tables, pictures, examples, data
  analyses, etc.
• Determine the key points that you want them to
  remember
• focus your presentation on these points
• Camping trip analogy
• Your initial pack usually has too much stuff
• Need to figure out what to take out
• Practice, rehearse, and then practice again

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Poster content

• Stick to the hourglass shape for content
• Balance of text and figures
• Use bullet points
• Give example stimuli
• Use large enough font to read from 6 feet away
• End with 3 or 4 key take home points

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Title Authors and affiliation

• Introduction
• Not a lot of detail
• Just the main points
• Hypotheses
• predictions

• Results
• Graphs/tables
• Bullet points of
• main results

• Conclusions
• 3 or 4 take home
• points
• Potential limitations

• Methods
• Not a lot of detail
• just the main points
• Participants
• Design
• IVs DVs
• Examples of stimuli

• References
• If you cite something
• give the full reference

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Title Authors and affiliation

• Methods

• Results

Introduction

• Conclusions

• References

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Brief checklist for the poster

• Initial sketch/outline
• Rough layout
• Balance (text/pictures, data/conclusions)
• Typography
• Movement
• Simplicity
• Final layout

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The pen is mightier than the brush Using
mnemonics Leon DaVinci and Bill
Shakespear Illinois State University
Introduction

• Remembering things is often a
• challenge in everyday life.
• What was I supposed to
• get at the grocery store?
• (Cutting, 2000)
• We examined two factors
• We predicted
• mnemonic devices will help
• memory for both pictures and words
• effect larger for words than pictures

Results

• Stimulus type matters
• participants remembered words
• better than pictures
• Use of mnemonic devices helps
• memory performance
• Potential limitations

• stimulus type pictures/words
• use of mnemonics

• 900 native English speakers
• 2 x 2 between groups design
• Measured the percent correctly recalled
• items from a free recall procedure
• 24 pictures and words

words
pictures
books
Cutting J. C. (2000). Finding things in your
house. Journal of Memory and Stuff, 17,
pg 1-230.
frog
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Presentation of the poster

• Arrive early and set up
• Author(s) stand next to poster
• Have a short walk through presentation ready
• Answer questions (also ask questions)
• Handout copies of the poster available
  (sometimes), or a request sign-up

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Your posters (our checklist)

• Content
• Introduction
• Problem of interest
• Very brief summary of past research
• Basic purpose of experiment(s)
• Hypotheses
• Method
• Brief but clear
• Design
• Materials
• Procedure (brief)

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Your posters (our checklist)

• Content cont.
• Results
• Descriptive statistics
• Inferential results
• Discussion
• Hypothesis rejected or supported
• Implication of results
• A few take home points
• References
• Tables and figures
• Useful info to reader
• Easy to understand

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Your posters (our checklist)

• Format
• Overall clarity
• Organization
• Font size
• Figure/text balance
• Title
• Authors

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Different kinds of talks

• Research Presentations
• (typically 10 to 30 mins)
• Paper with respondent
• Panel Presentation
• Workshop

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Talk Content

• Create a logical progression to the talk
• Hourglass shape
• Work on the transitions between slides
• Be brief, but include enough details so that the
  audience can follow the arguments
• Use slides to help simplify/clarify points
• Include tables, graphs, pictures, etc.
• Dont just read the slides
• but do walk through those that need it (e.g.
  graphs of results)
• Be careful of jargon, explain terms (if in fact
  you really need them)

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Presentation of the talk

• Make it smooth (lots of practice will help)
• Watch your speaking rate (again, practice)
• Maintain eye contact with whole audience
• Emphasize the key points, make sure that the
  audience can identify these
• Point to the slides if it helps
• Beware jokes, can be a double-edged sword
• Dont go over your time

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Dealing with questions

• Repeat the question in your own words
• so that the rest of the audience can hear it
• to make sure that you understood the question
• to buy yourself some time to think about the
  answer
• Try not to be nervous
• you know your study better than anyone else
• When preparing, try to think of likely questions
  and prepare answers

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Checklist for the talk

• Preparation
• Analyze the audience
• Choose your main points
• etc.
• Prepare the Final Outline
• fix any problems/loose ends
• Construct your speaking outline
• e.g., the note cards that youll read
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse