Presentations

As well as knowing your subject and your audience, on a more practical level you need to know what equipment will be available to use when you make your presentation. For instance, will there be a projector and screen big enough for the whole room to see or will you need to provide handouts to help people follow along with your talk...?

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Whilst you are planning the content of your presentation, you will need to consider how the available resources will affect the organisation and presentation of your talk - how will you use them?

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• What is the room like and where will you stand in relation to the audience?
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• How is the audience's seating arranged (e.g. tables or rows)?
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• Will you be allowed to make any changes to the seating if you need to?
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• What IT equipment is available? Should you bring your own laptop, or have your presentation ready on a memory stick? Is there a working projector with a clear screen?
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• Will you need to print out reference material for the audience to read along with your talk or to take away afterwards? If so, will you hand it out or will it be readily available on chairs or tables before your presentation begins?
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• Do you need to find somewhere appropriate to display a poster beforehand to encourage people to attend?
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Using visual props, such as printed notes, PowerPoint displays or short video excerpts, can certainly help to make the presentation more interesting for your audience, as well as giving you a little breathing space during your talk and something to refer to during questionss. Some topics are also very difficult to convey in words alone, particularly if lots of numerical data is involved, so pre-prepared charts projected for all to see are much easier than a five-minute description, both for the audience and for you!

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However you may have been at a presentations where the talk centred entirely around a PowerPoint slide presentation, during which the speaker just read from the screen, almost making you feel that they may as well have left the slide show to run on its own and not said a word! So remember how you felt in the audience at that time and make sure you consider the advantages and disadvantages of using too many PowerPoint slides or too long a print out before you decide what to use.

Here's an amusing video about this very idea which might give you some clues about what NOT to do:

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If you want your audience to get involved with some interactive exercises, such as writing down ideas from your talk to share as a group, you will need to make sure you have supplied appropriate sized paper (e.g. big sheets of A3 or post-it notes?) and numbers of pens for them to use, as well blu-tac or pins and a space to display their responses if this is a good addition to your talk. Don't be afraid to ask your audience to complete quick activities or answer questions out loud during your talk if it is relevant and might help them engage!

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Little tip: Another good reason to consider having print-outs of your presentation is just in case of equipment failure! At least you will still be able to talk your audience through most of what you had hoped to show them so that their time has not been completed wasted. You don't always need to provide a complete copy of your presentation - just a few important points on the page may be enough. If it is a class presentation, check with your teacher as to whether you should or can do this.

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