Making Class Presentations

Student Achievement Series No. 6
Counselling Service, McMaster University

Typical Problems with Presentations
How to Make Presentations Enjoyable
Preparation
Visual Aids
Speaking from Notes or Writing It Out
Making Your Topic and Organization Clear
Helping Your Listeners Understand
Practising the Talk
The Common Anxieties
- Coping With These Anxieties
Nervousness
Being Yourself and Acting Naturally
Showing Interest in Communicating
Eye Contact
Volume, Speed, Confidence
Movements and Gestures
Answering Questions
Audio Visual Aids (additional points)

1. Typical Problems with Presentations (1)

Student Audience bored with presentations
Nervousness
Talking too fast
Don't talk loud enough
Don't look at audience
Giving impression that you would like to be somewhere else.
Other students do not know about subject

2. How to Make Presentations Enjoyable (1)

This is not a performance in which you are being judged
It is a communication; people listen to what you have to say
"Your only task is to get something transferred clearly from your mind to the mind of your listeners." (1)
Put your self in the position of your listeners. What is the best way to get your message across?

3. Preparation (1)

Identify the scope of your topic
Organize it into sections
Select information to present
Practice the presentation
Find out how long you are expected to talk
Do not select large topic;
Choose small number of points which listeners can digest
Explain each point carefully, with examples
Narrow your focus in your preparation.

4. Visual Aids (2)

Helps listener understand your points
Blackboard: problem of writing down all your points; takes time; distracts listeners
Transparency sheets: prepare material ahead of time (see more below)
Blank Transparency sheets: write on them; special pens (see more below)
Prepare photocopies; hand out
Aim for simplicity and uncluttered visual aids. Use only important information; don't overload with too much information.
Visuals must be seen clearly by whole audience; don't make them too small. (see more below)
Use several sheets, each with small number of points.

5. Speaking from Notes or Writing It Out (2-3)

Speaking from notes is more effective than reading them. This helps create a sense of direct communication with audience.
Reading from text can be "absolutely deadly". It sounds memorized.

6. Making Your Topic and Organization Clear (3)

Start by telling your audience what you are going to talk about
List the points or subjects you are going to talk about
Start slow
Clearly explain your topics
Include any background necessary for your listeners to grasp your topic
Organize your points clearly
Use a natural sequence of points that flow
Show the relation of your points to each other and to your overall topic

Failure to do the above means you will lose your audience

7. Helping Your Listeners Understand (3-4)

Listening is more difficult than reading;
Your audience is easily distracted;
Your audience cannot go back and check things they missed;
Therefore you must help your audience understand what you are saying.
Restate important ideas in different words to help your audience grasp them
List your points
Use frequent summaries
Show connections between one part of your talk and another

All of this helps your audience form mental pictures of your subject matter.

8. Practising the Talk (4)

After preparation is done, practice your talk - repeatedly.
Time yourself;
If it is too long, shorten it
Don't talk faster to cover your material; you will lose your listeners
Do not run overtime; that shows poor preparation
Better to be too short than too long
Do your practising in advance, not five minutes before your presentation
Each practice from notes will be a bit different; that's OK.
Anticipate questions, especially objections, and how you might answer them.

9. The Common Anxieties (4-5)

We naturally feel nervous speaking publicly in front of an audience
We assume our audience will criticize or ridicule us.
Audience might wonder whether we really know our subject
Audience watching for our mistakes
Audience judging us as poor speakers
We think our audience will detect our nervousness - our shaky voice and hands.
We think we have to adhere to some image of THE public speaker, and follow formal, professional guidelines for speaking

Nervousness in Speaking In Front of Others

Coping With These Anxieties:

We should just be ourselves, and relax.

Remind ourselves that our audience is just like us, not a pack of critics

Our audience is not looking for faults in our speaking; they will ignore minor slips and mistakes.

Our audience is here to obtain some information from our presentation

Don't act embarrassed over slips and mistakes you might make

Show you are interested in your own topic; if you display boredom with your topic, so will your audience

Show your audience that you have something important to communicate to them. They will respond positively.

10. Nervousness (5)

A little bit of nervousness:
- Shows that you are not too arrogant.
- Gives you extra energy to give a really good presentation; channel your nervousness into positive energy.
Your feelings of nervousness will not be evident to your audience; examples
- Increased heart rate
- Sweaty palms
- Shaky hands
- Butterflies in your stomach
Combat nervousness by thorough preparation; the day of the presentation should then be easy.
If after all this you are still nervous beyond the limits you can tolerate, seek help from the McMaster Counselling Services. They have programs to help you make presentations.

11. Being Yourself and Acting Naturally (5-6)

Act naturally, speak the way you would in normal everyday conversation
Use your normal voice, gestures, and expressions
Don't "Make a Speech". That would be artificial; your voice will take on a strange pitch and tone.
"People are most effective as speakers when they allow themselves to be the people they are naturally…" (5-6)

12. Showing Interest in Communicating (6)

Show your listeners that you have something important or interesting to say.
Show that your personally are interesting in the topic of your talk
Talk to the whole group, or the entire audience
Do NOT talk to the teacher or instructor.

13. Eye Contact (6)

If you do not look directly at your audience, they will feel left out, and so pay less attention to what you have to say.
Don't look at the ceiling or the far wall
Look directly into the eyes of your audience
- If it is a small group, you can do this individually
- If it is a large audience, you will have to look directly at groups or sections of your audience
If maintaining eye contact makes you lose your place in your notes, use your finger on the margins of your notes to keep your place.
If you read your notes, it is difficult to maintain eye contact; so this is not advisable
Be spontaneous;
Don't talk in a monotone;
Slightly slow down to emphasize points
Look directly at your audience when you want to emphasize particular points
Add impromptu comments as if they just came to your and were not part of your prepared presentation that you practiced on.

14. Volume, Speed, Confidence (6-7)

Speak loud enough so that your audience can hear you.
For a large audience or room, you may wish to use a microphone; test it out before your talk; you do want to fool around with adjusting the mic once your talk begins
If you are nervous, you may start to talk fast; slow it down.
If you are reading any text directly from a page, go slowly; prepared written text tends to be more packed with information, more tightly worded, and more formal; it will take your audience longer to digest it than if you were to speak more informally.
Pause at the end of sentences and sections.
Speak with confidence; it helps to convince your audience of what you are trying to say.
Do not raise your voice at the end of each sentence as if you are asking a question, and seeking assurance from your audience.
If you lose your place or get tongue tied, act normal about it; don't appear nervous. At this point a one-liner that pokes fun at yourself is sometimes quit effective in breaking the ice in an awkward moment.

15. Movements and Gestures (7)

Don't focus or think about what to do with your hands, or facial expressions; these will come naturally if you focus on your talk.
Don't fiddle with your hair or your jewelry, pace back and forth, or swivel in your chair, as you speak. If you are doing some kind of repetitive movement, try to control it. It distracts your audience. It can be extremely irritating to your audience.
Sit or stand straight. Place both feet on the floor. But don't be too stiff; relax your body. Hang loose.

16. Answering Questions (7)

Tell your audience whether you will accept questions during your presentation, or prefer to hold them to the end.
Treat a question and answer session at the end of your presentation as an informal discussion of your subject rather than as a series of challenges of things you have said. Your audience is primarily interested in seeking more information, clarification of points you made, and the raising of related points. These can add to your presentation. Welcome such questions and statements.
Make sure you understand a question before answering it; if you do not understand it, ask the questioner to repeat it, or to express it in some other way, or to give examples.
Answer a question as simply as possible without being long winded, or going off on unrelated tangents.
If you do not know the answer to a question, say so. Your audience does not expect you to know everything. Ask your audience whether they have the answer. Tap into the knowledge of your audience.

17. Audio Visual Aids (additional points)

Audio visual aids are now commonly used in presentations. There is practically nothing on this in the booklet, Making Class Presentations. So the following is additional material and suggestions.
Below are some special categories of Audio Visual aids. Here are some general points that cover all or most of them:
Test your equipment in the room you are going to use well before your presentation. Do not test it somewhere else. The room will have special conditions. They will affect your presentation, and your equipment.
Do not overwhelm your audience with your audio visual aids. Glitz can overwhelm and drown out the content of your message.
Make sure that your visual aids can be seen from all parts of the room.
Check the lighting before hand. Too much lighting can drown out your visuals. Not enough lighting can make the taking of notes by your audience impossible. Try to use dimmers if they are available.

Overhead Transparencies

Keep the sequence of your transparencies in order. Do not mix them up. You do not want to go searching for the correct transparency in the middle of your talk.

Do not photocopy onto your transparencies normal typed pages (say in 10, 12, or 14 font size). Your audience will not be able to read small text.

Put only a few points on each transparency. Make each point large enough so that the person in the back row can see it.

Make sure the text and visuals are dark enough that they can bee seen by the audience.

Do not use tables or charts with small statistics on them. They are very hard to read.

Use a sheet of paper to control which points the audience sees. Cover the points at the bottom which you do not want your audience to see until you get to them.

Writing on blank transparencies with a black felt pen is a way to record feedback from your audience so that everyone can see it. It helps interactivity.

Microphones

Try not to use a mic if at all possible. It can be distracting. If your voice does not carry to the back of the room, then use one.

Try to use a wireless mic that clips on to your collar or clothing. This will not restrict your movement.

If you use a stationary mic, your will be tied to one location, such as a podium. This might be OK for formal presentations, but it will make movement across the front of the room practically impossible.

If you have a hand held mic with a cord, make sure you do not get caught up in the cord, or trip over it.

Test the volume and pitch of the mic before your presentation. You do not want a high pitched squeal irritate the eardrums of your audience in the middle of your presentation.

Video and Film

Video and/or film can be an effective way to create impact.

Use video sparingly only to illustrate a point. You do not want to have a video or film take over the major portion of your talk.

Integrate the video clip seamlessly into the rest of your presentation.

Ensure the video quality is high or acceptable.

Ensure that the sound track works properly.

Do not fiddle with video equipment in the middle of your talk. Have it set up and ready to go before you begin your presentation.

Slides

A slide projector can be an effective tool to provide visual representations of some of your points.

Use slides sparingly. Do not overwhelm your audience with too many slides.

Try to control, with a remote control or clicker, the sequencing of your slides.

If you get a helper or aide to advance the slides, ensure they know the spots in your talk when they should advance to the next slide without prompting from you.

Computer-Aided Presentations

Computer-generated slides, such as Microsoft PowerPoint, have become standard in many professional presentations. They are used increasingly by students in classroom presentations.

One advantage of computer-generated slides is that they can be revised right up to the beginning of your presentation.

You can prepare your PowerPoint slides from any of the student computer labs on campus, or at home if you have a computer and the appropriate software. Other possibilities are Wordperfect, Harvard Graphics, Lotus, etc.

Make sure your slide show fits on a single diskette for easy transfer to the computer you will use in the classroom.

Try to ensure a good balance of text and graphics.

Use a modest number of computer slides. Do not overwhelm your audience with a Multimedia show that emphasizes format over content.

Test the slide show on the computer you are going to use and in the room you are going to use before your presentation.

Follow the guidelines for transparencies and slides. In particular, make sure that the text on the slides is viewable from all parts of the room.

Always use colour contrast between foreground and background. Never put text on a noisy background. This drowns out the text.

Make sure you prepare a hard copy handout of your slides in case something goes wrong. You can fit three to six slides on a single sheet of paper for photocopying and hand out. Use double sided copying to save paper.