One of the worst things I experienced in university education is that you never explicitly learn how to do certain things. You're just expected to know how to. This holds for writing essays, giving presentations, well even writing exams. The only source of whether you performed good or bad is the feedback you receive afterwards. And let's be honest: This feedback is most often rather well-meant positive than overwhelmingly helpful. Even my methodologically-focused masters's program does not incorporate something like a specific methods seminar. About two years ago I decided that if no one will teach me how to do these presentations I had to do some proactive research plus read some things about rhetoric. For me personally, the bad thing is that after this research I have given one single presentation and thus wasn't really able to transfer my theoretical knowledge to the practice. Nevertheless, in the following list I'm going to present ten general tips for good presentations which I consider to be among the most important.
Come early. In fact, better come really early. You should have enough time to setup your equipment and run through your notes again. Most presentations will nowadays have some power point-esque aid. This stuff needs to work when the audience is there and awaits your start. On the one hand, because they get either nervous for you, most likely bored or may think you're incompetent. On the other, it will make yourself endlessly nervous which - of course - has to be avoided.
Structure your presentation and communicate it. There is this infamous quote Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them. which - if not taken too literally - can be a reasonable guideline for a broad structure. Most often it is best to assume your fellow students will not have any clue about what you are going to talk about. After your opening give them a short insight into what's coming. During your presentation remind them of this but don't overdo it. The point is that after a big chunk of information, sum it up in 2-3 sentences and use it to create a bridge to what's coming next.
Don't learn by heart, learn by ideas. Never ever try to memorize your whole speech - for several reasons. 1) It will sound ridiculously monotone and the audience will negatively notice immediately. 2) All it takes is you forgetting one word and you're totally thrown off. 3) Any interruption will cause point 2.
Draw attention to yourself, not the slides. Some people tend to forget they are not a lecturer but just giving a student presentation, so they copy their style and pack their slides with lots and lots of information. In general, if the slides provide more than 50% of the information you provide during your talk, it's bad. The audience has to make a judgement of what to attend to. If the slides are better at this than you, you're in trouble.They can either listen or read, but not both. If you need some visual notes, don't put this on the slides but use the notes-feature plus a presentation view (only you see the notes) all applications have nowadays.
Engage the audience. In the age of 140-character communication people tend to have a quite short attention span. The most powerful way of "resetting" this is to involve them. This can be done by asking a question, take a poll or appeal to emotions by relating to (possibly shared) past experiences. A rule of thumb is to do this at least every five minutes.
Retain eye contact. It's simple but powerful. A good idea is to not switch around all the time but retain eye contact with one member of the audience for about half a minute. This will make them feel a lot more involved in your presentation.
Slow down and make pauses. Lowering your pitch at the end of sentences is the most important issue almost every student isn't able to do. The problem is that when you constantly keep up your pitch you build up a lot of tension for the audience as well of yourself. What happens is that you most certainly will start using a lot of fillers like "ah" or "umm" because you speak faster than you can organize the following thoughts. Besides, the members of the audience also need time to process what you tell them. Lower your voice/pitch and make a brief pause (~ 3 seconds). Whenever you do these kinds of pauses, retain eye contact! Listeners then will notice that you do this pause deliberately and for them to process your thoughts. If you look on your screen they might think you just forgot how to continue. Best time for pauses: After switching to the next slide, before talking about it.
Use analogies. During your presentation you will probably explain difficult processes / theories / experiments to an audience which is not on the same level of information in that specific field. It is incredibly helpful to use simple analogies. If you chosse them clever it makes your audience more likely to think about it and you have indirectly engaged them.
Be enthusiastic. I know it's hard but the more enthusiastic you are the more the listeners are willing to pay attention. This is just a matter of practice and willingness.
Keep track of the time and adjust accordingly. You most likely have an allocated amount of time which you're not supposed to exceed or even a specific length of time. It is important to plan ahead in preparation to be able to account for you being either too slow or too fast. This means that on the one hand you should be able to skip a small part if you're too slow and extend another if you're too fast. The best way for the latter is to explain a diagram a little more detailed than originally planned.
This isn't nearly an exhausting list but I think it is a lot worthier to keep these general things in mind opposed You should have X seconds per slide, use red, yellow and 24 point Arial. on which other lists of this sort often focus. Discussion appreciated. I might be willing put together some more detailed lists f.e. about Slides or Rhetoric if wished.
