Presentations

Presentations are fairly commonplace in academia, so there is a high chance that you will be required to prepare one. Similarly, in the workplace, there are very few jobs these days that do not require you to give some kind of oral report. University, therefore, provides a great opportunity to develop your presentation skills in an environment where the audience is supportive and on your side, and where you are not assumed to be the expert.

The resources in this section should help you to improve your oral communication skills. The first three resources all address similar issues and offer similar advice, whilst taking slightly different approaches: basic principles is activity-based and a good place to start, general guidelines i takes your through each step from preparing to actually presenting, whilst general guidelines ii focuses more on the presentation itself; tips and techniques is a list of suggestions for coping with the most common presentation problems.

Lastly, posters takes an unorthodox approach to giving advice on poster presentations: 'How to design a really bad poster'.