Giving an oral presentation at a conference or symposium is a great way to directly communicate your research to your scholarly peers. It’s a rare opportunity to have the (hopefully) undivided attention of people who care as deeply about your topic as you do; and who are well-positioned to become valuable colleagues, mentors, and collaborators.
Typically, an oral presentation gives you 15-20 minutes to speak about your research (with slides); and another 5-10 minutes for Q&A. That’s not a lot of time to demonstrate the rigour and value of your research. Even this short time slot can be compressed further if sessions are running behind schedule, or the person before you speaks too long.
So how can you make the best use of those precious minutes? In this post, we cover 3 essential considerations for preparing an effective oral presentation:
- Make it clear
- Make it impactful
- Make it enjoyable
If you can manage these three things – in both your visuals and your oration – you’ll be on track to make a positive impression on your colleagues and build your academic networks.
(1) Make it clear
Conference delegates are tired. Between long days and lingering jet lag, you can assume that your audience is not quite firing on 100% mental capacity. Make things easy for them by leading them through your essential points in a logical order, giving just enough information for audiences to understand and contextualise your research, but not so much that they become bored or overwhelmed.
A typical conference presentation structure might look like this:
| Section | Function | Example |
| Introduction | Introduces you (plus any co-presenters) and the project; positions you as a researcher | I’m ___ from ___ University and my research focuses on ___ |
| Outline | Signals what you will cover in your talk, emphasising your main points | In this talk I will cover ___ |
| Context | Briefly describes where your project sits in the context of the field / subfield (including any key theory / frameworks used) | Other work in this area has established that ___ |
| Problem | Describes the research problem (with reference to research questions) | I’m investigating ___ because it affects ___ |
| Methods | Describes how you conducted your research | To investigate this, I ___ |
| Findings | Shows the audience what you discovered | I found that ___ |
| Significance | Illustrates why your work is important (including any real or potential applications) | This is important because ___ |
| Conclusion | Restates main ideas and leaves the audience with something to think about (or even a call to action) | So this research has established that ___ and I leave you with ___ |
This is just one way to structure a presentation – and there are others – but it’s a reliable way to organise your content so that the audience can follow along easily.
Sidenote: make sure you consider who is likely to be in your audience, and how much they know about your area of research. This will influence how much or how little explanatory work you will have to do to bring them along with you – especially with regard to context and methods.
(2) Make it impactful
Audience members will not care about your research by default; you need to show them why they should care. While the significance and impact of your research may be obvious to you, it’s worth spelling it out to the audience. The more real you can make it, the better.
There are a few ways you can do that:
- State the benefit (say very simply what positive impact your research will have)
- Quantify the benefit (using numbers and statistics to show the scale of impact)
- Depict the benefit (using emotional appeals or real cases to illustrate the impact)
- Forecast further benefits (i.e. other applications or avenues of enquiry)
Let’s say that your research addresses the (100% fictional) condition of hurdler’s toe. Hurdler’s toe (hypothetically) affects joint mobility for hundreds of hurdlers worldwide, and has even been linked (hypothetically) to arthritis in later life. Your research has resulted in a new sock design that halves the risk of hurdler’s toe. Here’s how you might illustrate your impact:
- State the benefit: “this new sock design halves the risk of hurdler’s toe.”
- Quantify the benefit: “this evidence-based invention could prevent approximately 75 cases of hurdler’s toe each year and save an estimated $750,000 in medical expenses.”
- Depict the benefit: “hurdlers like Harry Hurdlini will no longer have to live with the crippling reality of aches, pills, and surgeries.”
- Forecast further benefits: “this could have applications for other activities that cause joint pain in the feet and toes, such as dancing.”
A caveat: academic audiences have excellent bullshit detectors. Don’t overstate the significance of your research. Be clear and transparent about its limits, and don’t go into full salesperson mode. An articulate, enthusiastic, and realistic statement about why your work is important is likely to strike the right tone.
(3) Make it enjoyable
Even at a conference where everyone shares (roughly) the same academic interests, human attention spans are simply not equipped to handle solid blocks of dry information. Be sure to vary your presentation – both visually and verbally – with a mix of types of content, imagery, text, and graphics, and a modulated voice.
One common mishap is to try to cram too much into the presentation. In a 15-20 minute presentation, you will not have time to cover everything. Your thesis is the proper home for every little detail of your research; a conference presentation is the place for an overview. If your research is a movie, think of your presentation as the trailer. You want to get people interested to know more; but to do that, you have to keep their attention and show why they should buy a ticket.
So keep it simple:
- limit your scope (think a chapter of your thesis, rather than the whole thing)
- stick to a manageable slide deck (think about 8-12 slides)
- use your visuals to make an impact (think striking images and diagrammes; no walls of text)
- prioritise your time to cover your main points
- prioritise your research contribution & findings over background readings & context
Yes, you’ll be sacrificing some detail. But anyone who wants to know more can always come up and talk to you afterwards (and that’s a great way to grow your network).
Last but not least: don’t be afraid to go ‘off book.’ The vibe at an academic conference is typically professional, but not as formal as many people assume. Academics often become familiar (and, accordingly, less formal) in their professional relationships over time, and so conferences can become places for friendly banter as much as knowledge-sharing. What does that mean for your presentation? While you should definitely stay in professional mode, the odd joke, audience interaction, or light-hearted moment (in good taste) is often a valid way to build rapport with academic colleagues.
We will have lots of oral presentations from AUT postgraduate research students at the Postgraduate Research Symposium on Monday 9 September 2024. If you are speaking at the symposium, and would like some help preparing your presentation, please email the Researcher Education and Development team at red@aut.ac.nz.
