This last week I gave my first practice presentation, which was recorded and sent back to me for analysis. With one more chance to practice this Saturday (before the final presentation next week), I spent most of my time working this week to fix up my presentation. While I had few problems regarding my presentation skills, I had much more to add in terms of my presentation’s content, specifically in my methodology/discussion and use of visual aids.
Unfortunately, I have a tendency to talk very quickly during presentations (likely due to nerves). During my recorded practice presentation, I managed to turn the presentation that took my 16-18 minutes normally into a 9 minute presentation. While this puts my far short of the 15-20 minute time frame, it also means I have a lot of room left to incorporate more material into my slides. Besides this speed reading, the only other problem with my presentation skills was my tendency to look at the slides regularly, which messes up the flow of the presentation and makes it seem as if I don’t know the material I am presenting by heart.
Those who viewed my practice presentation found it to be a little boring, as I had many long slides inundated with text all throughout my powerpoint. After my first practice, I cut down a majority of my long slides, either by removing text and adding it to my script or by splitting slides with more than 4 points into multiple slides with less text. With all of these additions being made to my script, I also went through the script from the beginning and simplified it, ensuring that any complicated language was put as simply as possible (this both makes it easier to memorize and easier for the audience to understand). With regards to visual aids, I found that the one picture (of a PCA pump) and two tables (my results) were not enough to sufficiently keep the audience's attention through a 22 slide presentation. I added 3 pictures and a graph to my updated slideshow (28 slides in total), which should be more than enough to both help get my points across to the audience and keep them engaged with my presentation.
With regards to my methodology and discussion sections, I added a few slides to both explain how I formulated my survey questions and create a direct link between my results and my conclusion. I had an especially hard time creating a discussion section, as everything I would say in my discussion was more concisely stated in my conclusion just a slide later. I ended up merely using the discussion section to tell the audience about some interesting things shown by my data that I did not explicitly mention before (and that didn’t directly relate to the conclusion).
Saturday will be the next practice presentation opportunity for me, while the final presentation will also take place towards the end of next week. My last blog post for this project will be a reflection on my final presentation.
Almost done!
WORD COUNT: 515
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