How To Give A Scientific Seminar

Michelle ChowOcean Discovery!Sebastopol, CA

Overview

• Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

• “How To” on Project Presentations

Nonverbal Communication“body movement and expression”

• Face audience

• Make eye contact

• Appropriate facial expressions

• Body movement (pacing, swaying)

• Dress appropriately

Verbal Communication

• Speak at a reasonable pace

• Intonation (tone of voice, use of voice)

• Pause when needed

• Avoid excessive use of “um” or “like” or “so”

Suggestions for Practicing

• Practice at least three times!!!

• Get feedback from your peers.

• Before you start to speak take a few seconds to organize your thoughts, notes and equipment.

Appearance of your slides “You want people to focus

on your message”

• Use a simple design for your slides. This is a professional seminar.

• Text must not fade into background.

• Choose an appropriate font that can be read from the back of the room.

• Size 32 – 36 for bulleted text

• Size 44 – 48 for titles

• Each slides does not need to have a title. Especially if a title is redundant or obvious.

• Spread bullets apart to avoid reader’s brain overload.

• Paragraph—spacing—6-12 pt after paragraph.

• Pictures and graphs should take up the whole slide. Axes text and statistics hard to read from back of room.

Treatments

Treatment 1 Treatment 2

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Michelle’s Don’t List

• Clip art when not appropriately used (which is most of the time).

• Slides and lines that zip in and out of space. Please have all your text on the slide at the same time.

• All slides should transition appropriately (use no transition or fade at fast speed)

• No music, unless you are studying dolphins and are recording their mating calls.

Planning the package• Know your audience

• Define terms

• Provide an overview if complex

• Integrate text and images– map of study area, distribution– understand overall idea/theory/topic– images of organism/scientific name– repeat the question if necessary

Planning the package• Clear purpose/logical sequence

• Consistency in style and language

• Bulleted information

• Prompts for speaker and audience

• Time yourself: 1 frame /minute

• Leave time for questions

• Don’t read your talk

Techniques that help• Memorize opening sentence

• Note cards

• Tough question?– anticipate questions that poke holes– anticipate future direction questions– repeat the question– “That’s a good question”– “I don’t know but…”

Advice to Fellows

• Practice within a group and then between groups.

• Bring laser pointer into class to demonstrate how to use it correctly

• Remind students they will be using a microphone

More advice

• Everything presented verbally or visually should have a clear role in support of the central thesis or theses of the talk.

• If anything doesn’t do this, remove it.borders, animations, clipart, etc

Listener’s Responsibility

• No talking

• Listen closely

• Think of at least one question to ask speaker

• Stay awake (no sleeping) and engaged during the talk

Presentation Title

your name

School affiliation

city state

Introduction• Introduce topic, big picture. Why?

• Explain how you reached your questions/hypotheses.

• Define scientific terms. Use scientific names for organisms.

• Visual Aids (slides of organisms)

• List questions your study addresses.

Methods

• Summarize methods = Use methods as an explanation of how you addressed your questions.

• Visual Aids (pictures of study sites or setup is most effective).

• Organize methods to help audience easily follow your research.

Flow Chart for Presentation Organization

R e su lts a n dIn te rp re ta tio n A

M e th o d fo ra d d re ss in g A

Q u e s tio n A

H o w a ll parts fit in to :1. O rig inal questions2 . B ig p ic tu re3 . P a s t re se a rch

R e su lts a n dIn te rp re ta tio n B

M e th o d fo ra d d re ss in g B

Q u e s tio n B

R e su lts a n dIn te rp re ta tio n C

M e th o d fo ra d d re ss in g C

Q u e s tio n C

In tro d u c tio nQ u e s tio n s

Results

• Use tables and/or figures to present data.

• Avoid verbalizing too many numerical values (especially without visual aids).

• Show audience only data and results that are important in addressing your questions.

• Remind audience how each method or result fits back to the questions of your study.

Discussion

• Talk about results with respect to: Your study’s questions Past research

• Make logical conclusions about your research findings.

• Visual Aids (refer back to tables and figures used in results)

Conclusions

• Visual Aid = Outline of questions from introduction with acceptance or rejection of null hypothesis.

• Big picture

• Future research

• Acknowledgements

Your brain starts working the moment you are born, and

doesn’t stop until you have to speak in public.