Hot tips for students

Remember that you only have three minutes. Structure your talk so that the audience can follow your logic. Don’t forget that you want to make your audience not only understand your research but also believe that your project IS research.

Clarify how your research project is significant, not only to you but also to the community at large (beginning with your research community). Your audience will want to know more if you engage individuals and leave them feeling as if they have learned something. A sure sign of success is when people remember your project and/or your presentation after the competition and can tell others why it is significant.

In most cases you will want to reduce your complete thesis title to something catchy that encapsulates your project. A three-line title with a colon will look clumsy and might be confusing for audience members who are non-specialists.

Aim for a title that is informative as well as imaginative, but always relevant to your topic. Don’t be too cute or too esoteric.

*The least successful presentations at the UWA finals in 2011 were those where postgraduates used their complete thesis titles. Remember, your ideal audience for this competition is intelligent but non-specialist.

One static PowerPoint slide can be an important aid in communicating with your audience. This engaging visual cue needs to relate to your talk and provide complementary information. Proofread your slide and have someone else check it for grammatical and punctuation errors. NO MISTAKES PLEASE. This slide is your only visual aid so do not waste it. Very little information – for example, a picture with no text – will not offer you much support. Too much text and/or complicated diagrams detract from your presentation, as the audience might be distracted trying to decipher them. Beware of using a font that is too small or faint.

If you need to use aids of some kind, make them easy to handle and big enough to read. If you have several sheets of paper, you might lose your place and you will waste time shuffling your notes. Sometimes paper (as opposed to note cards) will shake with your hands if you are nervous. Use a method that makes it easy for you to keep eye contact with the audience.

Time yourself and use all the time allotted. Practice several times because people often speak either too quickly or too slowly at home alone. If possible practice before an audience of some kind. Even one person is better than none. His or her face will give you valuable information about how clear and dynamic you are.

Try to vary your tone so you don’t lull your audience to sleep. If you pace yourself, you won’t be rushing to finish at 2 minutes 45 seconds and garbling your sentences.

Always maintain eye contact with your audience. You don’t want to be looking at notes constantly. Eye contact is one of the best ways of engaging your audience. 

Speak clearly and at a reasonable pace. It’s fine to move around and to use appropriate gestures, but too much movement can be distracting, causing people to watch rather than listen.

Finally, speak with enthusiasm and passion. As one of the judges last year commented, ‘It is, after all, your thesis. If you don’t display positivity, then no one else is going to be convinced by the talk.’

Remember who your audience is – intelligent but non-specialist. This competition will give you invaluable practice in learning how to communicate with those outside of your discipline. You do not want to patronise the audience nor do you want to be abstruse. Avoid jargon. If technical terms are needed, make sure you define them.  You are aiming to walk the middle road here and to invite others to travel with you.

Another way of approaching this is to imagine that you are being interviewed by a journalist who has heard you are working on an exciting project. How would you communicate the significance of your research? How would you excite the journalist and also make sure he or she was able to report what you had accomplished accurately?

*At the university finals and the national finals, nearly all contestants memorised their presentations and so did not make use of notes. You might start with notes at the School level, and if you progress you might not need them by the time you reach the next level.