Presentation Skills

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Presentation Skills

• Orna Farrell
• orna.farrell_at_dbs.ie

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Discussion questions

• What makes a great presentation?
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• Who do you think is a great speaker?What makes
  them great?
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• How do you feel about public speaking?
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 Topics

• Remember the audience
• What make an effective presentation?
• Nerves
• Verbal Non- Verbal communication 
• Notes 
• Using Powerpoint
• Effective slides
•  10 steps for preparing your presentation

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Remember the audience

• "The most important aspect of making a
  presentation is to consider the needs of the
  audience. If you simply read or repeat
  information off by heart your presentation will
  probably sound very flat and dull to the
  audience. There is also a greater risk that you
  will lose your place in your talk." (Cottrell,
  2009)
• Engage your audience talk to them not at them
• Audiences want variety
• Audiences get bored
• Audience like images the slides are for them
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What makes an effective presentation?

• Careful planning preparation
•  clear structure
• Good time management
• Relevant interesting content
• Good communication skills
• Appropriate use of slide/supporting documentation
•  Suitable audience participation

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Careful planning preparation

• This involves researching choosing relevant
  content
• Preparing slides
•  Allocating tasks if group work
• Planning slide handovers
• Preparing an introduction conclusion
• Reharsing the presentation Speak aloud use the
  actual room for the presentation
• Think about where you will stand, especially if
  its a group

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Time Management

• Time your presentation
• Allow for a few minutes extra
• Better to be too short than too long
• If in a group give each member a similar time
  period to speak, over running will make you
  unpopular

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Content

•  Make sure your content is relevant interesting
• Use examples, definitions, theories, case
  studies, quotes and personal examples to make the
  presentation interesting
• Images photos, graphs, charts, maps are all
  effective means of communication

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Structure 1

• A clear structure is very important
•  Introduction introduce yourself your group.
  Outline the main parts of the presentation. Say
  how long it will take and when you will have
  questions
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• Have an introduction Hello my name is Orna
  Farrell and Im  going to talk to you
  about......... Firstly I will discuss..........the
  n ................... and lastly..................
  ............... The presentation will take 10
  minutes and I will take questions at the end 

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Struture 2

• Conclusion
• Thank the audience for their attention
• Invite questions
• Stay standing and wait for the questions....dont
  run off

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Verbal Communication

• limit your use of jargon
• Explain new or complex terms
• Speak slowly clearly
• Vary your tone pitch
•  Breath
•  Finish sentences
•  Stand straight, it improves your voice
  projection 
• Use pauses
•  Record yourself

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Non-verbal communication

• There are basically three elements in any
  face-to-face communication words tone of
  voice and body language.
• These three elements account differently for the
  meaning of the message - Words account for 7-
  Tone of voice accounts for 38 
• - Body language accounts for 55 of the message

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Non-Verbal Communication

• Choose where you will stand
•  Keep your hands still
• Face the audience, dont put your back to the
  audience
• Eye contact- lighthouse
• Don't read from the screen
• Dont hide behind the computer

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Notes

• It is a good idea to use notes during your
  presentation
• Don't have the whole presentation written
  out....you will just read
• Have keywords bullet points on cards or print
  out your slides and use them as notes
• Don't have loads of pages to russle through and
  get lost
• Learn your presentation, the notes are only back
  up

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Using powerpoint

• Common mistakes
• Over reliance on the powerpoint
• Information overload
•  Getting too technical wasting time
• Thinking in bullet point
• Too many fonts and styles
• Boring slides
• Only talking about whats on the slide

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How to make good PowerPoint slides

• Do
• Use bullet points short phrases
• Use a consistent slide background
• Use pictures, graphs and short clips
• Use big font
• Proof read your slides for spelling and grammar

• Dont
• Use long pieces of text
• Flashy graphics animation
• Use many different slide designs, fonts
• Many different colour fonts

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Background Bad

• Avoid backgrounds that are distracting or
  difficult to read from
• Always be consistent with the background that you
  use

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Background - Good

• Use backgrounds such as this one that are
  attractive but simple
• Use backgrounds which are light
• Use the same background consistently throughout
  your presentation

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Colour - Bad

• Using a font colour that does not contrast with
  the background colour is hard to read
• Using colour for decoration is distracting and
  annoying.
• Using a different colour for each point is
  unnecessary
• Using a different colour for secondary points is
  also unnecessary
• Trying to be creative can also be bad

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Colour - Good

• Use a colour of font that contrasts sharply with
  the background
• Ex blue font on white background
• Use colour to reinforce the logic of your
  structure
• Ex light blue title and dark blue text
• Use colour to emphasize a point
• But only use this occasionally

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Slide layout - Bad

• This page contains too many words for a
  presentation slide. It is not written in point
  form, making it difficult both for your audience
  to read and for you to present each point.
  Although there are exactly the same number of
  points on this slide as the previous slide, it
  looks much more complicated. In short, your
  audience will spend too much time trying to read
  this paragraph instead of listening to you.

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10 steps for preparing your presentation

1. read the assignment specification
2. Create a task list
3. Create a time chart
4. Review your existing knowledge of the topic
5. Research read on the topic
6.  Decide on the content
7.  Find examples
8.  Decide who is your audience
9. Make slides
10. Rehearse presentation

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Conclusion

• Preparation is the key to a good presentation
• Face the audience
• Speak slowly clearly
• Humour
• If something goes wrong move on!

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Further reading

• Chivers, B et al.(2007) A student's guide to
  presentations. London Sage.
• Van Emden, J. et al (2004) Presentation skills
  for students. London Palgrave Macmillan.
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• http//www.palgrave.com/skills4study/studyskills/p
  ersonal/presentation.aspRemember
• Killer presentations
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vwhTwjG4ZIJg
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