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Engineering researchers are tasked with solving increasingly complex and interdisciplinary problems requiring succinct communication and presentation skills.
Presenting research at an academic or professional meeting can be intimidating, but can also be a rewarding experience that gives a deeper understanding of one’s own research while developing communication skills.
An oral presentation allows research to be described in a concise, controlled manner.
Oral presentations can reach a wider audience and receive fewer questions with little to no interruptions.

Introduction to Oral Presentation

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Flow of Oral Presentation

Get to presentation room early and test the technology.
Keep it simple, precise, and accurate.
Ditch the complex animations, large blocks of text, and complicated graphics.
Do not just read the contents.
The slides should only be a guide for your presentation, and as a way to illustrate your research to your audience.
Pay attention to nonverbal skills.
Audience may be excited about the talk only if the presenter make eye contact, move around, and vary the voice for emphasis.

Aspects to Keep in Mind when Giving an Oral Presentation

Be sure to discuss the meaning of the results presented.
Reinforcement of the key points in the concluding slide is a must.
Visual elements are critical components in effective oral presentation.
During presentation one has to structure the ideas, facts, and data into a logical convincing story using a narrative structure.
Oblige the speaker to explain them rather than being as self explanatory as possible

Key Points of an Oral Presentation

The language choices in a technical presentation are dictated by the prior knowledge of the audience.
A presentation made to general public naturally uses a significantly different language than a presentation given to colleagues or supervisor.
The employment of analogies, examples, and stories can often be the difference between a good presentation and a great one.
Analogies are powerful speech strategies which anchor a complex technical idea to something that an audience already understands, thereby providing a deeper form of learning and higher amount of retention.
While introducing a new term, one must clearly define it to ensure that your audience is on the same page with the presenter.

Language Choices of an Oral Presentation

The voice and body language can enhance the messaging in a technical presentation even though content is obviously the most important part.
A few areas of delivery are especially critical for researchers:

The speed of the presenter’s speech should be such that there is enough time for the audience to keep up with the material while processing the usually dense information conveyed, and if required the content should be reduced.
Pauses are an important delivery tool that allows the audience to absorb the content delivered and emphasize it, while also allowing the presenter to organize thoughts on subsequent content.
Make specific and sustained eye contact with individual members and be sure to not spend too much time talking to the slides. Again, practice will help to be more comfortable with making eye contact with the audience. Eye contact also provides feedback as one can ascertain if the audience looks confused and perhaps needs more explanation.
A researcher is expected to speak to the audience from one’s knowledge of the material and not relying on notes which has a negative impact on the presenter’s credibility.

Delivery of an Oral Presentation

Poster Presentations

Introduction to Poster Presentation

A poster presentation is away of communicating one’s research outcomes and understanding of a topic in a short and concise format.
One needs to analyze and evaluate information, synthesize ideas, and creatively demonstrate understanding or the findings of your research.
Poster presentations are more personal and interactive. A well-designed poster can serve as a permanent record of research accomplishments.
Once one has decided what to include, one needs to plan how to present it so as to capture and hold the attention of the viewer.
Layout is the first thing to decide: where to place the information and how to divide the space and the placement of headings and graphics, as well as how much space to assign to different elements, are all important considerations.
It is important to leave some white space between sections, figures, and tables.
Posters are meant to be a visual presentation and so should use a mix of images, tables, plots, and flowcharts to convey the research outcomes with minimal text.

Guidelines in Preparing a Poster

Make sure the poster can be read from a distance. A font size over 24 pt is recommended for body text, with titles and headings even larger. Body text should be clearly readable from 5 ft away, and the title from 50 ft away.
Break up the content into clearly defined sections (introduction, results, discussion, etc.), but keep a logical flow. A reader should not have to jump around the poster to understand the project.
Poster should be professional and visually appealing. One does not need to be an artist to make a great looking poster, but adding clear and simple pictures, tables, and graphs is a great way to summarize data and to visualize the research.
Give people a reason to stop at the poster.
Posters should be designed for a general audience, not experts in the field. If the audience wants to know more, they can ask!

Presentation Preparation Guidelines

Do not try to sum up the entire research project in one night. For poster presentations, at least a week is needed to compose, review, and print the poster.
One needs preparation to answer questions and explain the research to an average person.
For oral presentations, one needs to make sure that the slides load properly with all the equations and in the intended fonts.
Presentation should be rehearsed several times.
Presenting in front of one’s research colleagues can help make sure that the data is right, while someone who is not familiar with the research can help identify if it is understandable to a general audience.
Turn complex tables into simple graphs, condense each slide or section into basic bullet points, and leave complicated jargon and methods for questions.
Slides of oral presentation or the Poster should motivate the audience to hear or attract for visualization, describe the necessity of the research, and explain the choice of methods to be described shortly but duly prepared already.

Presentation Preparation Guidelines