Examinations

Typical structure of a presentation:

1. Basic argument / theory

2. Brief description of data and methods

3. Key findings

4. Discussion/methodological evaluation of findings

Please also note the following:

• Try to build up suspense. To do this, you need a clear and exciting research question/thesis, which you develop and work through in your presentation.

• The first slide is a title slide: topic, authors, location of the presentation. You should also briefly introduce yourself.

• This is followed by an introduction. You know what it's going to be about, but your audience doesn't! The ability to empathize is important here: where can I meet my audience?

• A presentation should not be a simple retelling from the text - that would be too much information and would cause the audience to “switch off.” You should consider how much information the audience can process in the given time. Hint: It's not much! Therefore, leave out many details (footnotes) and limit yourself to the basic lines of argumentation.

• Do not put continuous text on the slides, but rather bullet points that serve as “milestones” of your argument.

• Avoid long direct quotations from sources (e.g., several sentences), unless they are absolutely necessary to your discussion.

• Sans serif font (Arial)
• Smallest font size: 20pt
• It takes about 2 minutes to design a slide like this. So, if you have 20 minutes, you should have a maximum of 10 slides.
• Remove any unnecessary slides before the presentation. Include any additional material that may be helpful for the discussion in the appendix (backup).
• Another typical error: huge tables with lots of numbers that are no longer legible. Only present excerpts from the table with the key results.
• Ideally, statistical results should be presented graphically (e.g., the key regression effects as a bar chart or coefficient plot, etc.).
• Make sure the presentation is high-contrast (black text on a white/light background).

• Practice your presentation at least once under realistic conditions (ideally in front of a test audience). This will allow you to check whether you are staying within the time frame.
• Speak to your audience, not to the computer or the screen. Do not read your presentation!
• Set signposts again and again: “Today I would like to answer three questions ...”
• Build bridges between slides: “Now that I have answered the first question with ‘yes,’ I will move on to the second...”
• Emphasize highlights: “This is a remarkable result.”
• If you are giving the presentation together with other students, be sure to coordinate the content! Under no circumstances should you prepare several unrelated presentations instead of one unified presentation.

• Not engaging the audience at the beginning (lack of empathy)
• Too much information (more than a dozen slides)
• Font size too small (less than 20pt)
• Too much text on the slides (e.g., long verbatim quotes)
• Tables on the slides too large (making them unreadable)