The following is intended for UTSC annual presentations, but can be adapted to other uses.

General Guidelines

  • Use the UTSC Powerpoint template
  • Use the written report to inform your presentation. The written report contains the details, and the presentation hits only the highlights.
  • Give credit to your committee and any other contributors on your last slide
  • Get the first draft of your slides done at least 1 month before the presentation date
    • Have your committee review your first and subsequent drafts
    • What questions do people have? What needs to be more clear?
    • What data do you still need to collect?
    • How can you make your argument stronger?
    • Why should your audience care about what you're saying? What's in it for them?
  • Know the time limit for your presentation. Usually you will have between 5-15 minutes for a presentation. Once you create it, go through it out loud and time yourself. Then go back and add information or cut information.
  • Do a dry run in front of your committee members, the Staff Council Executive Committee, and anyone else who can offer you constructive feedback
    • Emil Kresl from HR may be willing to help you hone your message or give you feedback

Effective PowerPoints

  • The PowerPoint is there to support your talk, not replace it.
  • Simple, more numerous slides are always better than fewer, cluttered slides.
  • The best slide is a single image or infographic representing what you're talking about. If you have to choose between an image and text, choose the image. Make it fill the screen if possible. More tips can be found in Presentation Zen.
  • When creating text for your slide, think in headlines not paragraphs. People cannot listen to you talk AND read your slides at the same time.
  • Think about where you'll be presenting. Is it a large auditorium? Then text needs to be large enough that the people in the back can see it. Good guidelines are: 
    • 24 pt or larger text
    • No more than 3-5 bullet points of text (But if there's a way to communicate your points using images, do it that way instead)
    • Bullet points should be short and to-the-point. Incomplete sentences are OK.
      • Bad: "The ceremony will take place August 15, 2015"
      • Good: "Ceremony: August 15"

Interesting Talks

  • As you prepare your talk, think from the audience's point of view: what's in it for them? Why should they care about what you're telling them?
  • Stick with 3-4 main points. Everything else should support those points. For each point, try to come up with a supporting story or example.
  • Statistics and charts can be boring, so make them as simple as you can or break each one up with a story or anecdote. Always give meaning or context to the data.
  • Keep it as concise as possible - don't waste your audience's time. Remember for the May presentations, the audience has your report to refer to. You can refer to it too.

Media Use

When considering use of logos, particularly those of UT departments, get permission first. Using their logo in the wrong way can cause reputation damage for UTSC.

To get permission, contact the department's director. Look up the department on the utexas.edu site and then look for an organizational chart, or call their main line and ask for the name of the director, and then look them up in the UT directory.


When considering use of other images in presentations, fair use includes use for educational, non-profit, and scholarly purposes. When in doubt, see this flowchart:


Use of Charts and Graphs

Keep these as simple as possible. Use the following guidelines when deciding what type of chart to use:


Resources

UT Staff Toastmasters group

To improve as a public speaker, join the UT Staff Toastmasters group to get practice and feedback.


Articles

Lynda.com Courses

Presentation

PowerPoint

Pick the one that matches your version of PowerPoint:

Literature

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