Best practices

The presentation is meant to support your research and narrative. Keep it simple and aesthetic – use a simple color scheme, easily visible fonts, no special effects, no flashy transitions, no extraneous sounds. Limit the words on your slides. You are the focus of this presentation, and the judges will evaluate you based on your performance, not your slides.

Sequence of slides

• The first slide introduces you. Use the second slide to outline your presentation. Include your main points and follow that sequence.
• Cover detailed information in content slides. Use as many slides as you need, but generally no more than 2 per minute.
• Create a meaningful final slide. The audience will remember this slide.

Slide format

• Use a consistent background and layout for all slides; avoid distracting bright backgrounds and cluttered layouts.
• Choose fonts carefully. Use two at most, nothing cursive or ornamental. Sans serif fonts such as Arial, Helvetica or Calibri are most legible on screens (additional options can be found here or here). Use a minimum of 18 point font; 20-24 point is better. Main points and titles can be larger. Easiest to read is high-contrast letters on a light background.
• Use color with care. Your choice of colors evokes emotion (see here or here). Avoid extremely bright colors and distracting combinations such as red/green.
• Graphics should only be used to support your narrative. Images should have good resolution: not pixilated, out of focus, or too dark. Crop images to remove distractions.

Slide content

• Choose your content carefully. You cannot possibly convey your entire research project in 10 minutes, so make your limited content tell a story.
• Do not use large blocks of text. Use bullet points with keywords, not complete sentences.
• There should be no more than 4-6 bullet points on a page. Left-align text (centered is harder to read). Consider using animation to reveal one point at a time.
• Tables, graphs, and charts should be structured and formatted so that the audience can easily follow your narrative. Be sure to label each appropriately – title, graph axes, table columns, etc.

Preparing for your presentation

• Do not assume that whatever works on your computer will work the same on different equipment or using video conference. Verify.
• Adequately explain tables and graphs. Allow enough time for the audience to understand.
• Anticipate questions from the judges and prepare responses in advance.
• Show up early.
• Practice, practice, practice – with a timer.