Suggestions for preparing your presentation Do not expect the ...

SCBC606 Research Seminar Course
Some things to consider when preparing your seminar
Try to tell a story not just report your data.
Sometimes this will mean presenting the results in a different order than you did the experiments.
Give enough background so people unfamiliar with your field of study can understand not only
what you are doing but why. The rationale for the experiments is very important.
Explain clearly what the questions you are going to address in your presentation.
If you are using techniques that are complicated or difficult for people unfamiliar with the
technique to understand make sure you teach people about the technique first. Don’t give the
intricate details of the experimental protocol but explain in general what information you will get
out of the experiment and a little about how the experiment was performed.
Do not put too much data into the presentation. If you do not have time to give a good
explanation about the results then do not include them. Also if the results do not fit with your
story you may want to leave them out.
It is okay to have a couple of sections. If all of your results don’t fit a single story tell them both
but separately. But try to tie them together at the end.
Figures for publications are not always good for presentations. The audience will have a short
time to look at the figure and it should be simple enough that the audience can understand it in a
short time. Too much information on a slide generally results in very little information being
conveyed to the audience.
Organization
INTRODUCTION
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (results alone are not informative you need to tell the audience
what the results mean and what you learned)
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS (these are not the same, you can briefly summarize your
results but then you need to tell the audience how your results fit into the big picture)
FUTURE DIRECTIONS (what you plan to do and hope to learn, again try to make this a general
idea and not be too specific about experimental details)