Presentation Skills Good Practice

From the Skills Team, University of Hull

This guide covers the following areas:

Presentation structure

Presentation design 5 top tips

Slide design

Presentation skills 5 top tips

Why are most presentations so bad? Well, most people who give presentations have
not actually considered what is good practice in this field and most students have
had such poor examples presented to them by academics that they do not know any
better.
Many lessons come from the world of business which is now moving away from textrich slides full of bullet points to more visually interesting slides. Death by
PowerPoint is a byword (byphrase?) for any presentation that is so dominated by the
excess use of PowerPoint features (bullet points, animations, complex diagrams, clipart
etc) that the content is lost and the audience are brain dead by the end of it.

Presentation structure
Every presentation should flow like a good story. It should involve the audience
directly.

The beginning section is where

you hook them. Start with the
general picture then explain the
specific problem and how by
listening to your presentation you
can solve it for them.
The middle section should
contain the main detail of your presentation, and can be organised in a number
of ways (the two best are showcased below).
Finally your end section should summarise the presentation and lead the
audience to the next step.

Design your slides so that these sections look distinctive and any key points stand
out.

Web: www.hull.ac.uk/skills
Email: skills@hull.ac.uk

Middle section structure option 1 - key points

Several authors suggest using a structure that involves an introduction followed by a
middle section containing special key point slides (usually 3).
The ideas is that there is a heirarchy of slides so that after each key point you have
other slides that explain or add detail to that key point.
Cliff Atkinson (writer of Beyond Bullet Points) provides a story template to help you
structure and plan your presentation in this way on his website at
http://beyondbulletpoints.com/resources/ (download the BBP Story template for Word
2007). There are lots of other useful resources there too.

Middle section option 2 - sparkline

Nancy Duarte, from Duarte Design (the company employed to create Microsoft's own
new promotional presentations) has written a book called Resonate in which she looks
in detail at the structure of successful presentations throughout history (even back to
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address). She discovered that many have the same presentation
form which she calls a 'sparkline'.

This structure involves there being a clear distinction between "What is" (the position
before the presentation is seen and acted upon) and "What could be" (the position
after the presentation is seen and acted upon). The idea is that the audience is
introduced to the "What is" state at the beginning of the presentation and then
switched back and forth between "What could be" and "What is" several times before
ending in the "What could be" condition, which she calls "Reward: new bliss".
Nancy explains this better on her website found here:
http://www.duarte.com/books/resonate/sparkline-overview
In terms of academic work the "What is" is the current level of knowledge or previous
thinking on a subject and the "What could be" is the new knowledge or new thinking.
The "new bliss" is what the audience could do or learn next now that they are aware
of the change.

Presentation design - 5 top tips

1.

Don't use one of the themes that comes with PowerPoint

Don't be tempted to use one of these built-in themes

At best they are overused so that your presentation does not stand out, at
worse they contain distracting elements and bad colour choices.

2.

Make sure there is sufficient contrast between your background

and any text on the slide
As a general guideline, using coloured
text on a coloured background is
rarely necessary. Also, try to avoid
black text on a white background as
this is acknowledged as particularly
troublesome for dyslexics in your
audience. If you stick to the basic
rules below you cannot go wrong.

3.

A second colour can be used for contrast only

Avoid unnecessary clutter

Don't put a logo or image on every slide - if you need to use a logo, just put it on
the first slide and the last slide (and on your handouts).

4.

Keep fonts simple

Don't use fancy fonts for the main text in your presentation. You should also
avoid WordArt for the main text too. It is OK to use a fancy font if you are
making a point with it, but otherwise stick to the simple ones. Oh, and NEVER
use Comic Sans!!
Some people say it is wrong to use the default fonts (usually Calibri or Cambria)
but these are actually perfectly serviceable fonts. If you want to change to
something else, just to show you are not boring, consider one of the fonts below
which are still easily readable and yet have a bit of extra character (and are all
standard in MS Office).

If you decide to download a font from elsewhere, remember to change your

Save options (found under PowerPoint Options at the bottom of the Windows
menu) to Embed fonts so that you can use them on other machines.

5.

Keep animation to a minimum

Don't presentation-wide animations (like animating all titles to fly in or all text to
build a point at a time). You should only use animation when it is absolutely
necessary; to make it easier for the audience to understand or visualise
something. If you apply it to all slides, this thought process is clearly not being
followed.

Slide design
There has been a lot of research and much written about what is a well designed,
effective slide. The main finding is that: A slide full of bullet points with a title
that makes no immediate point is a poor slide.
This is a very hard lesson for people creating academic presentations who feel that a
good slide has a simple title then a list of points about that title. Most students will only
ever see presentations where the majority of slides use that format and most will only
ever create presentations which use that slide format.
Ask yourself this question "Is PowerPoint the best way to transfer large amounts of
textual information? The answer is "No, that is what a book or a document is for".
People are very poor at reading and listening at the same time, which is what they
are asked to do when attending most PowerPoint presentations.
PowerPoint is a visual medium; its purpose is to help an audience visualise what the
speaker is saying. The purpose of a presentation should not be information transfer, it
should be about enabling understanding and encouraging further action or research.
This section offers information about what makes a well designed slide and links to
research that supports this finding. There are also links to books which will help you
find solutions on how an audience can visualise information.

Design slides like academic paragraphs

On our essay writing pages, we give advice on creating academic paragraphs using the
PEE acronym (Point, Evidence, Explanation). This same structure can be used for good
academic slides.
The Point of the slide should be made in the
title, it should be a full sentence in a
conversational style. So, instead of
"Costumes" you may have "The costumes are
well researched and authentic" or instead of
"Language" you may have "Language is more
than the spoken word".
The Evidence should be shown in the main
body of the slide and where possible this
should be visual rather than textual (although in some cases quotes or very simple
lists can be used).
The Explanation should be spoken in the narration and this is where the detail of
the presentation should be contained. In order that you can produce useful
handouts, it is recommended that you record this in the Notes section of
PowerPoint.

Presenting skills - 5 top tips

No matter how good a slideshow is, a poor presenter can ruin it for the audience.
Follow these top tips to become a confident and compelling speaker.

1.

Don't read your slides

Surveys have shown that presenters who read their slides are the number one
most hated thing about PowerPoint presentations. Who wants to be hated?

2.

If possible, use a remote device for advancing your slides

This allows you to move out from behind the computer and/or lecturn and
enables you to connect to your audience. Most departments have them if you
ask nicely!

3.

Know your material and ditch the notes when you can so you
connect better with your audience
There is no quick fix for learning your material, you just have to get your head
down and do it I'm afraid. Ideally, all you should need is a quick glance at the slide
(or some cue cards) and you should know what you want to say to explain your
point. Nervous and new presenters are clearly going to struggle with this - but
don't panic, use your notes to begin with and eventually you will grow in
confidence and be able to ditch them when you can. The worst case scenario is
that you could take 3 years getting to this point - but at least you will be fabulous
for your first job interview presentation!

4.

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

Even experienced, professional speakers rehearse their narration. Personally I
rehearse it at least 2-3 times sitting in front of the computer (timing it to make
sure I'm not going to run over or be way too short). Saying it out loud is
important and you may feel a bit self-conscious, but the computer is a very
uncritical audience! If you are an inexperienced presenter and do not think you
will be able to manage without reading from your notes, at least memorise and
practice some short passages so that you can have some eye-contact with the
audience and make them feel involved.

5.

Be yourself
If you are a natural performer - go for it. If you
are naturally reticent, keep it simple. The quote
on the image here is from Sir Ken Robinson, a
former government advisor on education who
champions supporting creativity in children. He
has given some of the most-watched
presentations at the renowned TED
conferences. He has a really simple presentation
style with little or no visuals but manages to
keep the audience hanging on his every word by making them feel he is just
having a chat.

Academic texts supporting these points

Alley, M and Neeley, K.A. (2005) Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides.
Technical Communication 52(4) 417-426. Available at
http://iris.nyit.edu/~klagrand/PowerPoint%20techniques.pdf

Mayer, R.E. and Moreno, R. (2003) Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia
Learning. Educational Psychologist 38(1) 43-52. Available at
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic448497.files/Stacie%20Articles/cognitiveload.pdf

Mayer R.E and Johnson, C.E. (2008) Revising the redundancy principle in multimedia
learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(2). 380-386. Available online as an
eJournal via the University Library

Author: Jacqui Bartram

All web addresses in this leaflet were correct at the time of publication. The
information in this leaflet can be made available in an alternative format on request.
Please email skills@hull.ac.uk