Presenting your thesis and dissertation
This is intended to be a guide for students presenting their thesis and dissertation work. This applies mostly to your research and/or final defense, but the ideas in general apply to any other presentation that you might give.
- "2 minutes per slide". Don't kid yourself. Ignore rationalizations like "but some of the slides include large pictures" or "some of them are animations", etc. Don't count the title slide. Beyond that, all other slides are 2 minutes per slide. No exceptions, not even if you talk fast. Note that sometimes the time stated is not just how fast can you read the slide. It is time that it takes to transition there, to allow for clarifications, etc. So, the rule is clear 2 minutes per slide. This means that a 40 minute presentation has 20 slides + 1 title slide. Period.
- Your presentation is not intended to be the "live" version of your writeup. You presentation must be shorter and more condensed than your writeup. The goal is not to present what you wrote. The goal is to present your work. In that sense, it has the same goal of your writeup. The writeup's goal is to present all of your work to someone that knows nothing about your work. The defense presentation's goal is to present the highlight of your work to people that have already read your document. Both are presentations of your work.
- To follow up on the previous goal, do "not" present your literature review. Do not present citations in your slides. Just talk about what is known and what you have contributed to the state of knowledge.
- Leave the acknowledgements to the writeup. You might want to put references to the grant (that paid for your work) in the title slide if you want, but the acknowledgements belong in the writeup.
- And, please, please, please, leave out the "outline of my talk" slide. Note what most of these slides have:
- Outline of my talk
- Problem definition
- Previous work
- Method
- Data collection
- Results
- Conclusions
Now, doesn't that apply to all presentations you have ever heard in your life? If so, then don't tell me that you are presenting a presentation. It is a waste of time. Start your presentation with the problem you are addressing. Period.
- Finally, practice your presentation in front of a mirror. By the time you present, you should have done this twice on your own.
Other resources
- http://www.presentationzen.com/
- Oral presentation advice by Mark Hill from the CS department at the University of Winsconsin http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/conference-talk.html