1. Presentation skills refresh
Claire Sewell
Research Support Skills Coordinator

2. Outline
o Why learn to present?
o Designing your presentation
o Delivering your presentation
o Top tips and tricks

3. Do we need presentation skills?

4. Do we need presentation skills?
“I read a study that said speaking in front a crowd is
considered the number one fear of the average
person.

5. Do we need presentation skills?
“I read a study that said speaking in front a crowd is
considered the number one fear of the average
person.
Number two was death.

6. Do we need presentation skills?
“I read a study that said speaking in front a crowd is
considered the number one fear of the average
person.
Number two was death.
This means to the average person if you have to be
at a funeral you would rather be in the casket
than doing the eulogy”
Jerry Seinfeld

7. Design

8. PRESENTATIONS!!
• Welcome to this workshop about learning to design and deliver
presentations
• Today we will talk about the best way to capture (and keep!) audience
attention as you talk to them for hours and hours about something they
don’t really care about
• We all hate presentations but we have to do them as part of our
everyday jobs – more about this to follow….
• Basically as long as no one falls asleep in your presentation you
must be doing a good job … right?!?
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Users Books
borrowed
Questions
received
Satisfaction
levels
This chart explains something very important – but not important enough for a slide of its own!

9. Problems
Bad clip art
Poor font choices
Pointless
graph
Font size
Slide
background
Poor colour
choices
Hard to read
Too many colours
Multiple fonts
Too much text
Pointless
animations

10. Basic design principles
o Stick with your theme
o Be sensible with colour and font choices
o Use animation sparingly

11. Structuring your presentation
o Build around your key message(s)
o Work backwards
o Make it flow
o Question questions
o Storyboard

12. Power of the point

13. Design tools
Powerpoint alternatives
oHaiku Deck
oPrezi
oGoogle Slides
oKeynote
oCanva
Image sources
oFlickr
oPixabay
oPexels
oPhotofunia
oNappy.co

14. Handouts
o Purpose and content
o New ways to share information
o Accessibility

15. Delivery

16. Bad delivery can kill a great presentation

17. Dealing with nerves
o Can be a good thing!
o Preparation is key
o Relaxation techniques
o Practice

18. Body language
o First impressions matter
o Eye contact
o Hand gestures
o Facial expression
o Voice projection

19. Dealing with disaster
o No one will know unless you let it show
o Preparation helps avoid problems
o Deal with questions professionally
o Have a back-up plan
Image: Lady Silke's femmetastic world via Flickr under a
Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)
license

20. Questions?

21. Top tips
o Always think about your audience
o Never underestimate the importance of preparation
o Fake it until you make it

22. Good luck!
Claire Sewell
Research Support Skills Coordinator
Office of Scholarly Communication
ces43@cam.ac.uk