Presenting Your Research: Guidelines To Consider When Making An Academic Presentation

To a large extent, academic presentations can be considered as one of the key forms of scholarly communication. This article explains how it is possible to stand out and deliver a speech at a conference or seminar, and even when conducting a thesis defines. Below is advice that needs to be followed while preparing for presentations to enhance the presentation’s conceivability.

1. Know Your Audience

That means understanding who you are presenting to be always important. Are they specialized in your area of practice or have they generated a diverse practice? Tailor your content accordingly:

- For experts: In your summaries, concentrate on what you have to say, specifics of implementation, and advanced evaluation.

- For generalists or interdisciplinary audiences: Make your complex ideas concise and stress the importance of your mission in terms that are quite easy to comprehend.

 2. Structure Your Presentation

Organization of the presentation facilitates communication of the findings. Consider the following structure:

- Introduction: The first strategy is to start strongly, this is creating an interesting introduction to the text. In the first chapter, you should outline your research question concisely, briefly discuss why it is important, and explain what literature gap your study aims to fill.

- Methodology: Here I briefly discuss the methods used to carry out my research and the justification for the selected methods.

- Results and Discussion: On general approach to presenting your findings should be thoroughly calculated and formulated in a logical manner linking with the research question.

- Conclusion: Finally, recapping the major research conclusions recommended the future research areas.

3. Focus on the Key Points

When designing your interface, it can be quite tempting to focus on every single element on the site and its functionality but your users or viewers are always limited to what they can comprehend. Be very clear from the start and specifically determine the issues which you want them to recall. Do not use fancy language and avoid inserting too much professional terms unless you are addressing an expert group.

4. Create Effective Visual Aids

Don’t let the visuals overpower the content or message of your graphic that you are trying to convey. Follow these guidelines for slides:

- Keep it simple: Less is more; no more than bullets, but preferably simple statements.

- Graphs and charts: However, be careful with presenting data in a visual form: graphs and tables should be clear and, if possible, named.

- Use visuals sparingly: One of the mistakes people make is using many slides or on the other hand cramming the whole content on one slide. Each slide should have one concept.

5. Practice, Practice, Practice

Rehearsing your presentation is essential:

- Time yourself: Also, to ensure that you are within the time limit avoid putting a lot of information into your work.

- Run through it with a colleague or mentor: They can help you understand how well your message gets through and how you deliver it.

- Practice in front of a mirror: This aids in the expression on the body as well as confidence.

6. Engage with Your Audience

- Make eye contact: Making direct eye contact with the audience takes your presentation to the next level personal.

- Ask questions: At the end of presentation or within the presentation if it is feasible ask, whether questions can be asked. It also not only makes the audience warm up and interested in the process but also helps you to analyze how much they actually grasp what you do.

- Tell a story: Put your work into context in terms of a historically or chronologically larger story. It will assist your audience to find relevance of their world with your work and the other way round.

7. Manage Nerves

One can get very anxious when presenting, especially in the intensive academic environment.
- Prepare thoroughly: The more familiar you are with your topic then the more prepared you will be to handle whatever questions get thrown at you.

- Breathe deeply: Before starting reading pay attention to few breaths of fresh air, it can help to decrease pressure.

- Focus on the message: This will save you time and create more effective graphs than worrying about how you are ‘selling’ the research.

8. Handle Questions Confidently

Another point you will find rather forcible is when you are done presenting your ideas and you move to the question and answer session. Here’s how to handle it:

- Listen carefully: Be very careful when answering the question especially if you have not understood it at first instance. Don’t be shy to seek clarification from anyone who you think would be willing to given it.

- Stay calm: If they do not know the answer to a question then, they shouldn’t be afraid to say that they don’t. At some point, you can offer to contact the person later, providing additional data.

- Be concise: Between questions, writes concise responses of no more than 2-3 sentences.

 9. End Strong

Summarize for the audience and then come up with a memorable closing statement. Repeat the main points of your talk and make a final statement that provides an implication of your work or a call for future studies.

 10. Follow Up

After your presentation, speak to those people who showed interest in what you had to say. Asking the participants to share copies of their slides or inviting them to provide extra information about their research helps to bring new partners to joint academic projects.

Final Thoughts

In order to present the research one needs to have good content, manner in which the content is presented and maybe how the audience will be involved. That is why adhering to these tips and spending time on preparation you will make your presentation not only informative, but also effective.

The current blog post is quite useful and can be helpful for both new as well as experienced researchers, who want to give better presentations with less effort.