Prof. Ranade's Writing Tips for Seminar Presentations (VERY useful)
Further Tips on preparing and making presentations
Main Credit: Malathi Veeraraghavan, Director of Computer Engineering,
University of Virginia
(*ed entries are additions/modifications by Varsha)
Pay attention to sizes and styles of fonts used within a slide and also from slide-to-slide. Be consistent.
Use animation when it adds value. In other words, don't arbitrarily animate everything! Yet do incorporate animation. When done well, it can be effective.
There should be NO grammar or spelling errors (not even ONE).
Use figures as much as possible – ''a picture is worth a thousand words! ''
Do not overcrowd information on slides. In general make only one point per slide.
*Do not put anything on the slide that you have trouble explaining.
*Do not just show a slide and move it quickly – it is better to remove it.
*If you write an equation that requires some explanation, use arrows to point to variables/sub-expressions (using brace brackets) and textboxes.
When you present, speak slowly and deliberately. Make sure your audience is understanding. Stop and invite questions.
*Do not read out the title of each slide. Instead, smoothly flow into a slide from the previous one, and if you must, then weave the title into a sentence.
Look each individual in the audience. Constantly make eye contact (with all members of the audience).
Be sensitive to audience's body language. Often, people shuffle their feet or look at their watches, etc. If this is happening overwhelmingly, STOP.
Practice your talk at least two times. Your first practice should be focused on flow and content. The second run should target time. If your talk takes longer than allocated time, make changes and practice again.
It is better to make fewer points clearly rather than to rattle off a large number of points at a superficial level.
With graphs, always explain the axes first.
With graphs and tables, be sure they are legible. Use large fonts. Using animations to add in plot lines for different values of parameters is excellent to draw an audience's attention to the impact of the parameter.
With tables, explain header rows and the first column clearly first.
Limit number of slides based on the time available using roughly a 2-3 minutes/slide rule.
Especially for non-native English speakers, write out your whole talk and memorize it. Speak in full sentences. Even if at first it seems unnatural, it is a whole lot better to err in this direction rather than in the direction of sentences with broken grammar, or with a whole lot of ''ahems'' and throat-clearings.
In preparing for questions, again DO NOT WING IT. Anticipate questions. Write out full-sentence answers and memorize your answers.
*If you are not sure about a question, but are still trying to answerit, state clearly that you are making your best guess.
*(For Seminar Presentations:) Some questions that you will almost surely get:
What did you conclude from this seminar?
In general – a lot of ``why's''. Why do you say this is better? Why is this design chosen? Why didn't the earlier method work? Etc.
For an one hour presentation, your preparation time after you make your presentation should be at least ten hours!