Research presentation 1: Three elements and two keys to make it impressive
Hey, it’s Dr. Liu here with Better LIFE Research TIPS. Today I will show you the three elements that make an effective research presentation, and the two keys to make it impressive.
Communication is an essential part of research, because research is not a personal thing. Researchers always need to communicate and learn from each other in order to be relevant. In addition to publication, research presentation provides a great opportunity for us to establish and expand the influence of our work, to get feedback, and to be connected with the community. It will put us at great advantage if we are able to present our research effectively and confidently, without the need to memorize our speech word for word, or the need to keep reading our notes or ppt slides. In order to be able to do that, first we need a clear structure for our speech.
Structure provides freedom for our speech. When we put our messages into a clear structure that is easy to remember, we will be more flexible and more confident on stage. Even if sometimes we forget what we plan to say, a clear structure can always help us to get back on track. Structure also sets expectations for audience, it provides a map to prevent the audience from getting lost. When we set structure for our speech, it is important to know that speech and writing are two different modes of communication. Speech requires simple structure. Generally, most people can easily handle 3 to 5 bullet points at one time. If more than that, it would be difficult, for both the speaker and the audience.
A very effective structure for a typical research presentation include 3 elements, or 3 parts. They are problem, solution, and benefit. We want to start by explaining the problem. What is the problem? Why we should care? Why we want to talk about it today? The key message is, why is it important? Not only why it is important to us, but also why it is important to the audience or the general public. In order to answer this question well, it is important to have some basic understanding of our audience. As we explain the problem, we also want to spend some time to establish our personal credibility. It can be done effectively and briefly in 2 to 3 sentences, talking about our personal experience related with the topic, and why I am the one working on it and speaking on it? After we answer that question, we actually win the right to speak and get needed attention from the audience.
Then we may enter the second part, the solution. This part often contain most of the technical details in our speech, including our methods and results. But we’d better try our best to keep it simple. In a typical conference where we give research presentations, most of our audience are well educated, but they are not necessarily the experts in our specific field. We’d better keep our technical details at a level that most audience can understand no matter they are an expert or not. We want to find creative way to reduce details and highlight the key message. Also, there is no need to cover the whole paper. It would be better to focus on the most innovative, or the most brilliant part of our work, and make it easy to understand in the limited time of our speech. We do not want to put our audience into sleep by dumping too much details and without focus. Because once we lose our audience, it is difficult to get them back. If some audience are really interested and want to know more details, they can always ask questions afterwards. And last, we want to talk about the benefit of our research. We want to tell the audience how our research will help the community. Maybe our work is funded by tax money. In that case, it is more important to tell people that their money is used on the common good and not wasted.
As we said, speech and writing are two different modes of communication. In writing, we hate repetition, but in speech, we love repetition. For our key message, it is a good practice to tell our audience at least three times to make sure they can really hear it and remember it. For example, when we are at the problem part, we may provide a preview and tell our audience what we are going to say. When we are at the solution part, we say it. When we are at the benefit part, we may again summarize what we have said. In this way, the three parts are also better connected.
So problem, solution, and benefit are the three parts that make a whole body of a complete research presentation. But in order to make our presentation more impressive, we need two additional keys. They are the first thing you say and the last thing people will hear and remember. We need a strong opening and a strong closing to hold our message together, like two bookends. The opening and the closing of our presentation are the two golden opportunities to impress our audience. This figure here shows how the average audience pay attention during a typical presentation. In the beginning, almost everyone will listen. But then the attention may drop to 10-20% for a typical presentation. At the end, many people may start to listen again, especially if we provide a signal for our conclusion. In order to make an impressive presentation, we should make the best use of these two golden short periods. Both the opening and the closing should be carefully designed.
The purpose of the opening is to catch our audience’s attention, stimulate their curiosity, and essentially to make them want to listen to us. There are 5 basic methods we may use. The first method is to ask a question that matters to the audience. A question will naturally engage people and make them think. The second method is to provide a surprising fact or statistics that our audience may not have known. It will stimulate people’s curiosity and encourage them keep listening if they want find out why. The third method is a common one. It is to provide a very brief preview of our key message, tell the audience why they should continue to listen. Typical phrases include, “today I will show you …. “ or “the purpose of my presentation is”, And then we provide our key message in a very condensed form in 1 or 2 sentences. The forth method is to tell a little story that can be related to our topic. Or you may call it an anecdote, which means a short and interesting story that can be used to reveal an idea. It is a story with a point. The last method is to start by telling a joke. This method can be very effective, but can also be a little risky. And it depends on personality. If you are the kind of person who can tell jokes naturally, you can go for it, but it would be better to always have a backup plan in case the joke does not work well. These 5 methods can be used alone, or in combinations to make a strong opening.
For closing, the first thing we should do is to provide a clear signal to let the audience know we are ready to close and wrap things up. This is a chance to get the audience back if we have lost them during the speech. How we design our closing depends on the main purpose of our speech, it may be to inspire more people to read our paper, or to impress potential collaborators, or just to get feedback for our work. But in general, a strong closing may include two things, the first is to reinforce the key takeaway message of our speech. It may be a restatement of the significance or benefit of our work, or the most brilliant part of our solution, or why our solution is timely. The second thing we can do in closing is to call for action, ask the audience their role in moving things forward. Especially when our presentation have a persuasive element, we need to answer the question “so what?” And we should tell our audience in a clear message what we recommend they to do next. Another effective closing for general public speaking is to stimulate further thinking by telling an inspiring story. It is more creative, but is less common for a research presentation.
Thanks for watching, I am Dr. Liu with research tips for the underdogs. Presentation needs both knowledge and practice. I am still trying to apply what I have learned in my practice. Until next time, let’s practice together to make our life better.
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