How to Become a Doctorate: Mistakes to Avoid In Slide Presentations

PowerPoint slides or a projector is a great tool for expressing better during oral presentations.

Whether its your PhD review tests or viva examination or thesis presentation, in most cases the department does allow for the use of modern technologies.

However, while slides and projectors are helpful in giving you a cue on what to speak next as well as helps the audience understand your point better, if not designed carefully, they can become problematic during the presentation hour.

Read below for the know-how.

1. Slides and projectors create a good visual information sharing session and makes the presentation impressive, however, it is not necessary to always show one. Especially if you are not technically adept. Making slides is not easy. You have to dedicate time, energy and creativity in making each slide that complements your presentation. So, if you are a learner and yet to master such applications in your computer, kindly avoid using them at the last minute. You are basically eating away the valuable time meant for sharpening your oral presentation.
2. Similarly, avoid gadgets, laptops, pointers, laser pens or anything that will inhibit your presentation if you are new to using them. Fumbling with how to change (back and forward) slides while speaking can be a problem and in the process your audience will be put off by your incapacity.
3. Before you sit down to make slides for your presentation, ask yourself if you really need one. In other words, not every point/argument you say needs to be presented in a slide. You can have a 15 minute long presentation with just 4 slides (title, outline, main points, conclusion).
4. It is best to begin making slides after you are done drafting your whole presentation. This way, you know your introduction, main points, sub-points, examples and conclusion.
5. When using PowerPoint slides or a projector, design each slide or clipping to-the-point. Do not write too much information or try to show too long a video. Remember, tools like PowerPoint and projectors are for helping you to speak better. You cannot and should not speak less just because you think all the data and information is written in the slide.
6. If using slides, use big enough fonts to make each letter visible from far end of the room. Also take care of the fonts being consistent throughout the presentation. The audience should not have a situation where they are able to read slide 1 and 2 but cannot see slide 4 or 6 just because you changed the font, its size and color.
7. Keep the fancy fonts away from formal presentations. Fonts that are stylish and cursive are best for poster making. Same rule goes for the color of the font. Ideal color is black on white background and white on black background. If at all you want to use color, use 1 or 2 colors only for emphasizing a particular name or quotation.
8. After the first 1 slide in which you are showing the heading of your presentation. Do not jump right into the presentation. Make the second slide and title it - The Outline. This is important for your audience to get an idea of what all is going to be spoken and in what sequence. The outline is like the short trailer to a movie. Sometimes you can also printout just the outline slide and hand it over to your audience for them to visually see the breakdown of your research in points, sub-points and so on. Outline markedly helps in clearing confusions that audience/faculty members/supervisor/examiners may be carrying in their heads about your research. However, an outline is a gist and a gist can only be created if you are thorough with your subject and research plan. If and only you have full grasp over your topic and levels of research, you can create a perfect outline.
9. In every slide, just mention 2-4 points written in very short sentences. Best is if you only mention the key words and not full sentences. Point out the keyword and begin explaining each one in detail. No one is interested in reading your slides.
10. Keeping the text short in slides helps in avoiding confusion of the audience about what to read. Too much of information with different fonts will make it difficult for the audience to read and understand.
11. Too lengthy slides and alot of written information may also put you at the risk of counter questions. For example, many times there is an examiner or a person in the audience who is keeping a tab on what to ask during question-answer round. He glances at your slides and finds something odd. Chances are she/he will note it down immediately and ask about it. If you are well prepared then this will not be a problem but if you are not then your inability to give a fitting reply will lessen your score. Remember, the more data and information you are giving to the audience (both in written and spoken form) the more questions are being provoked in each person's head and they will demand an answer from you. So, show less and speak to-the-point. In fact, do not even show and tell what you are not best at. No need to mention the name of a famous writer or book or incident just because you think it will create a good impression. If you lack detail information about it, you will be feeling sorry later. 
12. Be careful of being in snyc with the slides when delivering presentation. Sometimes, the content shown is different from what you are explaining because you have forgotten to change the slide and have started to discuss an issue that is unrelated to the slide being shown. This situation is very confusing to the audience and makes them loose focus.
13. Slide presentations are of two different kinds. One is Supporting the Speaker and other kind is Replacing the Speaker. In type one, the number of slides and its content are kept to the minimum. The speaker is main here and discusses in detail whatever keyword is mentioned in the slide. Whereas in type 2, slides are meant for distribution or publications after the presentation is over. Many times the audience demands the full slide presentation in hard or soft copy form for study. In such a case, each slide is written in great detail with information like citation, references, images with copyright information, contact name and number of speaker, etc. So, before sitting down to design slides you need to decide the purpose of your slides. If slides are for distribution and will be published in the internet, then slides definitely has to be long and dense, so much so that the whole PowerPoint presentation is self-explanatory. However, the problem occurs when a detailed PowerPoint (meant for distribution) is used for a short 15 minute speech or presentation. Here the audience is going to have a tough time in reading the gamut of information provided in each slide. It is also upsetting because the audience cannot deicide whether to listen to you or read the slides. A solution can be that you carry a PowerPoint presentation meant for distribution in soft or hard form on the day of your presentation/speech and while speaking show the simple and short slides to the live audience.
14. If you want to show a video in your slides, never opt for online links. Many times, you may not be able to connect with the internet or the video itself has been deleted from the website, and you will face a problem in playing the video in front of live audience. Therefore, always keep backups of the video.
15. If a situation occurs where a video is not working, then work on it for no more than 30 seconds. If you continue to fix the problem with the video for long then you are wasting the time allotted to you for presentation and secondly, audience is starting to loose attention and you are not gaining any points for that.
16. Ensure that the video, just like images, must be large enough for people who are sitting in the far end of the room are able to see and hear.

So, these were tips for a successful slide presentation that applies for not just university presentations and assignments but for office purposes too.

Comment below to tell me which point made sense to you and what you were doing wrong during your presentations.