Standards for Project Presentations
Your team will have 15 minutes for your presentation plus a couple of minutes for changeover and questions. As in a professional conference, this time limit will be strictly observed. There is a clock in the back of the room so that you know how much time you have left to finish your presentation. You will get a warning when there are two minutes left.
Oral presentation
Rehearse! Give your talk to friends and ask them for suggestions. If your presentation runs too long, delete some material and rehearse again.
Don't just read what's on the slide. That's the classic boring PowerPoint presentation. Your audience knows how to read, so point out what's important, give context for the material on the slide, and so on.
Engage the audience. Make eye contact instead of facing the projection screen or looking down at note cards. Engage the whole audience, not just the instructor.
Speak clearly. Speak loudly and distinctly enough that people can hear you without straining. Some common problems are trailing off at the ends of sentences or speaking too fast.
If you run out of time don't race through the rest of your presentation. Skip some details and go to your conclusions.
Visual materials
Rehearse! Make sure your materials are readable and free of typos or other embarrassments. Colors that look fine on your monitor can look much worse when projected, so rehearse in a room with a projector if possible.
The Iron Rule of Presentations: Never use a slide filled with dense, small type, whether words or data. This is guaranteed to lose your audience's attention.
A picture can be worth 1000 words. For example, a clear and appropriately labeled map is much more effective than a verbal explanation of your region's location. But don't use pretty pictures for their own sake — remember, your purpose is to convey information.
All your text and graphics must be large enough to be legible to the whole audience. The default label size in plots (especially Excel) is always too small for a presentation so remember to make your labels larger. If something isn't important enough to be legible then get rid of it.
Devote each slide to a single theme. Put a title at the top of each slide that summarizes the point you are trying to make.
Use the minimum number of words needed to make your points clearly. Your audience does not have time to read and understand detailed explanations.
Be careful with slide backgrounds as they sometimes make your text hard to read. Avoid garish color schemes or hard-to-read color combinations (such as one light color against another or one dark color against another). Consider using a "minimalist" approach that focuses on your content instead of visual frills.
Mechanics
Rehearse! Work out any technical kinks (like graphics or animations) ahead of time so you don't have to apologize to your audience for something not working.
Ensure in advance that your presentation is viewable. ("In advance" doesn't mean two minutes before the start of class!) If possible, test your presentation on a room-sized projection system beforehand.
Did I mention that you should rehearse? You really should rehearse.