1、How to givesuccessfuloral and posterpresentationsJ.W. NiemantsverdrietSchuit Institute of Catalysis,Eindhoven University of TechnologyEindhoven, The NetherlandsSee also:http:/ www.efcats.org1How to give a successful oral presentationdevelop your own presentation style but try to avoid commonly made
2、mistakesIntroductionHow often have you been listening to oral presentations that dealt with interesting science while you nevertheless had difficulty to pay attention till the end? How often did you lose your interest before the speaker had even come halfway? Was it because of the subject of the tal
3、k or was it the way the speaker presented it? Many presentations concern interesting work, but are nevertheless difficult to follow because the speaker unknowingly makes a number of presentation errors. By far the largest mistake is that a speaker does not realize how an audience listens. If you are
4、 well aware of what errors you should avoid, the chances are high that you will be able to greatly improve the effectiveness of your presentations. The Attention CurveThe average attendee of a conference is by all means willing to listen to you, but he is also easily distracted. You should realize t
5、hat only a minor part of the people have come specifically to listen to your talk. The rest is there for a variety of reasons, to wait for the next speaker, or to get a general impression of the field, or whatever. Figure 1 illustrates how the average audience pays attention during a typical present
6、ation of, lets say, 30 minutes. Almost everyone listens in the beginning, but halfway the attention may well have dropped to around 10-20% of what it was at the start. At the end, many people start to listen again, particularly if you announce your conclusions, because they hope to take something aw
7、ay from the presentation. What can you do to catch the audiences attention for the whole duration of your talk? The attention curve immediately gives a few recipes: Almost everyone listens in the beginning. This is THE moment to make clear that you will present work that the audience cannot afford t
8、o miss. If you want to get your message through, you should state it loud and clear in the beginning, and repeat it at the end. The best approach, however, is to divide your presentation in several parts, each ended by an intermediate conclusion, see Figure 2. People in the audience who got distract
9、ed can always easily catch up with you, particularly if you outline the structure of your talk in the beginning. ConclusionAudienc Atenio TimeFigure 1 Typical attention the audience pays to an average presentation2Why does an audience get distracted?There are many reasons why this may happen, some m
10、ay be outside your control, such as inadequate sound systems, poor overhead projectors, or noisy conference centers with cardboard walls between two sessions running in parallel. What you can do, is avoid anything that may encourage the audience to stop listening. Such mistakes fall in two classes:
11、speakers errors and presentation errors. We list a couple of the most common ones, most are self explanatory. 1) The speaker lives in his own little world of research, he believes that all the background information needed to appreciate the meaning of his work is common knowledge. This is seldom the
12、 case!2) The structure of the presentation is unclear, and consequently the line of reasoning is hard to follow. Important matters as problem identification, aims, or motivation are insufficiently clear.AUDIENCES LOVE BACKGROUND INFORMATION!You can raise the interest of attendees who are not per def
13、inition interested in your subject, by giving them the impression that they will learn something from your talk. Note that this part of the audience is more interested in general aspects than in the details. You certainly need to give them a good introduction into the background of your subject, bef
14、ore they can fully appreciate the subtleties of your work. Hence, you should spend at least some 30% of your time on general themes, e.g. what is known about the catalytic reaction and the catalysts and how it is applied in industry, or perhaps a less known method of research that is more generally
15、applicable, etc. A large part of the audience may find this very useful to know. But what is even more important, with sufficient background information they will understand a lot more about your specific results, i.e. that part of the talk you are most proud of.Introduction Various ThemesAudience A
16、tentioTimeIntermediateConclusionIntermediateConclusion FinalConclusionsAverage PresntationEficient PresntationIntermediateConclusionFigure 2 Ideal attention curve of an audience when the speaker divides his talk in recognizable parts, each summarized by intermediate conclusions. If people loose thei
17、r attention for some reason, they can easily catch up with the speaker in one of his intermediate summaries. The big advantage of this approach is that every important item is said several times. Repeating the essentials is the key to getting your message across33) Visual aids (transparencies, slide
18、s) are inadequate, confusing, unreadable, too small, too crowded, etc. Some speakers show too many in a too short time (one per minute is not bad as a rule of thumb).4) The speaker uses long, complicated sentences; he uses unnecessary jargon, abbreviations or difficult words. Passive sentences (“Fro
19、m this figure it was deduced that ” or ”It was therefore concluded that ) are more difficult to follow than active ones (”This figure implies that ” or ”Therefore, we conclude that ” ). 5) Even worse is when the speaker reads his speech from paper and forgets that a) written language is usually more
20、 formal and complicated than language used in everyday conversations, andb) reading written text goes a lot faster than impromptu speaking. In such cases the audience will definitely experience information overload. Of course we sympathize with the speaker who feels insufficiently confident in Engli
21、sh. However, reading a text is almost always an unsatisfactory solution. And after all, nobody in the audience will blame you for a couple of mistakes in the language, English will be a foreign language for the majority of the participants.6) Monotonous sentences, spoken either too fast or too slowl
22、y, lack of emphasis, unclear pronunciation, all make it difficult for the listeners to stay attentive. Some speakers turn their back to the audience and watch the projection screen while they are talking, in stead of trying to make visual contact with the audience.How to organize your presentationYo
23、u should be aware of fundamental differences between an oral presentation and a written report. In the presentation the listener by necessity has to follow the order in which the speaker presents his material. The reader of an article can skip parts, go back to the materials section, take a preview
24、at the conclusions when he reads the results, etc. Exactly because of this reason, all scientific reports follow the generally adopted structure of Abstract Introduction Experimental Methods Results Discussion Conclusions References. However, this structure is totally UNSUITABLE for an oral presenta
25、tion. Nevertheless, the majority of contributed talks at a conference adheres to it.Why is this generally accepted structure unsuitable for lectures? Because the listener will have to remember details about the experimental methods until the results are presented, and he must recall the various resu
26、lts when the speaker deals with the discussion. In other words, details that should be combined (the why, how, what and what does it mean of a particular experiment) are treated separately. You ask a lot from the audience if they need to remember all these facts and figures until at the end you expl
27、ain how these bits and pieces fit in a larger picture.Grouping together what belongs together is a much better way to organize your talk. Hence, if you discuss characterization by e.g. XPS, you start this part of the presentation with a few introductory remarks of what you want to learn about your c
28、atalyst, how XPS may help you Not too fast, please.!Many speakers have rehearsed their talk so often that they speak too fast. Others simply have so much to cover, that the only way to stay within the allotted time is to speed up. Of course, this is not in the interest of the audience, particularly
29、not at an international meeting. and try to vary your paceAs a rule of thumb, speaking at 150 words per minute is all right. However, try to vary your rate. Key ideas, complicated points, or concluding remarks (you may want to use one at the end of every slide you show) are best presented at a slowe
30、r pace.4to provide this information, then you show a few results and you discuss what they mean. End with a conclusion. Then you go to the next item in your presentation, which may be determination of particle size by TEM. When finished with this, you may give an overall conclusion on the state of y
31、our catalyst before you go on to speak about catalytic behavior. Figure 3 In an oral presentation you should group together what belongs together.In Ten Steps To a Successful PresentationYou should realize that the two key issues in the preparation of a talk are: The message: What do I want the audi
32、ence to know when I am finished? The audience: How do I present my talk such that the audience will understand and remember what I have to say?1) Start in time.Once you submitted the abstract to the conference organizers, it is time to start thinking about how you organize the material in a talk if
33、your abstract will have been accepted. Read about the background of your work, read related work, look at your own results regularly and think about the most relevant conclusions. Try to imagine what type of audience you would have and consider what you would have to include as background informatio
34、nGenral Introductionnot o short, is very much apreciated bya lrge pa f th audieneCatlyst the right figure explains itself.12figures. Try to avoid tables as much as possible. Figures and captions should be easy to read (see also Figures 4-6). Consider adding a brief conclusion below every figure. 4)
35、Conclusion. Write the conclusions in short, clear statements, preferably as a list. Finish with an assessment of what you have achieved in relation to your objectives, and, perhaps, what your future plans are. 5) Attention getters. How are you going to draw the peoples attention? An attractive title
36、 serves as such to some extent, but is not enough. Select one of your most important results, a photo, a scheme explaining the scientific background, a model or the main conclusion, or whatever you consider as highlight of your presentation and give it a prominent place on your poster, for example i
37、n the middle or at the beginning. This is what the audience will see first. It should raise their interest and stimulate them to read your poster.6) Layout. Arrange all the parts of the poster around your attention getter. Add headers if necessary to clarify the structure of your poster, and add eve
38、rything else that is needed, such as literature, acknowledgements. Ensure that author name(s) and affiliation are on the poster. 7) Review, revise, optimize. Ask your co-authors and/or colleagues to comment on a draft version of your poster. Assess very critically if the poster indeed conveys the me
39、ssage you want. A good poster enables the reader to grasp the message in a short time, e.g. less than a minute. If he finds the subject of interest he will stay to learn about the details, and discuss the work with the presenter. If you fail to get the readers attention in a short time, he is likely
40、 to go on to the next poster, unless he really wants to know about your work. FinallyWe hope that the recommendations in this brochure will help you to present effective talks and posters at future scientific meetings. Too many interesting pieces of research go lost because they are not presented pr
41、operly. Yours will not, if you work on your presentations skills. Remember that this brochure does not intend to offer a standard template for talks or posters, you should develop your own presentation style. Just try to avoid the mistakes that so many of your colleagues (including experienced scien
42、tists, yes, even Nobel Prize winners) make J.W. NiemantsverdrietEFCATS President 1999-2001Schuit Institute of CatalysisEindhoven University of TechnologyMarch 2000Literature: P. Kenny, A Handbook of Public Speaking for Scientists and Engineers, Adam Hilger Ltd, Bristol, 1982. V. Booth, Communicating
43、 in Science: Writing a Scientific Paper and Speaking at Scientific Meetings, 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. M. Davis, Scientific Papers and Presentations, Academic Press, San Diego, 1996.A checklist for analyzing oral presentations, and examples of posters can be found on
44、www.efcats.org13Checklist for Analyzing Oral Presentations1) Contentsa) Recognizable Structureb) Introduction:i) Strong openingii) Informative on general backgroundiii) Identifies scientific questioniv) Explains the approach to solve this questionc) Main parti) Logical structureii) Not too much info
45、rmationiii) No irrelevant detailsiv) Short summaries or conclusions per subjectd) Conclusionsi) Clearly announcedii) Only important pointsiii) Relation with scientific question in the introductioniv) Effective closing2) Presentationa) Use of language i) Casual or formal language ii) Jargon, abbrevia
46、tionsiii) Clear pronunciationiv) Varying pace and pitchv) Use of emphasis where necessaryb) Contact with audiencei) Speaks towards the audienceii) Enthusiasmiii) Natural gesturesc) Visual aidsi) Readable letteringii) Clear self-explanatory slidesiii) Efficient, easy to understand figures iv) Text in
47、 headlinesd) Timingi) Balanced timing per partii) Finishes in time, without hurrying towards the end3) General impressiona) Correct level for majority of the audience?b) Not too much material?c) Audience learned about general background?d) Background sufficient to appreciate details?e) Message clear?
