Effective Scientific Presentations and Posters

09.00-09.30

Introductions and objectives

Defining personal aims and objectives for the course

9.30-10.30

Planning your presentation
Being invited to speak. Defining your audience. How to construct an exciting presentation. Differences between papers and presentations. Successful presentations for different audiences. Planning tips and techniques. Mini-exercise – making a plan for a presentation.

What to say and how to say it

Should you ever read a presentation? Special considerations for technical material. Choosing and using words for intellectual and emotional impact. Making your presentation memorable. Rhetorical devices. The importance of non-verbal communication and basics of body language. What to say in response to difficult questions.

10.30-10.45

Break

10.45-12.45

Preparing your visual aids
Choosing your medium. Turning ideas into illustrations. Basic rules for slides and overheads. Text, photos, tables, graphs, bar charts, pie charts. How to edit slides for clarity and impact. Getting the best (and worst) out of Powerpoint.

12.45-13.30

Lunch

(Note- this could be extended by 15 mins if necessary to give people time to make last-minute adjustments to their presentations)

13.30-15.00

Presentation practice

Each participant has the chance to give a five-minute presentation and to receive feedback from their peers.

Introducing posters

What is a poster? What is it for? How do people read posters?

15.00-15.15

Break

15.15-16.45

Exercise – the poster beauty parade. Rate sample posters in order of attractiveness/readability and be ready to justify your choices Getting started. How does a poster differ from a paper? What information do you need and where do you get it? What technical resources do you need? Principles of data selection for posters. Balance of Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion/Conclusions, tables and figures. Do you need an abstract? How to write the text for a poster. Ten rules for conciseness and clarity. Giving your poster an effective title. Feedback on participants' posters