Website maintained by
Andy Wall.
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Oral Presentations
See
Schedule for details.
Oral Presentation Guidelines
Three types of visual equipment will be available for oral presenters:
1. Slide projector
2. Overhead projector
3. Computer (PC) and video projector for PowerPoint presentations. You need to bring your presentation on a flash drives. Also consider bringing an alternative visual presentation in case the computer equipment fails.
Time:
12 minutes of presentation plus 3 minutes for discussion.
Make sure you keep the time limit!!
We will have session chairs that will indicate to you when you have reached the 10-minute mark. To maintain our schedule they will
cut you off after 12 minutes no matter whether your presentation is finished or not.
Practice and time yourself before giving your presentation
Audience:
Presentations should be prepared to reach an interdisciplinary scientific audience. You may assume the audience has basic scientific knowledge, but
do not assume the audience is intimately familiar with your specific field or jargon commonly used in your field. Therefore, you should either
avoid that jargon or define and explain acronyms, terms, and concepts.
Judging:
Judges will be using judging sheets to evaluate your presentation.
Please
familiarize yourself with this sheet and design your presentation accordingly.
Oral Presentation Hints
Although there are many factors which go into an excellent presentation, we would like to emphasize a few points:
1) Use font size that will be large enough to be seen clearly from the back of a room when projected (at least 18 point font, I use 28 or 32
point
for most everything on presentations). Do not try to put too much on a single slide or overhead.
2) Present enough background and introductory material for an audience unfamiliar with your particular field of study to understand the
larger
significance of your work.
3) Speak slowly and clearly. Don't worry about presenting ALL your results.
4) Avoid tables - put your info into a graph, diagram, or sentence. Also, simplify graphs - the audience needs to be able to get the general
idea
quickly. When showing a graph, the very FIRST thing you should do is TELL the audience what the axes are. This helps them understand your graph
quickly.
5) Make sure that your background color, texture, or picture does not interfere with the readability of your text. It doesn't matter how
pretty
your slide is if the audience can't read it!
6) Define terms and abbreviations!!!! This is an interdisciplinary audience. Do not expect everyone to know what you are talking about. For
example, do you know what all these mean?: AFM, TEM, XPS, ICP-AES, XRD, XAFS, tRNA, GC-MS, NMR, AMD, K-spar, SMOW, PDB, BIR, BTEX compounds, MOPS,
PCR, LPS, TCA-cycle, smectite, a, magnetosome, siderophore, saprolite...
7) Practice, practice, practice so that you know you will be within the time limit and you can relax knowing how you will express your
thoughts.
Practice in front of others - at your research group meeting, for example. They can tell you what parts are confusing.
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