Assignment Report

How to Create an
Effective Presentation?

Submitted by: Narinder Singh Saini

SUMMARY

Strong presentations have one key element in common: they tell a story. In the
modern age of technology, people forget that presentations are an old form of
communication.

For

centuries,

stories

have

been

passed

down

orally.

Storytelling engages the audience, assists in comprehension, and increases

retention.

To make your content relevant to the people listening to you, think about what
story they will understand and be interested in. Why have they chosen to be
here? How does the content of your presentation impact them? This will help
you frame the presentation. It also helps with the examples you select to
explain key or challenging concepts. Know what people do in their day-to-day
work and then give an example that will illustrate an impact they understand.

So how do we tell stories? Each story needs a protagonist, a conflict, and a

resolution. For instance, discussing research results about climate change data
can become very technical. Dont let the facts obscure the story; have the facts
support the story. The story provides context for the data, so that the audience
understands why the data is important.

This

report

will

look

into

how

someone

presentations, whether its in-person or online.

can

put

together

effective

INTRODUCTION
A. Steps involved in Effective Presentation
A lot of people just have a common notion that A presentation is just a couple
of slides created with a presentation design tool and on those slides slap long
text informations and the audience will understand your presentation, that is
why first of all it is a false notion; secondly during a presentation if youre going
to just read text from presentation slides and think that audience will engage
with what you are saying then the sad truth is NO.
The first and foremost thing you need to understand and look an answer for is
What do you want to achieve?
So these following 4 steps are crucial to your presentation.
1. What is your Story?
To make your content relevant to the people listening to you, think about what
story they will understand and be interested in. Why have they chosen to be
here? How does the content of your presentation impact them?
2. Who is your audience?
The illustrative components of your presentation should fit within the
audiences current realm of understanding, making your content relevant to
them. This information can also help you avoid embarrassing mistakes.
3. What are your Presentation Objectives?
After you have identified the characteristics of your audience, you can
determine what it is you want to accomplish with your presentation. Are you
hoping to persuade people? Are you hoping to inform people? Do you have a
call-to-action that youre hoping people will act upon afterward?

EFFECTIVE PRESENTATION DESIGN

SKILLS & TECHNIQUES
Presentations are like icebergs, what you see is only a small part of the whole
thing. The design process (particularly the preparation of the content and
material) is crucial to a successful presentation. Below are some simple and
easy steps to follow to ensure that even if youve never designed a
presentation before, it can be a success!
There are 6 steps to effective presentation design:
Planning
Context
Structure
Content
Timing
Visual aids & supporting materials

1) Planning and preparation

The most important part of making a really good presentation is preparation;
and failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
Spend some time thinking about the material you want to cover; be sure
what it is that you want to communicate.
Idea storm things it might be possible to include.
Rank ideas into: topics you must include, topics it would be nice to cover,
and information it is worth knowing in case of questions.
Priorities the essential.
Remember to think about the audience. Who will be there? What will their
expectations be? What level of knowledge do they possess at the moment?
2) Context
As well as considering the audience, the venue, the time of day and the level
you can also consider the type of presentation. There tend to be two main
categories for giving presentations, and these will affect the overall style as
seen on the following page:

3) Structure
Once you know what you want to include in your presentation you will need to
put it into a structure so that you can speak coherently and develop themes
without losing your audience along the way. Most presentations can often be
broken up into these recognisable parts:
Introductions who you are, what the purpose of the presentation is,
and an outline of the structure.
Main Body the main points, presented in a logical and coherent
fashion.
Conclusion summary of the main points, and an emphasis on the key
things to remember.
Questions opportunities for audience to clarify their understanding or
find out more specific details.

4) Content
Keep it clear
Keep it focused/relevant
Keep it as simple as possible

5) Timing
Rehearsal can be very useful, and you should plan to stick to the time limit.
Finishing early is better than running over time.

\
6) Visual aids

As an additional note, bear in mind the need to convert statistics into charts
and graphs wherever possible and put lengthy detail into a handout. Visual
aids will bring your presentation to life, but dont rely on the technology to
make you for a lack of content or preparation.

7) Reviewing Your Presentation

It is always important and worthwhile to review your presentation after you
have created it. Since you can be very familiar with your topic (probably far
more familiar than your audience, otherwise why would they bother to attend
your presentation?) it can often be hard to remember what its like not to know
something. As evidence to this, just think about your professors. Theyve
become such experts in their subject matters that you can likely think of at
least a few occasions where it has been difficult for them to explain it.
As way to help be conscious of this, begin reviewing your first slide and assume
your audience knows as little as possible (or plausible), which in most real word
cases is far less than you might hope. Then write down what they know after
seeing that first slide (or first point on the first slide), then with every
proceeding slide ask whether they would be able to make the next jump. Or
said another way, ask what would they need to make that next jump and then
HONESTLY critique whether your presentation can enable them to make that
jump.

CONCLUSION
One of the most common mistakes is to assume that your audience will just
get it. Sometimes it can be helpful to start at the middle of your slides,
perhaps right after one of your key conclusions, and then review your slides
backwards. As you go backwards, ask in order to reach this conclusion, they
would have to know x. But in order to understand x, they would need to know
y and z and continue down this path until you reach what you assume is the
audiences starting minimal starting knowledge. Then you can check whether
your presentation provides that x, y, and z in the proper order.
Just remember though, Ask yourself again Do they really need to know
everything? As a good check, try to see if leaving out these details might
cause any misconceptions. If you can make your message clear with
reasonable support but without those additional details, then its best to leave
them out.
Your goal and responsibility is to help your audience understand the material
and its value. If test taking has been become too en grained into your thinking,
instead think of presentation creation as a game such that you score points for
how well your audience understands your presentations information but the
goal is to reach a high score in as few slides/talking points/examples as
possible.

Finally rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. And in doing so show your slides to your
friends and be very conscious of what they perceive as being the main
takeaways. Also ask them questions like what is the first thing you notice on
the slide?.

As a final check, try to go though your slides and think about what are some
questions that you might expect. A list of common questions that are good to
prepare for ahead of time are included below.