Defense Presentation Tips?

[ACM88]

Hi everyone,

 

In about two weeks I will be giving my Master's thesis presentation to my committee and a slew of other people who will be attending in the department, both faculty and students. The presentation is supposed to be roughly 40-45 minutes with time left over for questions (10-15 minutes), followed by a review session with my committee members. I'm interested in gaining some advice or tips from the community here on how to best prepare for my presentation. I've never presented anything longer than 20 minutes before, so I'm mostly concerned about running into inopportune dry mouth/throat and rushing through my slides just to get all the words out.  I tend to speak on the fast side normally, so it takes a bit of concentration for me to reign it in; throw onto that the nerves that I will be feeling and I worry that I won't hit my 40 minute quota. Also, I'm worried I'll tend to read off my my slides. I've given plenty of presentations before, but I still go in with a jumble of nerves, and things usually turn out fine, but this seems larger in scale to me than my previous presentations, so I want to make sure I cover as many bases as I can.

 

Any thoughts? I plan on practicing my presentation every day to get a good feel for it, but so far I've run out of steam around the 25 minute mark. I'm just not used to speaking that much without any sustained pauses. I was thinking I might bring a bottle of water and possibly some flashcards to help me keep pace, forcing me to slow down by either taking a drink or checking some notes. Does that seem out of place for a thesis presentation? I'm really not sure! It'd be great to hear back and see what everyone thinks, so thank you in advance for your help!

[fuzzylogician]

Both a bottle of water and flash cards or notes are perfectly natural to bring to any presentation. If the notes can help you slow down, that may be useful but hopefully as you practice more you'll also be able to pace yourself better so you won't need to actually use the notes to slow you down -- it'll be sufficient that they're there to give you confidence.

If you're not doing so already, start writing down the timing for different parts of the presentation (e.g. Overview of presentation begins at 30sec mark, Part 1 at 2:30, subsection 1.2.3 at 11:00 and so on). After you get a sense of your natural pace, try and decide where in the presentation you would *like* to be at a certain point in time and then figure out how to speed up or slow down to get you there at the correct timing. Often the answer to that problem is either to decide to cover less topics, or else to cover less details within your topics. For a presentation of your thesis, it should be fine to give an overview of most of it and go into details in one specific place, or else to state up front that you're only going to discuss aspect X and Y of the thesis and that for questions Z and W the audience is referred to the paper or else they should ask you about that during the question period. A common mistake would be trying to cover *everything* because that often means you end up talking about too many details and covering too much ground, making it difficult to pick out the important contributions out of the details.

[newms]

A tip I've found helpful is to write out your talk before. Not for the purpose of memorizing it, but to make sure you've thought out how you want to say things and how you transition between slides. And of course, practice, practice, practice giving your presentation.

[PsychGirl1]

Since I just gave mine today, here's some lessons learned:

 

- Be overly prepared. Have backups of notes in case the PP doesn't work correct or if all of technology fails. Borrow the laptop and projector you'll be using, and practice on it. Make sure that you can see your notes as expected (set up presenter view on the laptop). If anyone is Skyping in, set that up on the computer. Think about how you'll set up the room and get it ready. Pack up everything a day or two before, including printing out your thesis. I even brought a second pair of clothes, I have no idea why- that's how paranoid I was. :-D I also brought my analyses, all organized just in case. My appendix had about 30 extra slides in it- just in case. If I did an analysis and didn't include it in my thesis- I stuck it in the appendix. Same with distributions, tables from my thesis (copy and paste- appendix doesn't have to look as nice). This way, if anyone has a question, or asks you anything about your data and you don't remember offhand- there's a slide. It will also look impressive that you have slides for various questions. Get to your thesis an hour early and set everything up, rearrange the room, change the room temperature, get yourself something to drink, use the bathroom, etc. Leave nothing to chance. Also, being OCD-like eases my anxiey- I'd rather be overly prepared than underprepared.

 

- Write out your presentation in sections and time it. For example, 30 seconds for this slide, 2 minutes for this slide, etc. Practice it in chunks, and add in notes and update slides accordingly. You can also set up a timer on presenter view and have little comments in your notes like "5 MINUTES HERE" on separator slides, so you can see where you are timing-wise- too fast or too slow to hit the 40-minute mark. If you practice this enough, though, you will have a sense of where the timer should be at various points.

 

- Bring some hot tea in a mug that isn't easy to spill. The small amount of caffeine will keep you alert, and the hot water will soothe your throat :-). Sip it at separator slides or intermittently. You can even make a joke halfway through that you are losing your voice- they will understand. I drank water, but only after the formal presentation was over- but mine was only about 30-32 minutes. My throat hurts from practicing the talk and then giving the talk, but you'll be running on adrenaline and won't notice/care as much as you think. Spread out practicing if you can, so that your throat is in good condition :-).

 

- One thing I've practiced due to my fast talking is sort of a speaking voice. It rises, and falls, and it's almost like a performance- where I'm reading my notes, thinking ahead, looking at the slide- all the while, my voice is coming out as if I'm genuinely interested in what I'm saying. You can practice this by reading a script of your presentation and making sure your sentences and voice are natural while script reading. This forces me to slow down my pace and sound a lot calmer than I would otherwise.

 

- Anticipate and practice questions/answers out loud to yourself. I did that, and while I didn't get many questions that I expected, it turned the Q&A into the easier part of the defense compared to the 30-some minute presentation.

 

Lastly, try to be natural and make some jokes. It will put you, your committee, and your audience at ease :-D

 

Honestly, after you write your results, write your discussion, write any revisions your advisor recommends, write your presentation slides, and write your presentation notes, you will basically have this presentation down pat :-).

 

Good luck! Let me know if you have any specific questions.

Edited May 31, 2013 by PsychGirl1

[PsychGirl1]

Oh also- wear comfortable shoes. My left calf hurts from wearing my fancy shoes and standing for a long period of time- definitely regretting the shoe choice.

[PsychGirl1]

I thought about my post a little bit and I think the part where I mention rehearsing your voice being natural seems a little odd, but what I mean is that you should develop a presentation "voice". This is helpful so that when you're nervous, you can kind of go into automatic presentation mode, which really helps to hide your nerves, calm your voice, and slow you down. Hope that clarifies what I meant :-)

[ACM88]

Since I just gave mine today, here's some lessons learned:

 

- Be overly prepared. Have backups of notes in case the PP doesn't work correct or if all of technology fails. Borrow the laptop and projector you'll be using, and practice on it. Make sure that you can see your notes as expected (set up presenter view on the laptop). If anyone is Skyping in, set that up on the computer. Think about how you'll set up the room and get it ready. Pack up everything a day or two before, including printing out your thesis. I even brought a second pair of clothes, I have no idea why- that's how paranoid I was. :-D I also brought my analyses, all organized just in case. My appendix had about 30 extra slides in it- just in case. If I did an analysis and didn't include it in my thesis- I stuck it in the appendix. Same with distributions, tables from my thesis (copy and paste- appendix doesn't have to look as nice). This way, if anyone has a question, or asks you anything about your data and you don't remember offhand- there's a slide. It will also look impressive that you have slides for various questions. Get to your thesis an hour early and set everything up, rearrange the room, change the room temperature, get yourself something to drink, use the bathroom, etc. Leave nothing to chance. Also, being OCD-like eases my anxiey- I'd rather be overly prepared than underprepared.

 

- Write out your presentation in sections and time it. For example, 30 seconds for this slide, 2 minutes for this slide, etc. Practice it in chunks, and add in notes and update slides accordingly. You can also set up a timer on presenter view and have little comments in your notes like "5 MINUTES HERE" on separator slides, so you can see where you are timing-wise- too fast or too slow to hit the 40-minute mark. If you practice this enough, though, you will have a sense of where the timer should be at various points.

 

- Bring some hot tea in a mug that isn't easy to spill. The small amount of caffeine will keep you alert, and the hot water will soothe your throat :-). Sip it at separator slides or intermittently. You can even make a joke halfway through that you are losing your voice- they will understand. I drank water, but only after the formal presentation was over- but mine was only about 30-32 minutes. My throat hurts from practicing the talk and then giving the talk, but you'll be running on adrenaline and won't notice/care as much as you think. Spread out practicing if you can, so that your throat is in good condition :-).

 

- One thing I've practiced due to my fast talking is sort of a speaking voice. It rises, and falls, and it's almost like a performance- where I'm reading my notes, thinking ahead, looking at the slide- all the while, my voice is coming out as if I'm genuinely interested in what I'm saying. You can practice this by reading a script of your presentation and making sure your sentences and voice are natural while script reading. This forces me to slow down my pace and sound a lot calmer than I would otherwise.

 

- Anticipate and practice questions/answers out loud to yourself. I did that, and while I didn't get many questions that I expected, it turned the Q&A into the easier part of the defense compared to the 30-some minute presentation.

 

Lastly, try to be natural and make some jokes. It will put you, your committee, and your audience at ease :-D

 

Honestly, after you write your results, write your discussion, write any revisions your advisor recommends, write your presentation slides, and write your presentation notes, you will basically have this presentation down pat :-).

 

Good luck! Let me know if you have any specific questions.

 

This in incredible advice. I want to make sure that things go without a hitch and I think that everything you've mentioned will be really helpful. Thank you for writing in so much detail!

[PsychGirl1]

No problem! Also something I learned late: in some departments, it's traditional to bring food/drink for the committee members and audience. I brought some muffins/fruit from the grocery store and bottled water. Some people bring a big thing of hot coffee from Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. Some departments ask you not to do this, others expect it, others don't care. :-D

[PsychGirl1]

Oops, lastly: practice, practice, practice. See if you can get a presentation in your lab meeting, or give it to your friends/people in your cohort. The questions they have, or the suggestions they have (ex. "did you look at this and this?" or "a possible explanation could be x"?) can help guide some last-minute analyses or great points for your limitations/future directions section. It can also help you figure out what you're missing from your appendix, or even the types of questions that people who aren't as familiar with your research area would ask. Also, don't forget the standard questions- "what did you learn", "where would you want to take this study next", etc. :-D