Oral presentations

This resource describes what oral presentations are. It also suggests strategies for effective planning and presentation. 

What is an oral presentation?

Oral presentations, also known as public speaking or simply presentations, consist of an individual, or a group of people,  verbally addressing an audience on a particular topic. The aim of this academic exercise is to educate, inform, entertain or present an argument. Oral presentations are seen within workplaces, classrooms and even at social events such as weddings. An oral presentation at university assesses the presenter’s ability to communicate relevant information effectively in an interesting and engaging manner. 

You need to approach these assignments with the same academic rigour as an essay or a report. The information you will present is not based on personal knowledge or experience; it needs to be research-based and precise. 

In most cases, the information you present will need to be cited and appropriately referenced during the presentation, as part of the PowerPoint slides, for example in-text references at the end of a dot point and full reference list as your final slide. 

In other words, a presentation is: 

• Carefully prepared
• Judiciously structured
• Well researched
• Heavily scripted (though you must not read a script)
• Rarely improvised 

Group presentations

In some instances, you may be required to present as part of a group to test your ability to work as a member of a team. Working within a group can sometimes be a challenge, or a great success. To understand how to effectively work in a group, take a look at our Group Work resource.

TIPS

• Divide the topic of your presentation into subtopics, and allocate one to each group member (according to people’s strengths, knowledge, experience and interest). Doing this will ensure that the workload is evenly shared and that everyone takes part in the assessment.
• Rehearse together as a group. Although it may seem easy for each group member to go off and cover their own section alone, not having regular group meetings or rehearsals will cause your presentation to appear disjointed.
• Ensure the presentation is consistent by using a consistent style for your visual aids. If the visual aids your group uses are not consistent in format, colour and font styles, it will be clear to the marker that you have not been working as a team.
• Use a cloud-based service or platform to create your presentation. Most cloud-based services and platforms have functions that allow you to work on materials remotely from one another. Check out our digital presentation resources to learn more.

Planning and presenting an oral presentation

Planning your oral presentation

 The most important factors for a successful presentation are: careful planning, lots of practice and engaging the audience. It's a good idea to watch some professional presentations online to get a sense of what good speakers do. Have a look at TED Talks, for instance.

• Review the subject outline. Look for all relevant detail that you will need to understand the requirements of the task, including when it is due, the weight of the assessment, and the length of time you have to present. Review the assessment criteria. What are you are being assessed on?
• Analyse the task. Determine the purpose of the presentation. Do you need to answer a specific question?
• Consider the audience. What are their expectations of your content and delivery?
• Brainstorm. Map out everything you already know about the topic. Write out any ideas you can use to interact with the audience, or engage them, and jot down what questions, explanations and information you want the audience to be provided with.
• Do the research. Find relevant material, take notes, and remember to keep the references you used.
• Organise your ideas. Create a logical presentation so the information flows well. In some ways this is more important when presenting orally, as your audience does not have the option of reading back over things that are not clear to them. 
• Pay attention to the language you are using. Presentations should be delivered in spoken or conversational language rather than written language. Therefore, try to avoid over-long sentences which will be difficult to follow by your audience. This being said, an academic presentation is still an academic exercise. You will need to remain precise, but make sure you explain and define complex terms, and provide illuminating examples. 

Audience interaction and engagement

Even if it is not a specific requirement, it is good practice to engage the audience and/or to have them interact during your presentation. Check the assessment description and marking criteria to understand what will be required. Examples of ways to ensure audience interaction are:

• Asking questions, testing the audience, providing a quiz
• Allowing the audience to ask questions
• Providing handouts – consider a ‘fill in the blank’ document that goes hand-in-hand with a slideshow or the information you are presenting
• Asking someone to volunteer if there are demonstrations

Using visual aids

In many oral presentation assessments you will be allowed or required to use visual aids, such as slides, images or props, to add an interesting feature and engage the audience. Keep your visual aids clear and to the point, and ensure that they are easily readable by your audience. Make sure that all the visual elements you include are directly related to the topics you present. 

If you decide to include a chart, table or graph, make sure you comment on the figures during the presentation. In other words, do not expect the audience to synthesise the information. It is the job of the presenter to extract and present the most relevant information in a succinct way. 

NOTE: Do not forget to save your visual material on a USB flash drive so that you can easily access it through the class computer (if applicable), and have a back-up if you need to submit it in class or print it out. 

Recorded presentations 

For some assignments you will be required to provide a recorded presentation (individual, or group recorded presentation). For a narrated PowerPoint presentation, your slides will give a structure to your presentation. 

• Start by thinking about the overall structure of your narrative (the skeleton), then base the slides on the main points you are discussing
• Make sure each slide has clear headings and sub-headings to orient the reader
• Include clear topic sentences to introduce the subject matter
• Make sure you define technical terms and explain what they mean
• Illustrate your points through carefully selected examples
• Use appropriate sources to support your argument and reference the sources on the PowerPoint slides
• Make sure you provide a reference list at the end
• Consider background: a busy background will be distracting
• Consider lighting: from the front, rather than behind you
• Composition: how large will you be in the frame?
• Minimise background noise. 

How many slides? How many words? 

For a PowerPoint presentation: 

• Aim for 1-2 slides per minute as a rough guide
• Avoid displaying too much information on any one slide: just provide the key points
• In your narration, explain or expand on the key points
• Make sure your text is between 14 - 20 point, with at least single spacing between lines
• Only use images that complement the text
• Do not use visuals for decoration purposes
• Aim for around 100 – 150 words (maximum) per minute, then practice to check your timing

Preparing to present

 Once you have completed writing your presentation – remember, this needs to sound like spoken language, not written language! – and have finalised your visual aids, it is time to practice the presentation. When practicing your speech consider these aspects:

• Speak slowly and clearly
• Demonstrate enthusiasm and keen interest in the topic
• Vary pitch, tone and speed to retain audience interest
• Do not read off your palm cards
• Maintain eye contact with the audience
• Maintain good posture so you can be clearly heard
• Use natural hand gestures
• Use a natural tone of voice
• Practice to improve your confidence
• Practice pronunciation of difficult words by breaking them into syllables
• Be mindful of your body language
• Time yourself to make sure you are within the time limits

It is also important that you use this time to make sure that you are fully prepared. Do you need to collect props? Have you thought about how you will access your visual aids?