Virtual Presentation Formats
Oral Presentation
The familiar presentation composing of a 12 minute oral presentation + 3 minutes question and answer time.
+ Define your goal, and organise your presentation well
Good organisation for your presentation is important. To present a paper at a conference, the presentation may roughly follow the sections of your paper. The key parts are:
- Introduction, related work, problem statement: introduce yourself, the topic, and then slowly introduce related work, their limitations and then the problem that you want to solve. You may show some example of the problem that you want to solve
- Your solution: explain how you have solved the problem
- Experimental validation: this is to show that your solution is good to solve the research problem
- Conclusion: A good conclusion should summarize the key points of your presentations (problem, key characteristics of your solution, key experimental results) and then you may talk about limitations and future work. The conclusion is very important. You can think of the conclusion as what are the key points that you want your audience to remember.
+ Presentation Tips
Avoid the temptation to dress up your slides with unnecessary clutter and focus instead on simple design basics:
Use a sans serif font for body text. Sans serifs like Arial, Helvetica, or Calibri tend to be the easiest to read on screens.
Use decorative fonts only for slide headers, and then only if they’re easy to read. Decorative fonts –calligraphy, German blackface, futuristic, psychotic handwriting, flowers, art nouveau, etc. – are hard to read and should be reserved only for large headlines at the top of the page. Better yet, stick to a classy serif font like Georgia or Baskerville.
Put dark text on a light background. Again, this is easiest to read. If you must use a dark background – for instance, if your institution uses a standard template with a dark background – make sure your text is quite light (white, cream, light grey, or pastels) and maybe increase the font size up a few points.
Align text left or right. Centred text is harder to read and looks amateurish. Line up all your text to a right-hand or left-hand baseline – it will look better and be easier to follow.
Avoid clutter. A headline, a few bullet points, maybe an image – anything more than that and you risk losing your audience as they sort it all out.
Using colour on your slides. Consider the concepts of colour balance, contrast and conflict. Black text on a white and yellow on navy blue background are ideal; green on white and white on read, or green on red are NOT aesthetically pleasing. Try it!
Using graphics. The temptation to use graphics from other sources may pose a problem when conveying the message to your audience. When projected on the screen the image may not be in focus or sharp colours may lack contrast. This is especially the case of pie-graphs.
How many slides? A good rule is a slide a minute. Hence if you are allocated 15 minutes it is a good policy to restrict the number of slides to less than 15 as your time spent on each may vary. Endeavour not to go over your allocated time.
Practice runs. Time yourself as you practice your presentation. This exercise will certainly put you at ease.
Speed Talk
New format for 2020 ASFB!
3 minute presentation - no question & answer time
Presenters are required to submit a talk title and abstract as per a regular talk but nominate the speed talk preference.
Presenters will be able to use 1 static slide as a visual aid to support their presentation.
+ Preparing your speed talk
Write for your audience
- Avoid jargon and academic language.
- Explain concepts and people important to your research - you may know all about Professor Smith’s theories but your audience may not.
- Highlight the outcomes of your research, and the desired outcome.
- Imagine that you are explaining your research to a close friend or fellow student from another field.
- Convey your excitement and enthusiasm for your subject.
Tell a story
- You may like to present your Speed Talk as a narrative, with a beginning, middle and end.
- It’s not easy to condense your research into three minutes, so you may find it easier to break your presentation down into smaller sections.
- Try writing an opener to catch the attention of the audience, then highlight your different points, and finally have a summary to restate the importance of your work.
Have a clear outcome in mind
- Know what you want your audience to take away from your presentation.
- Try to leave the audience with an understanding of what you’re doing, why it is important, and what you hope to achieve.
What not to do
- Do not write your presentation like an academic paper.
- Try to use shorter words, shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs.
- You can use humour, however be careful not to devalue your presentation.
Revise
- Proof your Speed Talk presentation by reading it aloud, to yourself and to an audience of friends and family.
- Ask for feedback.
- Ask your audience if your presentation clearly highlights what your research is about and why it is important.
Practice, practice, practice
Feeling nervous before you present is natural, and a little nervousness can even be beneficial to your overall speech. Nonetheless, it is important to practice so you can present with confidence and clarity. Practicing will also help you gauge the timing of your Speed Talk so that you keep within the time limit.
+ Slide Design
Rules
Before you start work on your slide, you should take the following rules into account:
- One single static PowerPoint slide is permitted;
- No slide transitions, animations or ‘movement’ of any description are permitted;
- Your slide is to be presented from the beginning of your oration; and
- No additional electronic media (e.g. sound and video files) are permitted.
- If you need to reference a picture, image or any kind of content in your slide, you can do it on the bottom of the slide in a small box.
Suggestions
You may like to consider some of the following suggestions.
- Less is more: text and complicated graphics can distract your audience – you don’t want them to read your slide instead of listening to your 3MT.
- Personal touches: personal touches can allow your audience to understand the impact of your research.
- Creativity drives interest: do not rely on your slide to convey your message – it should simply complement your oration.
- Work your message: think about how your slide might be able to assist with the format and delivery of your presentation – is there a metaphor that helps explain your research?
- An engaging visual presentation can make or break any oration, so make sure your slide is legible, clear and concise.
Graphical Abstract
We encourage abstract submitters to design a Graphic Abstract for digital display during the student virtual conference. In addition to your oral presentation & speed talk or as standalone submission.
Single static graphic in a PDF format that accompanies a standard title and abstract as per the submission guidelines.
The content of the graphical abstract is specifically not fixed, to encourage creativity
Students are encouraged to consult numerous online resources during preparation.
A Graphical Abstract (GA) depicts the main result/conclusion/recommendation of a study using mostly visual representations. If designed with minimal use of text, a GA can be very effective for communicating across language and cultural boundaries. Conveying your message in a single image is very useful for transmitting on websites and popular communication technology like Twitter and Facebook. Check out some examples of graphical abstracts here: www.elsevier.com/authors/journal-authors/graphical-abstract
Pre Recording Presentations?
We understand this year will be a very different format to previous years!
Click here to download instructions on how to pre record your presentation using Zoom or Powerpoint.