Guidelines for Oral Presentations

Yellow bullhead

CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO-VISUAL INSTRUCTIONS

Your audience, many new and even experienced presenters can benefit from reviewing tips on how to give a good oral presentation.  Just Google “How to give a good scientific talk” or “How to make a good PowerPoint presentation” for suggestions on how to make your presentation one that will be remembered.  An excellent article for speakers is “Strategy and checklist of effective scientific talks ” (Ecol. Soc. Am. Bull. 72: 8-12, 1991), or Michael Fraidenburg’s 2005 article on effective use of PowerPoint in Fisheries 30(5):34-38.  

General Instructions

  1. Oral presentations should contain: introduction, objectives, methods, results, conclusions/implications. Objectives should be clearly stated.  Avoid unnecessary detail in methods unless the methodology is the central topic of your talk.  Primarily discuss the results and conclusions.  Conclusions should relate back to objectives.
  2. Presentations are scheduled in 20-minute blocks.  Three things must happen during this block: the speaker introduction (1 minute); the talk (15-16 minutes); and the question and answer period (3-4 minutes).  The moderator will notify you when your presentation reaches 15 minutes.  You will be asked to leave the podium at 19 minutes.
  3. Presentations must start and end on time, no exceptions, because they are coordinated with other concurrent sessions.
  4. Rehearse your talk before the meeting to be sure that it does not exceed the allotted time.  Have peers evaluate your talk.
  5. Podium-mounted computers, lighting, and microphones are not always dependable.  Be prepared to give your talk without such aids, if necessary.

 

Advice on Production of Visual Graphics

1) Keep visual aids simple. Convey only one idea per table, figure, or other graphic.  Figures from reports and publications normally make poor presentation aides.  Too much detail detracts from the primary message of the slide. Use appropriate blank space.

2) Slides should be readable to the unaided eye.  You will be speaking in a large room.  Text on title slides should be restricted to 7 lines.  BIG IS BEAUTIFUL and easy to read.

3) Use appropriate and compatible colors for type and backgrounds; don't be exotic. Avoid white backgrounds.  Color combinations with pleasing contrasts are preferable.  Examples of suggested combinations are: white or yellow type on a blue background, and yellow type on a green background.  Do not use colors you have not tested before. Avoid dark slides and overly dark backgrounds.  Remember that color blind people cannot distinguish between red and green.

4) Simple typefaces are preferable to fancy fonts. Bold type may be effective on title slides.

5) Slides of scenes or organisms should clearly show what you want the audience to see.

Advice on Production of PowerPoint Files

      6) Do all cropping of images in an image processing package, NOT PowerPoint. Save the cropped image as an external file and then insert the image into your presentation.  We suggest saving image files in Portable Network Graphics format as the most space efficient and easiest to use format in PowerPoint presentations.

      7) Use Arial or Times New Roman fonts for all slides. This is to prevent problems with incorrect font/character substitution that occurs when presentations are prepared in fonts not available on the conference computers.  If you must use fonts other than Arial or Times New Roman, EMBED them in your presentation when saving it as follows: (a) in the 'File' menu, click 'Save As'; (b) in the 'Save As' window, click 'Tools'; (c) in the 'Tools' menu click 'Embed TrueType Fonts'. You can embed any TrueType font that comes with Windows.  Other TrueType fonts can be embedded only if they have no license restrictions. If a font can't be embedded (for example, it's not marked as being editable or installable), a message appears to tell you why.  Saving a presentation with embedded fonts increases the file size of your presentation.  

      8) Keep your presentation as simple as possible to avoid hardware and software conflicts.  Audio and video files, animated text, animated figures, superscripts, and subscripts cause most of the problems.

      9) Check to be sure you are using the correct version of PowerPoint and Windows. See the link for audio-visual Instructions posted at the top of this page.

Many of the Guidelines above were taken from The Wildlife Society and the American Fisheries Society, modified and used with permission.