Oral Presentation

A good oral presentation has a clear objective, a well-defined structure and uses clear and simple illustrations. All presenters should use the conference power-point template provided for your oral presentation. 

Your objective defines what you wish to achieve with your presentation. To achieve a realistic objective you must consider the characteristics of your audience: their motives for attending your presentation, their interests, their knowledge level and their intentions. 

The structure of a good presentation is as follows: 

• Define the subject, give a general outline and state the goals of your presentation in your introduction. 
• Work out your presentation in more detail. 
• Summarise and draw conclusions, which refer back to your introduction. 

We recommend you to make an overview with the estimated timing of your presentation and to prepare yourself for questions from the audience. Rehearsal of your presentation is strongly recommended! Please note that presenting to a live audience can take a little longer than during a rehearsal.

Presentation

It is important to adhere to the time schedule: 15 minutes in total per presentation (in example 12 minutes speaking time and 3 minutes question time). 

Generally, audience’s attention is high at the beginning of a presentation, will decrease and is at its worst about two thirds of the way through. When you reach the conclusion, their attention will increase again. You can help your audience to concentrate by restricting detail to a minimum, using variety in visual aids and tone of voice, maintaining eye contact and by summarising frequently.