←Back

How to present papers

Organise your work

Before creating your presentation, a key tip is to make sure your summaries are systematically organised into distinct sections (check out “How to write a summary section”). This will make the process of creating your presentation easier and more efficient.

You can use the headings from your summary to create the headings of the presentation slides. For example, if in your summary, there is a section that goes through experimental design, then you can use the same title for a slide. When choosing what information to include on the slides, have a think about the stand-out points from the summary; this may be the information that you feel is most important to share with your audience. Try to condense these points into short bullet points that give the audience a clear idea of what you are then going to speak to them about. This is also a useful way to give yourself prompts of what you want to say.

Know your audience

On a similar note, keep in mind that the audience may not have read the same paper, or research as you, and therefore may not have the same level of knowledge about the topic of discussion. It is therefore important to not overwhelm the slides with information that the audience have to read whilst also trying to listen to the presenter. This can easily lead to key information being missed, and overall reducing the impact of the summary. You, as the presenter, are responsible for conveying what is on the slide to the audience in a clear and complete way.

All about the looks

Colour on a presentation can make your presentation appealing to the audience and increase interest, however, when adding colour, try to stick to a consistent theme and palette as, similar with the number of words on the page, too many colours or patterns can make the slide busy and difficult to follow for the listeners.

How many is too many?

Finally, always think about how many slides are the appropriate number for your presentation. The number of slides you create may depend on how much time you have to present, or the size of the paper. Naturally, you will want to relay as much information from the research paper as you can, but remember, you are presenting a summary of the research. Therefore, you must be selective with your slides so that they contain only the most crucial bits of information. If you find that with the number of slides you have, you are having to rush through the presentation to cover all the information, consider reducing the amount of content.

Making and delivering presentations can be scary, but you can give yourself the best chance of succeeding if the presentation itself is as clean and engaging as possible.

Here is a quick stop list of some do’s and don’ts when it comes to designing a presentation:

DO:

Have clear headings
Have a consistent colour theme
Include images, when appropriate and relevant

DON’T:

Overcrowd the page with information
Have too many slides that you end up only briefly covering each point
Have too little information that the audience do not know what is being spoken about
Make the typeface too small
Have a font that is hard to read
Avoid clashing colours