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The following is intended for UTSC annual presentations, but can be adapted to other uses.
Guidelines
- For any slides, use Use the UTSC Powerpoint template
- Give credit to your committee and any other contributors on your last slide
- Get the first draft of your slides done at least 3-7 days before 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?
- If there is a time limit to your presentation, go through it out loud and time yourself
- You will likely have 5-15 minutes for your presentation. You may not have time to go through all of your committee's work, so prioritize!
- Do a dry run with 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. People cannot listen to you talk AND read your slides at the same time.
- Text on graphs must be 24 pt or larger. All other text must be 28 pt or larger. You are presenting to a large auditorium and font sizes smaller than that are unreadable.
- A text-only slide should have no more than 3-5 bullet points of text.
- A bullet point of text should be constrained to a single line; if it runs onto two lines, re-word it.
- Bad: "The ceremony will take place August 15, 2015"
- Good: "Ceremony: August 15"
- Incomplete sentences are fine in PowerPoint. It's shorthand that supports your talk, not prose.
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