How to Give an Oral Presentation

A part of the CURO Resource series

Outline Oral Session Guidelines Purpose and Audience (What and who) Content and Organization Visual Presentation (balance, balance,

balance) Oral Presentation “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Things to remember

Oral Session Guidelines

Sessions are 50 minutes in length (per the M/W/F class schedule)

Sessions will begin and end on time Presenters per session 15 minutes per presenter (strictly

enforced) 2 minutes for convener/faculty to

introduce 10 minutes for presentation 3 minutes for questions

Purpose and Audience CURO’s Purpose: Multidisciplinary undergraduate

research conference and premiere academic event of the year, showcasing accomplishments of undergraduate researchers.

YOUR Purpose: To share your research in this forum. To achieve your purpose, you must convey your

research to a general audience; however, you must also be aware of your co-presenters and the audience who choose to attend a session with these presenters.

Content and Organization

Hypothesis

Methodology - Picture, Diagram, Schematic

Results - Graph, Picture, Chart, Table

Conclusions and Q&A

Introduction and Background

Introduction and Background Introduction

State of the field OR context of topic Terminology and vocabulary Questions addressed by research

Background All relevant information needed to

understand questions Purpose and significance of research

Hypothesis or Thesis

Central point around which your presentation pivots

Clear and concise statement “If…then” statements Question Topic/comment

Methodology Present as few experiments at a

time as possible Clear description of the methods

used to obtain results

Methodology All pertinent information to

experimental procedure is given Purpose Controls Independent/dependent variables Unimportant conditions or variables are

excluded Diagrams/flow charts/graphics are

better than text

Protocol:Pathogen and normal flora cultures

were grown in appropriate media.9.0-9.9 ml of cell suspension was mixed

with 0.1-1ml amounts of stock psoralen to give final psoralen concentrations of 1,3,5,7, and 10 mg/L.

Mixtures were allowed to sit for 10min and placed under UVA lamp.

Number of surviving cells were determined at 20s intervals by removing 0.1ml with a Gibson pipette and preparing serial dilutions in MRD.

After last extraction, survival of the cells was calculated using n/no x 100.n=number recovered at time tno=initial number

Bad Method Slide Example

The Efficacy of Psoralen Assay

Good Method Slide Example

Results

Concise description of results/discussion

Graphical/visual representation with appropriate labels

End with the summary of results

Conclusions and Q&A

Answer questions asked in introduction

Relate results/conclusions with hypothesis

Identify new questions created by your research

The previous 9 slides in three sentences Tell them what you’re going to tell

them Tell them Tell them what you told them

Visual Representation

No more than 6 lines of text per slide Bullet points, not sentences

Font no smaller than 20 Use as many figures, diagrams, and

illustrations as possible Keep slides simple and clearREMEMBER TO CITE when

appropriate

Effective Presentation

Project voice Pace Enunciate Body control, placement, and

language Eye contact Laser pointer usage

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Practice, Practice, Practice!

Before the day of the Symposium: Practice with live audience

▪ Get feedback▪ Answer questions: your friends’ questions will

likely be the same as your audience The night before the Symposium:

Check equipment Backups of presentation Check slides for errors and formatting

Practice, practice, practice (Cont.) The day of the Symposium:

Make certain you have:▪ Your equipment▪ Back-up presentation

Arrive at the Classic Center at least 15 minutes before the beginning of your session.

Check-in at the main table and pick up your packet. Find your assigned room. When the room is open, enter and find the room

convener and introduce your self. Make certain the convener know how to pronounce your name and, if they are introducing you, your abstract title, mentor’s name and department.

Things to remember… You are the expert on your research. But

your expertise will always be limited to where you are in your development as a researcher.

Become comfortable with “I don’t know.” Being an expert on your research efforts doesn’t guarantee omniscience about the whole field.

It’s okay to postulate or speculate as long as you make it clear you are doing so.