is presentation the same as lecture

Lecture vs. Presentation

What's the difference.

Lectures and presentations are both forms of communication used to convey information to an audience, but they differ in their delivery style and purpose. A lecture is typically a formal and structured speech given by an expert in a particular field, aimed at educating and informing the audience. It often involves a one-way flow of information, with limited interaction between the speaker and the audience. On the other hand, a presentation is a more interactive and visually engaging way of sharing information. It often includes multimedia elements such as slides, videos, and graphics to enhance understanding and capture the audience's attention. Presentations are commonly used in business settings to persuade, inform, or entertain the audience. While lectures focus on knowledge transfer, presentations aim to engage and inspire the audience.

Further Detail

Introduction.

When it comes to sharing information and knowledge, two common methods used are lectures and presentations. Both have their own unique attributes and serve different purposes. In this article, we will explore the characteristics of lectures and presentations, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.

Definition and Purpose

A lecture is a method of teaching or presenting information where an expert or instructor delivers a speech or discourse to an audience. The primary purpose of a lecture is to impart knowledge, explain complex concepts, and provide in-depth understanding on a particular subject. Lectures are often used in academic settings, conferences, and seminars.

A presentation, on the other hand, is a visual or multimedia display of information, usually accompanied by a speaker. The main purpose of a presentation is to engage and inform the audience using visual aids, such as slides, videos, or graphics. Presentations are commonly used in business meetings, sales pitches, and educational settings.

Delivery Style

Lectures are typically delivered in a more formal and structured manner. The speaker stands in front of the audience and delivers a monologue, sharing information and insights. The focus is on the speaker's expertise and the content being presented. Lectures often involve minimal audience participation, with the majority of the time dedicated to the speaker's delivery.

Presentations, on the other hand, are more interactive and dynamic. The speaker uses visual aids to support their message and engages the audience through questions, discussions, or activities. Presentations aim to create a dialogue between the speaker and the audience, encouraging active participation and involvement.

Content Organization

In a lecture, the content is usually organized in a linear and sequential manner. The speaker follows a logical flow, presenting information step by step. Lectures often delve deep into a subject, providing comprehensive coverage of the topic. The speaker may use examples, anecdotes, or case studies to illustrate key points and enhance understanding.

Presentations, on the other hand, often follow a more modular structure. The content is divided into sections or topics, allowing the speaker to focus on specific aspects. Presentations may use bullet points, headings, or subheadings to highlight key information. Visual aids, such as slides, are commonly used to support the organization and provide a visual representation of the content.

Audience Engagement

One of the main differences between lectures and presentations lies in audience engagement. Lectures are often more passive, with the audience primarily listening and absorbing information. While there may be opportunities for questions or discussions at the end, the main focus is on the speaker's delivery.

Presentations, on the other hand, encourage active audience engagement. The speaker may ask questions, facilitate group activities, or invite participation through polls or interactive elements. Presentations aim to create a dynamic and collaborative environment, where the audience is actively involved in the learning process.

Visual and Multimedia Elements

Lectures typically rely on verbal communication and do not heavily incorporate visual or multimedia elements. The speaker's words and delivery are the primary means of conveying information. While visual aids may be used sparingly, they are not the central focus of a lecture.

Presentations, on the other hand, heavily rely on visual and multimedia elements. Slides, videos, infographics, and other visual aids are used to enhance the speaker's message and provide a visual representation of the content. Presentations leverage the power of visuals to engage the audience and make complex information more accessible.

Time Management

Lectures are often longer in duration compared to presentations. Since lectures aim to provide comprehensive coverage of a subject, they require more time to deliver. Lectures can range from 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the complexity of the topic and the depth of information being shared.

Presentations, on the other hand, are usually shorter and more concise. Presenters aim to deliver their message within a specific time frame, often limited to 15-60 minutes. The focus is on delivering key points and engaging the audience effectively within the given time constraints.

In summary, lectures and presentations have distinct attributes that make them suitable for different contexts and purposes. Lectures are formal, structured, and focused on delivering comprehensive knowledge, while presentations are interactive, visual, and aim to engage the audience actively. Both methods have their strengths and weaknesses, and the choice between them depends on the desired outcome, audience engagement, and the nature of the content being shared.

Comparisons may contain inaccurate information about people, places, or facts. Please report any issues.

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There are several key differences between delivering a training program, and delivering a lecture or a presentation.

Flow Of Information

A major difference between training and lecture/presenting has to do with how the interactions and information flow. In a lecture or presentation, the major flow goes from the speaker to the audience. Generally, that means that interactions between audience members is low, as is interaction starting from the audience members to the speaker.

Training, however, is far more flexible with information going in all directions -- it's far more interactive.

Different Purposes Or Outcomes Expected

The second major difference has to do with the purpose of the event, or the outcomes expected.

Presentations and lectures are informational in that the attendees are exposed to information, but the emphasis is on exposure rather than learning that can be applied in the real world. It's not that presentation information is irrelevant to real world behavior -- it's that the emphasis is different.

Training, however, is designed to alter the capabilities of attendees (learners), and to build new capabilities that can be used "out there".

One way to make the distinction is to say that presentations involve "learning about", while training involves "learning to do".

Presentations Have Wider Range Of Outcomes

While training should always be about "learning to do", presentations actually have many more possible outcomes, which need to reflected in how the presentation is planned and executed. Presentations can be of various types, depending on whether the presentation is intended to:

Lectures Often Half-Way Between Presentation and Training

It's not quite that simple, because lectures are often part of training, and are intended to result in learning, while that's not the case with all presentations. Still, lectures involve an information flow from teacher to learners that is primarily one way.

That's why, in educational and "learning to" situations, it's important to alter the flow somewhat so that lecture segments are interspersed with thinking exercises, and most important questions to audience members.

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Difference Between Presentation & Lecture

The key difference between presentation and lecture is that presentation is a mode of communication used in different speaking situations, whereas lecture is a well-organized talk delivered with the intention of educating people on a specific subject or a topic in a formal setting. Both presentation and lecture are used in educating and transferring knowledge to people on particular subjects or topics. Nevertheless, there are slight differences between presentation and lecture.

Key Takeaways

• A presentation is a mode of communication in speaking situations to deliver facts and points more clearly, while a lecture is a well-organized talk delivered to educate people on a specific subject or topic in a formal setting.
• Presentations require good preparation, practice, and presentation skills, whereas lectures are more focused on conveying information and do not require as much practice or presentation skills.
• Presentations can include elements of demonstration and may be less formal than lectures, which are typically used as a teaching method for larger crowds in educational settings.

What is a Presentation?

A presentation is an activity in which a presenter shows, describes, or explains something to an audience. It’s a mode of communication in speaking situations to deliver facts and points more clearly. Through presentations, the speaker or the presenter is able to explain or show the content of a particular topic or a subject. There are different types of presentations, and these presentations can be used according to the purpose of the presenter.

Preplanning and organization are required before doing a presentation. When planning a presentation, the presenter should consider the topic, subject, and level of the audience in order to create an effective presentation. At the same time, the presentation should have a structure starting from an introduction and ending with a conclusion. The voice projection of the speaker or the presenter is also very important when doing a presentation. He or she should also pay attention to his/her presentation skills and facial expressions.

What is a Lecture?

A lecture can be defined as an oral presentation of information to educate people on a particular subject or a topic. Lectures are used to deliver information on different subject areas like history, theories, equations, and background information. The presenter of the lecture is known as the lecturer, and the lecturer usually stands in the front of a room and conveys the information related to the particular subject.

Lectures are basically used as a teaching method for a large crowd. Universities and higher educational institutes around the world use lectures to deliver knowledge on various subject matter to their students. Lectures are delivered by talented lecturers. The students in the class may write down the notes while the lecturer delivers the lecture. There are many methods of delivering lectures. The use of multimedia presentations, videos, graphics, group activities, and discussions are some new ways of delivering lectures to students.

What is the Difference Between Presentation and Lecture?

Although both presentations and lectures are used to educate people on a particular subject, there are slight differences between these two methods. The key difference between presentation and lecture is that a presentation is less formal than a lecture. Also, although a lecture merely presents subject matter, presentations can have the elements of a demonstration. Furthermore, presentation skills and facial expressions are used in a presentation, whereas presentation skills and facial expressions are not much required in a lecture. Moreover, good preparation and practice are needed for a presentation, but much practice is not needed to deliver a lecture.

Summary – Presentation vs Lecture

Both presentations and lectures are used to educate people or students on a particular subject or a topic. The key difference between presentation and lecture is that presentation is a mode of communication used in different speaking situations, whereas lecture is a well-organized talk delivered with the intention of educating people on a specific subject or a topic in a formal setting. Reference: 1. “What Is a Presentation?” SkillsYouNeed. 2. “Lecture.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation. Image Courtesy:1. “Confident woman giving presentation” (CC0) via Pixahive 2. “Photo of blackboard, university, speech, lecturer, lecture, teacher, teaching, physics, professor, orator, birger kollmeier, public speaking” (CC0) via Pxhere

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Home Blog Business How to Make a Presentation: A Guide for Memorable Presentations

How to Make a Presentation: A Guide for Memorable Presentations

A presentation goes beyond the idea of crafting a catchy document to present in front of an audience. It is an art in which a person relies on communication skills to introduce a topic relevant to a group of people, regardless of its size. Different elements participate in this communication process, such as body language, presentation skills, visual tools, etc. and are key in delivering an effective presentation.

In this article, we shall present a detailed guide on how to make a presentation, intended both for newcomers in this subject but also for professional presenters who seek to improve the performance of their presentations. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is a presentation?

What is a powerpoint presentation.

• The Importance of a good PowerPoint presentation
• Choosing a topic

Consider the audience & presentation goals

Gather data, references, and source.

• Define the storyline
• Define the outline  

Using one idea per slide

Choose the presentation format, colors & styles, determine the use of metaphors and visual slides, proofreading and polishing process, prepare your speech, rehearse, rehearse and rehearse.

• How to give a memorable presentation

Start strong

Hook your audience, close your presentation.

• Selecting a PowerPoint template
• Add or delete slides in PowerPoint
• Adding images to slide templates
• Adding notes to your slides
• Adding animations to your slides
• Adding transitions to your slides
• Adding audio narration to your slides
• Ideal typeface and size

Color scheme

Printing your powerpoint presentation, powerpoint presentations tips, closing thoughts.

What is a presentation, and what is a PowerPoint presentation?

It is essential to highlight the difference between Presentation and PowerPoint Presentation, often interchangeable terms. One thing is a presentation, an audiovisual form of communication to present information. A PowerPoint presentation is a subset of a presentation. Since PowerPoint remains the leading tool in the market for creating presentations, the term was coined by both spectators and presenters. Let’s begin by checking the main differences between the two terms.

A presentation is any situation in which a person or group has to transmit a message in front of an audience. The format by which the audience attends can answer the following categories:

• Live crowd: A presentation in which the average number of spectators exceeds 100 people. 
• Massive event: Similar to the format above, but we speak about thousands of spectators. This format has specific requirements regarding scenario setup and logistics, and the usual presenters are influencers in worldwide conferences or corporate events (like All-Hands meetings).
• Private event: A selected number of attendants can listen to the presenter. Coaching sessions are the leading kind of private event for presenters, but multiple other categories can fit into this format.
• Online event: Following the trends of remote working and what the pandemic has left us in terms of digital immersion, multiple events shifted their large attendance numbers in favor of online settings. This has the advantage of a narrowed setting, as the area in which the presenter has to stand is considerably reduced – with simpler A/V inputs. Attendees are given a link to the event and watch from their computers or mobile devices.
• Offline event: This medium is what we consume via YouTube videos. Behind each and every YouTube video is countless hours of content development, editing, rehearsing a presentation, and so forth. We call it offline because attendees can browse the content at any time, replaying as desired, unlike Online Events in which the attendees must be logged in to a specific platform. No interaction with the presenter.
• Hybrid event: This is a format coined by large tech companies, the automobile industry, and even fashion brands. The idea is to create an event where a selected number of attendees are allowed to participate (using the Private Event model). Still, at the same time, the event is streamed for users worldwide (Online Event) and/or available on the official social media networks of the brand (Offline Event).

Each one of these formats exposed above has specific requirements in terms of interaction with the audience. For example, in-company presentations will differ from common presentations that seek to capture the interest of new consumers. It is vital to establish the presentation’s intent from the very first moment and then narrow it down according to the topic to present, as well as the knowledge level of your target audience.

A presentation does not necessarily requires to create a slide deck . It is a tool presenters use to make the content more interesting for the audience and also memorable. However, it is well-known that influencer speakers such as Tony Robbins or Warren Buffet ignore PPT documents altogether, preferring to articulate their narrative on the go.

A PowerPoint presentation is a specific type of presentation, which involves the usage of a slide deck crafted with Microsoft PowerPoint. This kind of tool allows presenters to communicate a message through a vast range of mediums, such as images, graphs & charts, audio, and video for a better impact.

Creating a PowerPoint presentation is an easy process, and there are two routes for it: working from a blank slide or using PowerPoint templates .

Some of the advantages of building a PowerPoint presentation:

• Better information retention by the audience, thanks to visual cues.
• Improves the audience’s focus.
• Easy to create powerful graphics.
• Templates are editable, meaning you can repurpose the original designs to meet your standards.
• Saves time to create presentations thanks to its user-friendly UI.
• Encourages teaching and learning processes.

The Importance of a Good PowerPoint presentation

There are some elements that presenters must take into account when making a PowerPoint presentation . It’s not just drag-and-drop, then magic happens. Creating a PowerPoint presentation involves a process of generating the graphic content to display and the narrative around it. The purpose of PowerPoint is to serve as a tool to enhance communication, not to make it overly complex.

We emphasize the relevance of working the speech and graphic content together since the speech itself gives the timeframes for each slide, what elements it contains, or whether it is relevant to use a slide or not to speak about a topic. 

Some points to highlight when preparing a presentation:

• Presenters often use the element of surprise. This means a presentation can start without a slide, use a video, or involve a discussion between two parties, then jump to the slide deck presentation. More on this topic later on.
• A good PowerPoint presentation can be your introduction card in multiple professional settings. The effort you put in terms of design and content shall pay back over time in contacts or business deals.
• Having a spare copy of your presentation, preferably in Google Slides presentation format, is a safe-proof technique in case the PPT file gets corrupted. The aesthetic remains the same and can be browsed by any computer with internet access.

How to Make a Presentation (5 Essential Points)

1. planning your presentation.

The first step in making a presentation is to plan the content according to our personal/business goals and the audience’s interest. Let’s break down each part in more detail.

Choosing the topic of your presentation

There are two situations for this. The first one is that you are open to presenting any topic of your preference. This usually happens in business presentations, inspirational presentations, product releases, etc. The second scenario is restricted, by which you have to pick a topic among a selected number of references. That’s the typical situation in which presenters see themselves when taking part in significant events – as not all topics are suitable for the main content of the event, and this is where creativity comes to play.

How to choose a topic, you may ask. Brainstorming is a good technique as long as you remain within the boundaries of this formula:

What you know and feel confident about + What is relevant to the current moment + What can resonate with your audience = Quality Content.

Again, if you experience restrictions due to the nature of an event, but your objective is to share specific information about your business, here are some tactics that can come to play:

• Do keyword research about the topics your business is involved. See the common patterns in your activity compared with the keywords. Then research the 15 articles on the 5 biggest volume keywords. Narrowing the possibilities in your business is a different take.
• Research whether there’s room for sponsored advertisement. That’s an alternative when directly speaking about your business is a no-no in a presentation.
• Turn your presentation into an inspirational story. That works in most events and brings the audience’s interest.

Another vital point to consider is how passionate you can be about the topic of your choice. Nothing speaks more about professionalism than a presenter being deeply involved with the topic in discussion. It sparks curiosity and gives validation as a reliable authority on the content. On the other hand, when a presenter delivers a talk about a topic they don’t connect with, body language usually betrays the presenter. Spectators feel that the speaker wished to be elsewhere, hence dooming the presentation’s performance (and badly impacting the presenter’s reputation).

Consider the purpose of the content to present. Is it going to be informative? Educational? Inspirational? That shall set the tone of your speech later on.

Like with any project, you can estimate the ROI of your presentation with two verifiable metrics: the behavior of the audience and how many contacts did you build after delivering an effective presentation.

Making a presentation has the implicit purpose of helping you construct your network of professional contacts. Even when the presentation has no explicit financial purpose – as in the case of non-profitable organizations, there is still the acknowledgment component. People want to feel validated for the work they do. People want to build long-lasting contacts that can later on turn to be part of a new project.

Considering the audience is imperative, and often one of the pitfalls many presenters fall prey to. You must be aware of the following:

• The knowledgeability of your audience about the topic to discuss. This filters the option of using technical jargon during a presentation.
• The age range and demographics of your audience. It is not the same to discuss a methodology to reduce financial risk to a group of corporate workers in their 40s than to a group of students in their early 20s. The language is different, the intention behind the message is different, and so is the information retention span.

On regards to presentation goals, they can be classified as professional goals (those who seek conversions or valuable business contacts), influential (to establish a brand in the market), educational (to inform a group of people about a topic you researched), etc. Depending on the presentation goals, you can then structure the content to list and the tone in which you speak to your audience.

2. Preparing content for your presentation

No presentation can be made without reference material. Even when you believe you are the most prominent authority about a topic – you have to prove it with valuable, referenceable material. For some niches, this is critical, such as scientific poster presentations, educational presentations, and other areas in which copyright might be an issue.

References for the material you used can be listed in different formats:

• If you are citing a book/article, you can do a bibliography slide, or screenshot the excerpt you want to cite, then include a proper source format below the image.
• You have to credit the author for images/videos that are subject to intellectual property rights. Depending on the context where the image is presented, you may even have to inquire the author about using the image. If the photo in question is yours, no citation is required. Learn more about how to cite pictures in PowerPoint .
• Graphs and charts should include a reference to what they mean, explaining in a short sentence their context. Cite the source if the graph is extracted from a book or article.

As a tip, prepare a document in which you jot down the references used to create the presentation. They can serve whenever a question is asked about your presentation and you must research extra material. 

Define the presentation storyline

We interpret the storyline as what is the connecting thread of your presentation. What do you wish to discuss? What motivated you to present this topic in this particular setting and in front of an audience? What can your message deliver in terms of new information and quality to your spectators?

All those questions are worth asking since they shape the narrative you build around your presentation. The storyline is the step before building an actual outline of your presentation.

Define the presentation outline

Now that you have a clear idea of your reference material and the story to tell behind your presentation , it is time to list down your presentation structure in a Table of Contents format. Keep in mind this is for internal reference, as the outline is a tool for writing the speech and creating the slides. You don’t have to list the outline in a presentation; if you desire, you can do a simplistic version with an agenda slide.

Be specific. Don’t let any topic be broad enough to lead to confusion. Sometimes, it is best to list many elements in a presentation outline, then trim them down in a second iteration.

This is perhaps the biggest mistake presenters make in the professional context when creating a new presentation. Slides are free; you don’t have to jam everything in, wishing people get an instant idea about EVERYTHING you will discuss in one slide. Not only does it become overwhelming for the audience, but it is also a faux pas in terms of design: when you use too many elements, the hierarchy does not seem clear enough.

Opt for the “one-idea-per-slide” technique, which, as the term refers, implies using one slide per concept to introduce. Work with as many slides as required, but just one main idea by slide. Your presentation becomes clearer, easy to digest for a non-knowledgeable audience, and also serves as reference material on how to pace your presentation.

3. Designing your presentation

The following section contains guidelines about the different aspects that shape a presentation structure . If you are looking for an all-in-one solution that implements these teachings into presentation design, try SlideModel’s AI Presentation Maker . A time-saver AI-generation tool for presenters powered by Artificial Intelligence.

Event organizers have a saying in the presentation format, which can be online or a live event. Depending on which, users have to structure the elements of their presentation to match the final output. An example of this: it’s not the same to create a PPT slide deck for an event in which you stand on a stage, in front of a live audience, than when you present via Zoom call, using your computer screen to cast the presentation. 

The format is different because text usage and images are perceived differently. For starters, an online presentation is most likely to draw users to read the entire content of your slides than a live presentation. The audience may not get your body language in an online presentation, merely watching slide after slide with the presenter’s voiceover. In some conditions, it can be incredibly dull and hard to follow. 

Do your research with the event organizers about which format shall be used. When it comes to in-company presentations or educational presentations, the format is usually live, as the audience is selected and part of the same organization (that being a company or a school/university). If a webinar is required for an in-company format, ask the organizers about the length of the presentation, if it is possible to interact with the audience, deliverable requirements, etc.

The aspect ratio for a presentation format usually follows the 16:9 format or 4:3 format. Presentations built in 16:9 aspect ratio are the standard , rectangular format PPT templates, which also serve to be printed without many distortions in regular A4 files. As we work with a rectangular format, there are two axes – horizontal and vertical, in which presenters can arrange the content according to its importance (building a hierarchy). Working with a 4:3 format is more challenging as it resembles a square. Remember, in a square there are no visible tensions, so all areas have the same importance. 

As a recommendation, the 4:3 aspect ratio is a safe bet for all projectors & beamers. When working with a 16:9 slide and the projector is 4:3, the content gets squeezed to fit the required ratio, and for that very reason, it is advised to increase the font size if you use a 16:9 slide on a 4:3 projector. Be mindful about logos or photographs getting distorted when this conversion happens.

The 16:9 ratio looks more visually appealing these days as we get used to TVs and mobile devices for browsing content. New projectors are usually intended for 16:9 format, so you won’t experience any inconvenience in this regard.

No, not every color works harmonically with other colors. Colors have a psychology behind their usage and impact, and to not make this guide extensive, we highly recommend you visit our article on color theory for presentations . You can find suggestions about which colors you should use for different kinds of messages to deliver and what each color represents in terms of color psychology.

The color you use in your presentations must be in accordance with your branding. For example: you should definitely not build a presentation with a bright, bold magenta neon tone when your logo contains green neon-like hues. If you work with a PPT presentation template that doesn’t match the color of your branding, we recommend you check our guide on how to change color themes in PowerPoint .

Regarding typefaces, do never use more than 3 different typefaces per design. It is best to stick to 1 or 2 typefaces, using the variations each font offers in terms of weight.

An example of this:

You create the heading title (H1 size) with Open Sans bold. Subtitles should be done in H2 size using Open Sans regular. Body text in paragraph size, using either Open Sans Regular or Light. Words to emphasize shall be bolded for important terms and italics for foreign terms to be explained.

Use a cohesive color scheme that fits the background, graphics (such as charts and bar graphs), text, and even images. It helps the audience to understand concepts more naturally and gives a pleasant experience to the sight.

Just as badly a slide deck filled with text is felt by the audience, the exact impact can be attributed to a slide deck that only contains images. The audience may feel disconnected, not understanding the purpose of the presentation. A second side-effect is when the spectators wish to browse the slides to study, as in the context of an educational presentation. If the presenter does not include any text guidance, the slide deck is a mere collection of images without any reference that helps remember the presentation.

Work in balance, like a 3:1 ratio between graphic elements and text. For every 3 graphic elements, a text box must be included.

Using metaphors in presentations is a great idea to introduce complex topics or to tell a story. Say, you want to make the audience aware of your company’s challenges to reach its current standing in the industry. Using a roadmap template that depicts a mountain is an excellent idea as it reinforces the ideas of “challenge” and “teamwork.” 

4. Final touches and polishing your presentation

Before giving any presentation, you should dedicate at least one day to this polishing process. Let’s break down the process for easier understanding.

• Do a first iteration of your slides. The objective here is to grasp how everything looks in terms of design. Check the alignment of images and text, any color inconsistencies, typos, etc.
• Rehearse your presentation one time, tracking how much time it takes to perform the presentation.
• If any information is missing that’s worth adding to the slides, proceed to add it. If there are elements that can be reduced, trim them.
• For time-restricted presentations, get a clear idea about how much time it takes to complete your presentation, plus 5 extra minutes for a Q&A session.
• The second iteration should check the tone of your writing, and double-proof any spelling, punctuation and grammar errors. 

After two complete iterations, your presentation is ready to go to the next stage.

Even though we believe the speech is partially built as you prepare your presentation slides, you should dedicate an extra section of time to prepare your speech correctly. This process involves the following steps:

• Identifying the purpose of your presentation. The core element of why you are speaking to this audience.
• Get to know your audience, their interests, their challenges, and what can they possibly wish to overcome.
• Adding value. This is vital – your presentation has to leave a lasting message to your audience on what they are interested.
• A strong start and a strong finish. Don’t neglect any of these elements.

Writing down your speech in notes is a must. It is the tool you can use to rehearse your presentation, and -in case you feel anxious- you can include some speaker notes in your presentation (which won’t be visible to your audience) to help you structure the speech.

Practice makes perfect. Rehearsing does not imply memorizing the entire presentation, as that would make your speech robotic, and prone to errors. How? Imagine a person asking you a question in the middle of your presentation, a question you didn’t expect. A prepared presenter can easily manage the situation because of the background built around the topic. A presenter that memorized a speech and robotically repeated its content can feel unease, losing focus for the remainder of the presentation.

Some valuable tips on the rehearsing process:

• Record your rehearsing sessions. You can use tools like Presenter View in PowerPoint to track your time. 
• Make it a memorable event. Creating an engaging presentation requires creativity, so consider brainstorming for new takes on adding exciting elements to your presentation for attention retention.
• An exercise recommended by Tim Ferris is to mimic the conditions as closely as possible. This helps to reduce presentation anxiety, and also to get used to cameras and spotlights or evaluate your body language.
• If possible, ask a friend for feedback on your presentation performance. This is particularly helpful for new presenters to get used to interacting with the audience.

5. Presenting (your presentation)

Now it’s time to talk about the presentation and your performance when delivering it in front of an audience. Giving a presentation has many aspects to discuss, from start to end, the techniques to keep your audience interested in the topic, and also recommendations to make a memorable event. Let’s get started.

How to give a Memorable Presentation – Delivering an Impactful Presentation

There are multiple methods to approach a presentation and deliver an impactful presentation. Let’s be honest, not everyone feels comfortable when standing in front of an audience. For that reason, we want to lay out some fresh ideas to help you bring your best to your spectators.

The first element you ought to be aware of is body language . It has to feel natural, not overly acted but also not stiff. Think of a presentation as a similar scenario in which you have a deep conversation with a group of people about a topic you are passionate about. That mindset helps to ease anxiety out of the equation. Avoid crossing arms or constantly pacing across the stage – that only shows impatience and lack of interest.

Keep the concepts simple. Don’t overload your presentation with unnecessary jargon; if you feel something cannot be easily explained, go break down concept by concept until the whole idea is understandable. Graphics are a fantastic asset to help you in this process and boost your performance as a presenter. 

Be mindful of not doing any of these common pitfalls:

• Including large chunks of text on a single slide.
• Using intense background colors that make it difficult to understand the contents of the slide.
• Don’t read every single element in your slides – this is perceived as boring by your audience.

One particularly interesting approach is by Guy Kawasaki, author of the book “The Art of the Start.” He considers the best presentations to be handled using 10 slides, lasting no longer than 20 minutes, and using a 30pt font size. That’s known as the 10-20-30 rule in presentations . It helps you to condense the content for the sake of information clarity.

In case you don’t use a PowerPoint presentation, there are multiple ways to make a presentation memorable:

• Tell a story, but connect with your audience in terms of body language. Play with the elements on the stage (much like TED presenters do), and let the audience feel the experience of your story by being as detailed as possible within the time frame.
• Using a video is an incredibly engaging tool, as it lets you introduce a topic you will discuss in more detail later.
• Use a visual impact in the form of an image with a dramatic element (i.e., climate change consequences, technological advancements, children engaging with technology or studying, etc.). This allows to hook the audience into what’s due to come next.

Knowing how to start a presentation is a critical skill all presenters ought to master. There are several approaches for this behalf, but for the sake of this guide, let’s stick to the following ones.

Using the Link-Back formula

This consists of throwing a story in front of your audience that explains who you are, what your background is, and why your speech should make a difference in the life of the spectators.

The Link-Back formula is beneficial for creating an emotional connection with the audience.

Using a Hook

Asking a rhetorical question, using a powerful fact, or other well-known hook techniques is a plus when starting a presentation. We shall talk about hook techniques for presenters in the next section.

Using a captivating visual

Much like the power of storytelling , visuals impact the audience’s psyche, especially if the presentation is about a trendy topic. Create a quality graphic with any of our designs at SlideModel, a graphic designer’s help, an AI Image Generator, or work with a video.

A hook is a tactic used by presenters as an opening statement but can be used in different areas of the presentation if it has an ample length. Much like the metaphor suggests, they serve to attract the audience to what you are communicating.

Research on attention span during lectures suggests a gradual decline in the audience’s interest in the presentation. That’s exponentially increased if you miss the chance to give a powerful first impression. Check this list of hook techniques to enhance the performance of your presentation skills:

• Asking rhetorical questions – better if a series of them on the topic to discuss.
• Using catchy phrases.
• Using a contrarian position, explain why such thinking harms the topic you wish to introduce.
• Historical event referencing.
• Making a powerful statement, best if data related. (i.e., “Every year, 8 million tons of plastic gets into the ocean, which equals to a truckload being dumped every minute” )
• Using the word “imagine”. It’s one of the powerful words in you can use in presentations .
• Add the comedy element – NB: be careful not to overdo it.
• Apply a “what if” scenario – this hook is similar to the “imagine” but with more data added.
• Tell a story.
• Spark curiosity.
• Smartly use quotations. Do not stick to text-book quotations but give your insight on why the quote is relevant for your speech.

Photo 9: Slide using a hook

Most people assume that ending a presentation equals doing a recap. It is a bad idea since your audience feels as if you haven’t planned a conclusion for your presentation. 

Another bad practice is to end with a Q&A format. Although questions and answers are often a required part of any presentation, they shouldn’t be the end of your presentation. You can include questions during your presentation or opt for a proper closure of the presentation past the Q&A session.

There are some powerful strategies to give a memorable ending to a presentation:

• Include a CTA on the lines like “Join our journey!” or similar that make the audience part of a bigger story.
• Close using a relevant quote. The idea is to deliver something that can linger, so the audience remembers your content.
• Use a story to close your presentation, as long as you avoid using a case study. The idea is to close with a meaningful thought, not with boredom.

We recommend you check our article on how to end a presentation for more ideas before reaching this stage of your presentation.

How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation (Quick Steps)

In this section, we will see how to use PowerPoint to make a presentation . Starting from creating a blank presentation or choosing a pre-defined PowerPoint template to preparing the presentation structure by adding PowerPoint slides and then working on the design of the presentation, we will explain how to make a visually-appealing and eye-catching PowerPoint presentation and how to create a slideshow in PowerPoint.

1. Selecting a PowerPoint template

When making a PowerPoint presentation, Professional PowerPoint Templates bring the advantage of not needing to think about complex graphic design decisions. However, there are certain aspects worth considering prior to picking the perfect PowerPoint template.

• Color aesthetic : If your presentation has to be done quickly, stick to PowerPoint templates that resemble your company’s branding palette. Although color can be changed, it is best not to lose time with extra adjustments.
• Opt for minimalistic designs : It is one of the most suitable ways to remain elegant in the professional world. You won’t be signaled for using a template that speaks seriousness on its design – and take for granted everyone shall badly remember the presentation that overdid color or graphics (or even worse, typeface effects).
• Avoid using heavy transition effects : Not all computers are as powerful as the ones you own. The simpler you make your presentation, the best it shall play on any PC.

As in life, there are advantages and disadvantages of using Premium or Free PowerPoint Templates vs. starting from a blank slate.

Advantages of PowerPoint templates when making a presentation

• Speed up the presentation design process.
• Reusable designs, ready for any situation.
• Helps to present data in an understandable format.
• Complex design decisions are made for users.
• Color pairing and font pairing are done for users.
• Helps to reduce the usage of text in slides.

Disadvantages of PowerPoint templates

• We are not learning to use advanced PowerPoint tools, as designs come pre-made for users.
• It can hinder creativity.
• Not every presentation template for PowerPoint is suitable for any topic.
• A professional team of PowerPoint template designers must be behind those templates to ensure quality.

2. Add or delete slides in PowerPoint

When we create PowerPoint Design ideas , not every slide makes the cut for the final presentation. Users then feel overwhelmed about those slides: will they be visible in the final presentation? Should you make a new PPT file without those extra templates? How to clone the “good” slides into a new file?

Instead of worrying about that process, we have here a guide on how to add, delete and rearrange slides in PowerPoint that explains, step by step, how to get rid of the unwanted slides or add more content to your presentation.

3. Adding images to slide templates

Some presentation templates and slide decks include entirely editable placeholder areas, and those boxes do not imply text only – they can include images, graphs, videos, etc. Say you want to add more images to your slides – it is as easy as replicating one of those placeholder areas with CTRL+C / CTRL+V (CMD for Mac users) or going to Insert on the Ribbon’s menu, then Picture . 

If you plan to move elements in your slide design, we recommend you get familiarized with how to lock an image in PowerPoint , so the images that shouldn’t be altered remain in position. This technique is ideal when your images are surrounded by plenty of editable graphics.

4. Adding notes to your slides

Presenters often struggle to remember key pieces of information due to performance anxiety or because they were moved from focus by an unexpected question. Using speaker notes in PowerPoint is the answer to prevent becoming stuck, since those notes won’t be available to the viewers – they remain visible only on the computer where the presentation is being streamed.

Keep in mind this technique works when the presenter is sitting next to the computer. If you have to stand in front of a crowd, opt to use different memory-recalling techniques when you feel out of focus.

5. Adding animations to your slides

Another technique presenters use adding animated objects or effects. This is as easy as following these steps:

• Select the object/text you desire to animate.
• Go to Animations in the Ribbon and select Add Animation .
• You can stack animations on a simple object to make unique effects.

Using animated presentation templates is an alternative when you don’t feel confident about adding animations. 

6. Adding transitions to your slides

Transitions are animated effects that happen when you change between slides during a presentation. Some people love them, while others prefer to stay away from them. 

If you want to add transitions to your slides, follow these steps:

• Select the slide you want to add the transition effect.
• Go to Transitions in the Ribbon, and choose a transition.
• If the transition allows the Effect Options menu, you can alter that transition’s direction and behavior.
• Click on Preview to visualize the effect.
• To remove a transition, select Transitions > None .

7. Adding audio narration to your slides

Sometimes, presenters opt to add audio narrations to the slides. The advantage of using this medium is to increase accessibility for visually impaired users. We created a guide on how to add audio narrations in PowerPoint that explains the procedure in detail.

Considerations for your PowerPoint presentation

Ideal typeface and font size.

There are multiple opinions on which typeface is ideal for presentations. Experience tells us the ideal typeface to work with is one that is system-available, meaning you don’t have to install a new font in the computer used to present. Why? You may ask. Simple: If the font used is not available on a computer, PowerPoint will automatically render a different font (sometimes even a different typeface) to replace and display the text appropriately. That action, which is replicated by other software such as Google Slides, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Apple Keynote, etc., can drastically change your design. 

Font size for titles should be between 36-44 pt. Paragraph font size between 24-28 pt. Use bold to emphasize concepts, and italics to insert foreign terms or quotations. Alternatively, you can make quotations to be displayed on a single slide, using 36 pt size, in italics.

Remember, these recommendations about size are intended for presentations in a live format. If the presentation is streamed through Zoom, using screen sharing, reduce the font size by 10-15% to avoid incredibly large texts. Test your presentation beforehand to be on the safe side.

The color scheme used is a primary part of your presentation design. When defining the presentation color palette , we recommend working within the colors that make part of your branding scheme. 

If we speak about a personal presentation or a presentation with no logo, then opt for pastel tones that don’t create harsh contrast between text and background.

Above all things, avoid these conflictive color combinations:

• Yellow and green
• Brown and orange
• Red and green
• Neon colors combined
• Purple and yellow
• Red and purple
• Black and navy
• Navy and red (unless you use a muted red tone or control the amount of red used)

Sometimes, printables are a requirement by event organizers, which represents a challenge to many presenters. We want to give a helping hand on this behalf, offering tips that can improve your printing experience:

• Always work within margins when adding content. It helps not to downsize the presentation, which often renders the text illegible. 
• If you have to print a presentation that uses intense background colors, opt for laser printing instead of inkjet. Laser printing won’t make the paper look odd when it is full-color print. The extra price is worth it when presenting a quality product.
• On the same lines about color-heavy presentations, ask for thicker printer paper than the average. This option is often advised when opting for laser printing.
• Run a print proof before ordering a large printing order. Colors can significantly change due to the RGB to CMYK conversion.

In this section, we want to list valuable tips to power up your presentations for their best performance. Some of these tips are tailored to presentation skills, others to design ideas, but ultimately, you can take in mind these tips the next time you need to make a powerful presentation in PowerPoint.

Tip #1. Using Video Presentations

An alternative to conventional presentations is to work with video presentations . These are particularly useful in academic and educational environments since they can convey large chunks of information in a memorable, easy-to-digest format. 

If we consider that social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok are transitioning into professional content for creatives, you should consider using video presentations when the situation arises. As a plus, you can repurpose that presentation on your website or other official social media channels for your company.

Tip #2. Drop Shadows and Text Shadows

When we intend to create interesting contrasts between elements, color isn’t the only option to try. Learn how to work with drop shadows in PowerPoint to make images and objects stand out from the presentation. It is an effect that boosts a tri-dimensional feeling in the presentation.

Using text shadows in PowerPoint – with extreme caution – is an excellent method to highlight titles instead of using fancy colors or other 3D effects. Do not overdo the text shadow, as it makes the text illegible. 

Tip #3. Working on your Presentation Skills

Giving presentations in front of an audience is, as we have seen, a process that involves many factors. One of those is the human element and the speaker’s ability to resonate with the audience. Therefore, we advise presenters to work on their presentation skills early, especially for mastering different kinds of presentation approaches, such as persuasive presentations (used in sales).

Tip #4. Editing Background Graphics in PowerPoint

Sometimes, PPT presentation templates include quality backgrounds that make the design pop from the screen. Yet, some of those backgrounds may not be suitable for all brands in terms of color, textures, etc.

Learn today how to edit background graphics in PowerPoint and create outstanding presentations in just minutes.

Tip #5. Google Slides compatibility

Finally, we want to remind users that almost every PowerPoint template has compatibility with Google Slides – if you intend to upload the presentation into the Cloud. Google Slides is an online tool for creating slideshow presentations, and one of its features is that we can convert PowerPoint presentations into Google Slides format. The converted slides are entirely editable, allowing presenters to count with a backup plan in case the PPT file doesn’t work or the computer to use doesn’t count with PowerPoint.

This is not an exhaustive list of presentation tips, but they offer a starting point for those who want to create attractive and effective PowerPoint presentations. You can also create presentations in other ways, and leveraging AI, for example. Check out the article how to create a PowerPoint presentation with ChatGPT to learn how to use Large Language Models to prepare presentations.

As we have seen, making a presentation is a complex process involving different skills, from knowing how to deliver a speech to having essential graphic design criteria. 

While it is true that PowerPoint presentation templates make the process far more manageable, we shouldn’t entirely rely on them. A PowerPoint presentation isn’t a presentation on its own. It is a medium by which presenters showcase their ideas and structure the speech, but one cannot live without the other.

We hope this guide can give you a better understanding of how to create a successful presentation. See you next time!

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From Presenting to Lecturing: Adapting Material for Classroom Delivery

Presentations are a common tool for which graduate students and faculty often receive training during their undergraduate and graduate course work. Lectures seem to be a natural offshoot from presentations, but there are significant differences between the two. We have identified contextual, structural, interaction and delivery components that are commonly different in lectures than in presentations. Keep in mind, however, that lectures and presentations are not two totally different entities, and that it would be more accurate to view them as two ends of a continuum.

An event such as a guest lecture shares elements of both a lecture and a presentation. As such, though presentations and lectures are presented separately here, you might very well find yourself combining elements of a lecture and elements of a presentation.

Interaction

Delivery and materials

CTE teaching tips

• Accessibility Checklist for MS Word
• Accessibility Checklist for MS PowerPoint

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help.  View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact.

This Creative Commons license  lets others remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and indicate if changes were made. Use this citation format:  From Presenting to Lecturing: Adapting Material for Classroom Delivery. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo

Catalog search

Teaching tip categories.

• Assessment and feedback
• Blended Learning and Educational Technologies
• Career Development
• Course Design
• Course Implementation
• Inclusive Teaching and Learning
• Learning activities
• Support for Student Learning
• Support for TAs

Preparing and Presenting a Lecture

This session will explore how to organize and deliver a lecture. It will help you understand how to organize content and use verbal and non-verbal communication to keep your students’ attention and increase learning.

1. In this session…

You will first read articles and prepare ideas that will be discussed in the videos. Next, you will watch video lectures where you will be instructed to pause and engage in a variety of activities, as well as think about the questions posed.

The outline is provided to serve as a guide to the session and serve as a support for note taking.

Download Session Outline [  PDF / DOC  ] Download Complete Session Video [  ZIP , 255 MB ]

2. Learning Objectives

After completing this session, the participant will be able to:

• Explain  how the structure of a lecture can influence learning.
• Explain  effective means of communication during lecture.
• Critique  and  evaluate  lectures.

3. Pre-Session Activity

• Curzan, A., & Damour, L. (2006). Chapter 3: Weekly class preparation. In  First day to final grade: A graduate student’s guide to teaching (2nd ed., pp. 31–44). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Gross-Davis, B. (1993). Chapter 12: Preparing to teach the large lecture course. In  Tools for teaching  (pp. 99–110). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Lewin, W. (1999). Physics I: Classical Mechanics [Video].  MIT OpenCourseWare . Retrieved from http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-mechanics-fall-1999/video-lectures/lecture-10/
• Identify specific techniques and strategies that Lewin uses to engage the class.

4. Session Introduction

Welcome to the fourth session! Our topic for this session is  preparing and presenting a lecture . We will begin the session with a few questions based on the pre-session activities, as well as your own experiences as a student and teacher. The first part of this session will begin by exploring what structure and lecture formats work best to maximize student attention. The second part of the session will concentrate on best practices of content delivery and effective communication strategies that you can integrate into your lecture delivery method to increase student attention.

Transcript [  PDF  ]

Think About

• What are traditional lectures good for?
• What are traditional lectures bad for?

5. Preparing a Lecture: Variability of Instruction Methods

The first part of this session will talk about how to structure your lecture and the types of lecture formats to consider when deciding how to organize the content of your lectures.

For a concept you would like to teach:

• Determine the goal and learning objectives for that concept.
• Think about the material you will cover to support teaching of that concept.
• Choose a lecture format that will be appropriate and justify your decision.

6. Delivering a Lecture: Learning from Actors

You have now planned and prepared a lecture. In this part of the session we will discuss the actual delivery of the lecture.

7. Delivering a Lecture: Visuals

After discussing how to present a lecture, we now need to return to other aspects of delivering your lecture. In this part of the session we will discuss a few principles regarding the selection and use of presentation tools during your lecture.

Answer the following questions about Professor Lewin’s lecture that you previously watched:

• What makes the lecture work so well?
• What would you change about the lecture?

8. Post-Session Activity

Watch a lecture of your choosing on MIT’s OpenCourseWare and evaluate the lecture using the guidelines of an effective lecture discussed during this session titled Preparing and Presenting a Lecture. In your evaluation, do not include the subject number or the instructor’s name, but do reference the discipline and type of course (for example, introductory physics course). Make sure to note the effective methods and strategies utilized by the instructor, and include ways for the instructor to be more engaging to improve student learning.

These materials are Copyright © 2013, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and unless otherwise specified are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

• Teaching Resources: Commonly Asked Questions about Teaching Practices and Educational Technology

Presentations/Lectures

This page covers: 

Introduction

• Effective Presentations  
• Tips for Effective Presentations 
• Accessibility Considerations  
• Ed Tech Tools for Presentations 

Presentations and lectures are effective methods for transferring information. Information is part of nearly every college class, so you expect to see some presentations and lectures in most classes. However, presentations and lectures are not effective methods for teaching students thinking skills, for helping them learn to solve problems, develop skills, or  change attitudes or perspectives. The first key in developing effective presentations and lectures is to use them only for the right purpose.

Effective Presentations

To deliver an effective presentation it is helpful to know a little bit about how we pay attention to, process, and remember information. Research about attention shows that our attention can be very focused, but it’s also limited. We can only pay attention to select things at a time and in fact multi-tasking is a myth . If we want to convey information, we first need to gain our students attention.

We also know that humans process information based on context, meaning and prior knowledge. If students have misconceptions or a lack of context, it’s more difficult for them to process new information. The more we can help students find meaning and provide them with examples and analogies they can relate to, the easier it will be for them to learn from our presentations.

The ultimate goal for our presentations is for students to remember the information. Yet humans have a limited capacity for the amount of information we can remember. A seminal study on memory showed that we can remember seven, plus or minus two, new pieces of information before we reach capacity. So cramming more and more information into a presentation, or speaking faster if you run out of time, are not methods that would result in students remembering the information.

Tips for Effective Presentations

So, how do we develop effective presentations?

• recognize that presentations are only effective for transmitting information and use them sparingly for this purpose
• gain and keep your students’ attention – don’t compete with distractions and help them see where and how to focus their attention. You might visit this page about mobile devices in the classroom
• help students discover the overall structure in the information being presented by chunking information and providing advanced organizers (outlines, visual aids, graphic organizers)
• give students context for new information and help them make personal meaning of new information
• find out the prior knowledge of your students and adjust the presentation accordingly
• use relevant visuals and images to help them process and remember information
• keep students actively involved, don’t give them the opportunity to get bored. Consider using clickers or group work for larger classes

Additional Resources:

• Design Guide: Creating Effective Visual Presentations
• Making Better PowerPoint Presentations

Accessibility Considerations

When designing a presentation or lecture, it is important to consider accessibility–remember that you have a diverse range of students in your course, and they may not all have the same range of abilities or be able to access materials in the same way. 

• Create accessible PowerPoints
• Provide  captions or transcripts  for any video content
• Provide slides or presentation notes ahead of time, and give the option for printed materials
• Include an overview slide that outlines the main points of your lecture
• Use  accessible fonts ,  color contrast ratios , and  alt-text  when necessary
• If you have a microphone in your class, be sure to use it!

For more accessibility tips, check out these resources:

• Instructional Accessibility Course Planning
• Equal Access: Universal Design of Your presentation

Ed Tech Tools for Presentations

Another helpful tip for designing effective presentations and lectures is to utilize educational technology (ed tech) tools that promote engagement and active learning. Some popular tools for encouraging student engagement during a lecture or presentation include:

• TopHat : provides the ability for instructors to incorporate interactive content, create interactive slides, graded questions, videos, discussions, polls, and more.
• Padlet : a digital bulletin board that is collaborative and interactive where you can create a single or multiple “walls” for various posts.
• Mentimeter:  a presentation tool that uses quizzes, polls and word clouds engage students for in-person and virtual classrooms.
• Nearpod : an online tool that allows you to add interactive elements to your PowerPoint slides and pre-recorded lecture videos.
• Kahoot:  a digital game-based student response system that allows teachers and learners to interact through competitive knowledge games using existing infrastructure, like phones or laptops.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to incorporating outside tools into your lectures or presentations. Should you wish to incorporate any of these tools, it’s crucial to be mindful of privacy concerns, such as FERPA, potential accessibility issues, and to ensure that the tools you select align with the learning outcomes or goals of your presentation or lecture.

Additional Ed Tech Resources: 

• Picking the Right Ed Tech Tool
• DU Ed Tech Knowledge Base
• Ed Tech FAQ

2150 E. Evans Ave University of Denver Anderson Academic Commons Room 350 Denver, CO 80208

Copyright ©2019 University of Denver Office of Teaching and Learning | All rights reserved | The University of Denver is an equal opportunity affirmative action institution.

What's the difference between lecture and presentation ?

Definition:

• (n.) The act of reading; as, the lecture of Holy Scripture.
• (n.) A discourse on any subject; especially, a formal or methodical discourse, intended for instruction; sometimes, a familiar discourse, in contrast with a sermon.
• (n.) A reprimand or formal reproof from one having authority.
• (n.) A rehearsal of a lesson.
• (v. t.) To read or deliver a lecture to.
• (v. t.) To reprove formally and with authority.
• (v. i.) To deliver a lecture or lectures.

Example Sentences:

• (1) The control group received the same information in lecture form.
• (2) Gove, who touched on no fewer than 11 policy areas, made his remarks in the annual Keith Joseph memorial lecture organised by the Centre for Policy Studies, the Thatcherite thinktank that was the intellectual powerhouse behind her government.
• (3) Although a variety of new teaching strategies and materials are available in education today, medical education has been slow to move away from the traditional lecture format.
• (4) You can get a five-month-old to eat almost anything,” says Clare Llewellyn, lecturer in behavioural obesity research at University College London.
• (5) One of the reasons for doing this study is to give a voice to women trapped in this epidemic,” said Dr Catherine Aiken, academic clinical lecturer in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology of the University of Cambridge, “and to bring to light that with all the virology, the vaccination and containment strategy and all the great things that people are doing, there is no voice for those women on the ground.” In a supplement to the study, the researchers have published some of the emails to Women on Web which reveal their fears.
• (6) The authors discuss the appropriateness of teaching clinical pharmacology (CP) to fourth-year students, lectures in CP to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-year students in accordance with the study of the main clinical specialties (therapy, surgery, pediatrics, etc.
• (7) The lecture remains the dominant form of instructional method.
• (8) Mark Hellowell, lecturer in global health policy at Edinburgh University and an adviser to the Treasury select committee inquiry into PFIs, said: "There are some really significant risks to affordability here."
• (9) Authors have previously published April 1988 a lecture where they criticize the bad denomination "passed coma" full of ambiguity for public mind, to which "brain death" ought to be preferred.
• (10) The "fly on the wall" stuff is no more for the moment but, Andy, grab the opportunities when you can – a few years down the line when Cameron is on the lecture circuit and the rest of us are hanging up our cameras for good, you should have an unprecedented photographic record of a seat of power.
• (11) Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures.
• (12) The Tony Abbott lecturing the American president on taxation fairness is, of course, the one who as Australian prime minister is presiding over policies of taxation amnesty for the richest Australians who have themselves offshored their hidden wealth, capping their taxable liability to merely the last four years.
• (13) An English translation of the lecture is printed below.
• (14) "I'm not here to lecture individuals about their private lives," he said.
• (15) It was hypothesized that students receiving instruction via lectures and handouts would score significantly higher than students who only received handouts.
• (16) Who better to lecture Muslims than Islam expert Donald Trump?
• (17) The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of guided design and lecture teaching strategies on the clinical problem-solving performance of first quarter student nurses.
• (18) You've read the book, now hear the lecture and watch the movie.
• (19) It is difficult to accept lectures on outsourcing from the party that introduced the North American Free Trade Agreement – an outsourcers' charter liberalising trade between the US, Mexico and Canada.
• (20) Subsequent to the questionnaire the PCCU liaison pharmacist implemented a visual display of monthly drug costs, an education program that included the presentation of questionnaire results, and drug information lectures discussing controversial therapeutic issues.

Presentation

• (n.) The act of presenting, or the state of being presented; a setting forth; an offering; bestowal.
• (n.) exhibition; representation; display; appearance; semblance; show.
• (n.) That which is presented or given; a present; a gift, as, the picture was a presentation.
• (n.) The act of offering a clergyman to the bishop or ordinary for institution in a benefice; the right of presenting a clergyman.
• (n.) The particular position of the child during labor relatively to the passage though which it is to be brought forth; -- specifically designated by the part which first appears at the mouth of the uterus; as, a breech presentation.
• (1) By presenting the case history of a man who successively developed facial and trigeminal neural dysfunction after Mohs chemosurgery of a PCSCC, this paper documents histologically the occurrence of such neural invasion, and illustrates the utility of gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance scanning in patient management.
• (2) It was tested for recovery and separation from other selenium moieties present in urine using both in vivo-labeled rat urine and human urine spiked with unlabeled TMSe.
• (3) A report is presented of 6 surgically-treated cases of recurrent cervical carcinoma.
• (4) The newborn with critical AS typically presents with severe cardiac failure and the infant with moderate failure, whereas children may be asymptomatic.
• (5) The rash presented either as a pityriasis rosea-like picture which appeared about three to six months after the onset of treatment in patients taking low doses, or alternatively, as lichenoid plaques which appeared three to six months after commencement of medication in patients taking high doses.
• (6) The authors have presented in two previous articles the graphic solutions resembling Tscherning ellipses, for spherical as well as for aspherical ophthalmic lenses free of astigmatism or power error.
• (7) The neurologic or digestive signs were present in 12% of the children.
• (8) These studies led to the following conclusions: (a) all the prominent NHP which remain bound to DNA are also present in somewhat similar proportions in the saline-EDTA, Tris, and 0.35 M NaCl washes of nuclei; (b) a protein comigrating with actin is prominent in the first saline-EDTA wash of nuclei, but present as only a minor band in the subsequent washes and on washed chromatin; (c) the presence of nuclear matrix proteins in all the nuclear washes and cytosol indicates that these proteins are distributed throughout the cell; (d) a histone-binding protein (J2) analogous to the HMG1 protein of K. V. Shooter, G.H.
• (9) Weddellite calcification was associated with benign lesions in 16 cases, but incidental atypical lobular hyperplasia and lobular carcinoma in situ were present, each in one case.
• (10) In some cervical nodes, a few follicles, lymphocyte clusters, and a well-developed plasmocyte population were also present.
• (11) Single-case experimental designs are presented and discussed from several points of view: Historical antecedents, assessment of the dependent variable, internal and external validity and pre-experimental vs experimental single-case designs.
• (12) We have previously shown that serotonin is present in secretory granules of frog adrenochromaffin cells; concurrently, we have demonstrated that serotonin is a potent stimulator of corticosterone and aldosterone secretion by adrenocortical cells.
• (13) Among a family of 8 children, 4 presented typical clinical and biological abnormalities related to mannosidosis.
• (14) Multiple overlapping thin 3D slab acquisition is presented as a magnitude contrast (time of flight) technique which combines advantages from multiple thin slice 2D and direct 3D volume acquisitions to obtain high-resolution cross-sectional images of vessel detail.
• (15) The subcellular distribution of sialyltransferase and its product of action, sialic acid, was investigated in the undifferentiated cells of the rat intestinal crypts and compared with the pattern observed in the differentiated cells present in the surface epithelium.
• (16) The data on mapping the episomal plasmid integration sites in yeast chromosomes I, III, IV, V, VII, XV are presented.
• (17) In the present investigation we monitored the incorporation of [14C] from [U-14C]glucose into various rat brain glycolytic intermediates of conscious and pentobarbital-anesthetized animals.
• (18) The purpose of the present study was to report on remaining teeth and periodontal conditions in a population of 200 adolescent and adult Vietnamese refugees.
• (19) Among the groups investigated, the subjects with gastric tumors presented the greatest values.
• (20) We present these cases and review the previously reported cases.

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How to Structure your Presentation, with Examples

August 3, 2018 - Dom Barnard

For many people the thought of delivering a presentation is a daunting task and brings about a  great deal of nerves . However, if you take some time to understand how effective presentations are structured and then apply this structure to your own presentation, you’ll appear much more confident and relaxed.

Here is our complete guide for structuring your presentation, with examples at the end of the article to demonstrate these points.

Why is structuring a presentation so important?

If you’ve ever sat through a great presentation, you’ll have left feeling either inspired or informed on a given topic. This isn’t because the speaker was the most knowledgeable or motivating person in the world. Instead, it’s because they know how to structure presentations – they have crafted their message in a logical and simple way that has allowed the audience can keep up with them and take away key messages.

Research has supported this, with studies showing that audiences retain structured information  40% more accurately  than unstructured information.

In fact, not only is structuring a presentation important for the benefit of the audience’s understanding, it’s also important for you as the speaker. A good structure helps you remain calm, stay on topic, and avoid any awkward silences.

What will affect your presentation structure?

Generally speaking, there is a natural flow that any decent presentation will follow which we will go into shortly. However, you should be aware that all presentation structures will be different in their own unique way and this will be due to a number of factors, including:

• Whether you need to deliver any demonstrations
• How  knowledgeable the audience  already is on the given subject
• How much interaction you want from the audience
• Any time constraints there are for your talk
• What setting you are in
• Your ability to use any kinds of visual assistance

Before choosing the presentation’s structure answer these questions first:

• What is your presentation’s aim?
• Who are the audience?
• What are the main points your audience should remember afterwards?

When reading the points below, think critically about what things may cause your presentation structure to be slightly different. You can add in certain elements and add more focus to certain moments if that works better for your speech.

What is the typical presentation structure?

This is the usual flow of a presentation, which covers all the vital sections and is a good starting point for yours. It allows your audience to easily follow along and sets out a solid structure you can add your content to.

1. Greet the audience and introduce yourself

Before you start delivering your talk, introduce yourself to the audience and clarify who you are and your relevant expertise. This does not need to be long or incredibly detailed, but will help build an immediate relationship between you and the audience. It gives you the chance to briefly clarify your expertise and why you are worth listening to. This will help establish your ethos so the audience will trust you more and think you’re credible.

Read our tips on  How to Start a Presentation Effectively

2. Introduction

In the introduction you need to explain the subject and purpose of your presentation whilst gaining the audience’s interest and confidence. It’s sometimes helpful to think of your introduction as funnel-shaped to help filter down your topic:

• Introduce your general topic
• Explain your topic area
• State the issues/challenges in this area you will be exploring
• State your presentation’s purpose – this is the basis of your presentation so ensure that you provide a statement explaining how the topic will be treated, for example, “I will argue that…” or maybe you will “compare”, “analyse”, “evaluate”, “describe” etc.
• Provide a statement of what you’re hoping the outcome of the presentation will be, for example, “I’m hoping this will be provide you with…”
• Show a preview of the organisation of your presentation

In this section also explain:

• The length of the talk.
• Signal whether you want audience interaction – some presenters prefer the audience to ask questions throughout whereas others allocate a specific section for this.
• If it applies, inform the audience whether to take notes or whether you will be providing handouts.

The way you structure your introduction can depend on the amount of time you have been given to present: a  sales pitch  may consist of a quick presentation so you may begin with your conclusion and then provide the evidence. Conversely, a speaker presenting their idea for change in the world would be better suited to start with the evidence and then conclude what this means for the audience.

Keep in mind that the main aim of the introduction is to grab the audience’s attention and connect with them.

3. The main body of your talk

The main body of your talk needs to meet the promises you made in the introduction. Depending on the nature of your presentation, clearly segment the different topics you will be discussing, and then work your way through them one at a time – it’s important for everything to be organised logically for the audience to fully understand. There are many different ways to organise your main points, such as, by priority, theme, chronologically etc.

• Main points should be addressed one by one with supporting evidence and examples.
• Before moving on to the next point you should provide a mini-summary.
• Links should be clearly stated between ideas and you must make it clear when you’re moving onto the next point.
• Allow time for people to take relevant notes and stick to the topics you have prepared beforehand rather than straying too far off topic.

When planning your presentation write a list of main points you want to make and ask yourself “What I am telling the audience? What should they understand from this?” refining your answers this way will help you produce clear messages.

4. Conclusion

In presentations the conclusion is frequently underdeveloped and lacks purpose which is a shame as it’s the best place to reinforce your messages. Typically, your presentation has a specific goal – that could be to convert a number of the audience members into customers, lead to a certain number of enquiries to make people knowledgeable on specific key points, or to motivate them towards a shared goal.

Regardless of what that goal is, be sure to summarise your main points and their implications. This clarifies the overall purpose of your talk and reinforces your reason for being there.

Follow these steps:

• Signal that it’s nearly the end of your presentation, for example, “As we wrap up/as we wind down the talk…”
• Restate the topic and purpose of your presentation – “In this speech I wanted to compare…”
• Summarise the main points, including their implications and conclusions
• Indicate what is next/a call to action/a thought-provoking takeaway
• Move on to the last section

5. Thank the audience and invite questions

Conclude your talk by thanking the audience for their time and invite them to  ask any questions  they may have. As mentioned earlier, personal circumstances will affect the structure of your presentation.

Many presenters prefer to make the Q&A session the key part of their talk and try to speed through the main body of the presentation. This is totally fine, but it is still best to focus on delivering some sort of initial presentation to set the tone and topics for discussion in the Q&A.

Other common presentation structures

The above was a description of a basic presentation, here are some more specific presentation layouts:

Demonstration

Use the demonstration structure when you have something useful to show. This is usually used when you want to show how a product works. Steve Jobs frequently used this technique in his presentations.

• Explain why the product is valuable.
• Describe why the product is necessary.
• Explain what problems it can solve for the audience.
• Demonstrate the product  to support what you’ve been saying.
• Make suggestions of other things it can do to make the audience curious.

Problem-solution

This structure is particularly useful in persuading the audience.

• Briefly frame the issue.
• Go into the issue in detail showing why it ‘s such a problem. Use logos and pathos for this – the logical and emotional appeals.
• Provide the solution and explain why this would also help the audience.
• Call to action – something you want the audience to do which is straightforward and pertinent to the solution.

Storytelling

As well as incorporating  stories in your presentation , you can organise your whole presentation as a story. There are lots of different type of story structures you can use – a popular choice is the monomyth – the hero’s journey. In a monomyth, a hero goes on a difficult journey or takes on a challenge – they move from the familiar into the unknown. After facing obstacles and ultimately succeeding the hero returns home, transformed and with newfound wisdom.

Storytelling for Business Success  webinar , where well-know storyteller Javier Bernad shares strategies for crafting compelling narratives.

Another popular choice for using a story to structure your presentation is in media ras (in the middle of thing). In this type of story you launch right into the action by providing a snippet/teaser of what’s happening and then you start explaining the events that led to that event. This is engaging because you’re starting your story at the most exciting part which will make the audience curious – they’ll want to know how you got there.

• Great storytelling: Examples from Alibaba Founder, Jack Ma

Remaining method

The remaining method structure is good for situations where you’re presenting your perspective on a controversial topic which has split people’s opinions.

• Go into the issue in detail showing why it’s such a problem – use logos and pathos.
• Rebut your opponents’ solutions  – explain why their solutions could be useful because the audience will see this as fair and will therefore think you’re trustworthy, and then explain why you think these solutions are not valid.
• After you’ve presented all the alternatives provide your solution, the remaining solution. This is very persuasive because it looks like the winning idea, especially with the audience believing that you’re fair and trustworthy.

Transitions

When delivering presentations it’s important for your words and ideas to flow so your audience can understand how everything links together and why it’s all relevant. This can be done  using speech transitions  which are words and phrases that allow you to smoothly move from one point to another so that your speech flows and your presentation is unified.

Transitions can be one word, a phrase or a full sentence – there are many different forms, here are some examples:

Moving from the introduction to the first point

Signify to the audience that you will now begin discussing the first main point:

• Now that you’re aware of the overview, let’s begin with…
• First, let’s begin with…
• I will first cover…
• My first point covers…
• To get started, let’s look at…

Shifting between similar points

Move from one point to a similar one:

• In the same way…
• Likewise…
• Equally…
• This is similar to…
• Similarly…

Internal summaries

Internal summarising consists of summarising before moving on to the next point. You must inform the audience:

• What part of the presentation you covered – “In the first part of this speech we’ve covered…”
• What the key points were – “Precisely how…”
• How this links in with the overall presentation – “So that’s the context…”
• What you’re moving on to – “Now I’d like to move on to the second part of presentation which looks at…”

Physical movement

You can move your body and your standing location when you transition to another point. The audience find it easier to follow your presentation and movement will increase their interest.

A common technique for incorporating movement into your presentation is to:

• Start your introduction by standing in the centre of the stage.
• For your first point you stand on the left side of the stage.
• You discuss your second point from the centre again.
• You stand on the right side of the stage for your third point.
• The conclusion occurs in the centre.

Key slides for your presentation

Slides are a useful tool for most presentations: they can greatly assist in the delivery of your message and help the audience follow along with what you are saying. Key slides include:

• An intro slide outlining your ideas
• A  summary slide  with core points to remember
• High quality image slides to supplement what you are saying

There are some presenters who choose not to use slides at all, though this is more of a rarity. Slides can be a powerful tool if used properly, but the problem is that many fail to do just that. Here are some golden rules to follow when using slides in a presentation:

• Don’t over fill them  – your slides are there to assist your speech, rather than be the focal point. They should have as little information as possible, to avoid distracting people from your talk.
• A picture says a thousand words  – instead of filling a slide with text, instead, focus on one or two images or diagrams to help support and explain the point you are discussing at that time.
• Make them readable  – depending on the size of your audience, some may not be able to see small text or images, so make everything large enough to fill the space.
• Don’t rush through slides  – give the audience enough time to digest each slide.

Guy Kawasaki, an entrepreneur and author, suggests that slideshows should follow a  10-20-30 rule :

• There should be a maximum of 10 slides – people rarely remember more than one concept afterwards so there’s no point overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
• The presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes as this will leave time for questions and discussion.
• The font size should be a minimum of 30pt because the audience reads faster than you talk so less information on the slides means that there is less chance of the audience being distracted.

Here are some additional resources for slide design:

• 7 design tips for effective, beautiful PowerPoint presentations
• 11 design tips for beautiful presentations
• 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea

Group Presentations

Group presentations are structured in the same way as presentations with one speaker but usually require more rehearsal and practices.  Clean transitioning between speakers  is very important in producing a presentation that flows well. One way of doing this consists of:

• Briefly recap on what you covered in your section: “So that was a brief introduction on what health anxiety is and how it can affect somebody”
• Introduce the next speaker in the team and explain what they will discuss: “Now Elnaz will talk about the prevalence of health anxiety.”
• Then end by looking at the next speaker, gesturing towards them and saying their name: “Elnaz”.
• The next speaker should acknowledge this with a quick: “Thank you Joe.”

From this example you can see how the different sections of the presentations link which makes it easier for the audience to follow and remain engaged.

Example of great presentation structure and delivery

Having examples of great presentations will help inspire your own structures, here are a few such examples, each unique and inspiring in their own way.

How Google Works – by Eric Schmidt

This presentation by ex-Google CEO  Eric Schmidt  demonstrates some of the most important lessons he and his team have learnt with regards to working with some of the most talented individuals they hired. The simplistic yet cohesive style of all of the slides is something to be appreciated. They are relatively straightforward, yet add power and clarity to the narrative of the presentation.

Start with why – by Simon Sinek

Since being released in 2009, this presentation has been viewed almost four million times all around the world. The message itself is very powerful, however, it’s not an idea that hasn’t been heard before. What makes this presentation so powerful is the simple message he is getting across, and the straightforward and understandable manner in which he delivers it. Also note that he doesn’t use any slides, just a whiteboard where he creates a simple diagram of his opinion.

The Wisdom of a Third Grade Dropout – by Rick Rigsby

Here’s an example of a presentation given by a relatively unknown individual looking to inspire the next generation of graduates. Rick’s presentation is unique in many ways compared to the two above. Notably, he uses no visual prompts and includes a great deal of humour.

However, what is similar is the structure he uses. He first introduces his message that the wisest man he knew was a third-grade dropout. He then proceeds to deliver his main body of argument, and in the end, concludes with his message. This powerful speech keeps the viewer engaged throughout, through a mixture of heart-warming sentiment, powerful life advice and engaging humour.

As you can see from the examples above, and as it has been expressed throughout, a great presentation structure means analysing the core message of your presentation. Decide on a key message you want to impart the audience with, and then craft an engaging way of delivering it.

By preparing a solid structure, and  practising your talk  beforehand, you can walk into the presentation with confidence and deliver a meaningful message to an interested audience.

It’s important for a presentation to be well-structured so it can have the most impact on your audience. An unstructured presentation can be difficult to follow and even frustrating to listen to. The heart of your speech are your main points supported by evidence and your transitions should assist the movement between points and clarify how everything is linked.

Research suggests that the audience remember the first and last things you say so your introduction and conclusion are vital for reinforcing your points. Essentially, ensure you spend the time structuring your presentation and addressing all of the sections.

17 Differences between Seminar vs Lecture

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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A seminar is a small group discussion among students whereas a lecture is a large group presentation where the professor does all the talking.

In seminars the professor facilitates discussion whereas in lectures the professor does all the talking with very little input from students.

This article outlines 17 key differences. It is split into two sections:

Definitions

• Seminars: Key Points
• Lectures: Key Points
• Summary of all Key Points

Let’s get started with key points about what makes a Seminar unique!

Below are some scholarly definitions of the terms ‘Seminar’ and ‘Lecture’. I’ve also paraphrased those

1. Definition of a Seminar

Here’s two scholarly definitions of a seminar:

• Race (2005, p. 141) defines a seminar as follows: “… in seminars, learners themselves contribute most of the content, for example, by preparing to talk as individuals or small groups about pre-allocated topics, then open the topics up for discussion.”
• Becker and Denicolo (2012, p. 33) define a seminar as “a coming together of a group of students (usually between 6 and 16 of them) to discuss one aspect of a course or module, led by one (or occasionally two) tutors.”

So, what does that mean?

• A seminar is a small group session where you get the chance to discuss the content you have been assigned to learn for the week.

They usually occur after lectures so you can brainstorm and reflect on the topic presented in the lecture.

2. Definition of a Lecture

Here’s two scholarly definitions of a lecture:

• Exley and Dennick (2009, p. 1) characterize a lecture as a speech “presented to hundreds of students in a lecture theatre” which is considered “the standard model of academic teaching.” The explain that the lecture is derived “from the Latin lectare meaning ‘to read aloud’.”
• Brown and Race (2003, p. 7) present several pages of humorous explanations of a ‘lecture’ at the outset of their book Lecturing: A Practical Guide . One of the more ‘practical’ definitions that emerged was: “Lecturing is engaging with a large number of people simultaneously to convey such things as information, enthusiasm, knowledge to generate interest among the audience.”

Okay, and what does this mean?

A lecture is a large group session where the teacher is the central discussant. Usually, the teacher talks and the students listen.

I’ll sum this up with one more definition, more humorous than the last, from Brown and Race’s list of definitions mentioned above: a lecture is “a talk by someone barely awake to others profoundly asleep.”

Now let’s move on to a discussion of several elements of seminars and lectures.

What to Expect in Seminars

Points 12 – 19 are all about what to expect in Lectures.

1. Small Classes

In your seminars, you will be in a small group.

In fact, seminar classes are usually (but not always) smaller than high school classes.

You wouldn’t expect more than about 15 people in a seminar.

But, I’ve done seminars with up to 45 students, so this is not a hard-and-fast rule. It depends how cheap your university is and whether they’re willing to fork out the money for additional tutors.

2. Dialogue

Seminars are designed to be discussions. A lecture involves the teacher talking (droning) on and on, a lecture may have the teacher barely talk.

Usually, the teacher gives an introduction and sets out the terms of the discussion. They may set a question or a task. Then, they let the students share their ideas together.

The teacher may prompt students to share their ideas, but by and large the teacher usually tries not to impose themselves too much on the students. It’s the students’ turn to talk, chat, debate or sometimes argue.

3. Group Work

Seminars involve a lot of group work.

When the students are set a task, they’ll often work in groups.

Sometimes this may be several small groups. The students will often be split into groups of 2 – 5 and asked to share their ideas on the topic of the day.

Then, the small groups report their findings to the whole seminar. There may be a group representative assigned the task to talk. They might tell the whole class all about what the group discussed and what conclusions they came to in their discussion.

Other times, the whole class will communicate as one whole group. They may sit in a circle and the teacher will pose a stimulus question.

Then, ideally students will start sharing their thoughts and building a discussion together.

But in reality, there’s a lot of awkward silence.

4. Self-Directed Learning

If you’ve not experienced a seminar before, you might be surprised that the teacher leaves you alone quite a bit.

That’s because at university level you’re supposed to be able to direct your own learning.

The question the teacher asked may lead you to discuss one thing after another until your group’s gone down a deep rabbit hole.

Then, when the groups come together at the end of the seminar to share what they each discussed, you’ll find each group may have gone on completely different tangents.

And usually, that’s okay. Seminars are all about exploring topics in detail. You’re supposed to think critically, explore topics from multiple angles, and explore many perspectives.

Your teacher probably won’t be hovering over your shoulder too much.

5. You’ll often Discuss Readings

It’s very typical for a teacher to set a “weekly reading” for you to complete before you come to the seminar.

The weekly reading is usually either a journal article or a textbook chapter.

If you’re studying literature, it may be a literary text.

Then, when you come to class, the stimulus questions the teacher sets for your groups to discuss will likely revolve around the assigned readings.

That’s why it’s so important to actually do the assigned readings before you get to the seminar.

Furthermore, if your seminar follows a lecture, remember to attend the lecture as well.

I usually start my seminars for opening up discussion about what happened in the lecture. We talk about their thoughts on the lecture topic and share their questions.

Then, we’ll dive into the weekly reading and I’ll get the students to share their notes and thoughts on what the reading was all about and what it can teach us.

That’s pretty common – so if you’ve been set a weekly reading make sure you have it all read and you take notes on it before your seminar.

6. Pop Tests

Pop tests are quite common in seminars.

One reason professors use pop tests in seminars is to hold students accountable to the expectations placed upon them to engage in weekly independent studies.

To put it simply, professors test students to make sure they’ve done their homework.

If you don’t do the weekly readings before class, you won’t be able to contribute acceptably to class discussions.

If students can’t contribute to class discussions, seminars are basically pointless.

So, expect pop quizzes in your seminars to keep you on your toes.

7. Active Learning

I’ve provided this point here to highlight the contrast between lectures and seminars.

In lectures you sit still, observe and absorb a teacher’s presentation. In other words, you’re often considered a ‘passive’ learner in a lecture. You don’t have to actually contribute anything. All you need to do is listen and take notes.

In seminars you are expected to be an active learner. You feed your ideas into the whole class discussion in order for it to progress.

In fact, often students’ input will significantly impact their own peers’ opinions.

It might be your job in a seminar to change your peers’ minds.

You might also get given a lot of activities to complete that involve very active learning and investigation.

Here’s some examples of activities you might do in seminars:

• Think-Pair-Share activities
• Brainstorming with flip chart paper
• Preparation of presentations
• Lab experiments

8. You can ask your Teacher Questions

One of the best parts about seminars is that you get close access to your teacher.

Remember that question you had about how to complete the upcoming essay? Now’s your chance. Put your hand up and ask that question.

Did you struggle understanding something they mentioned in the lecture? Ask for clarification.

Were the readings too hard? Share your thoughts with your teacher. They might give you some advice and support.

I always get a few students coming up to me at the end of a lesson.

Common questions to ask in seminars include:

• Requesting extensions
• Seeking clarification on how to complete assessments
• Seeking top tips on how to improve your marks
• Personal advice or insights on topics

Your seminar might be your only chance to get close enough to your teacher to get those gems of advice that will push you to the top of class.

I recommend focussing on getting input about what your teacher’s preferences are for your assessments so you know which mistakes to avoid when it comes to submission date for that looming essay.

9. You’ll get to know your Teacher more Intimately

This is So. Important.

Getting to know your teacher helps you get top marks.

You’ll never get to know your teacher truly in your lectures. In lectures, your teacher is standing in front of between 40 and hundreds of people. You’re just a sea of faces.

In the seminar, you’ve got the chance to get to know what your teacher’s preferences, likes and dislikes are.

This will give you an advantage when it comes to writing your assessment tasks.

In a previous post, I’ve emphasized some things you’ll want to do to ensure your teacher’s on your side. This will help them have a positive view of you and make them want to give you good marks.

Here’s a summary of that post’s key points on how to get your professor on your side:

• Make sure your professor knows your name
• Make sure your professor knows your goals
• Speak up in class to support or challenge ideas in the readings
• Seek feedback
• Follow-up on previous conversations with your professor

If you want to read more on how to build a good relationship with your professor, feel free to read the full post .

What to Expect in Lectures

1. large classes.

The first and most obvious thing you’ll notice when you’re in a lecture is just how many students are in the room with you.

I generally have somewhere between 40 and 200 students in my lectures.

You’ll even notice that the other students in the lecture may be taking very different majors to you.

Often, a psychology student will take an education elective and end up in the same class as you.

Similarly, it’s often the case that students studying ‘soft sciences’ such as a literature degree may still need to take a few ‘hard sciences’ courses. This means you might have an actor or communications major in your Physics lecture!

There are many implications for this large class size. Below are a few of the main ones.

2. Teacher is the Center of Attention

Take a look around a lecture theater next time you’re in there.

Notice which direction all the seats are pointed?

They’re all pointing towards one spot: a stage at the front. It’ll probably have a projection board for the teacher to show some lecture slides.

But really, the center of attention is the teacher.

You sit. You listen. You take notes.

And the teacher talks.

The original intent of lectures was for professors who were experts on topics to pontificate about the topic.

They literally ‘lecture’ us. They stand there and tell us about what is true and what is, perhaps, less true.

This is very different to a seminar. While in the seminar you’re the center of attention, in the lecture you’re expected to sit quietly and watch.

3. You’ll be Learning by Listening

In a lecture, you don’t ‘actively learn’. Nope.

Instead, you learn by sitting there and absorbing information.

Sometimes you’ll be observing the teacher’s demonstration.

But usually they simply talk to you. They tell you stories, explain concepts and … well … they talk and talk and talk!

This means you’re going to have to develop some strategies for learning in this environment.

I have a whole post on how to take notes in lectures .

Here’s a summary of just a few of the key points in that post:

• Print out the lecture slides and read them before class
• Don’t bring any distractions like mobile phones
• Record the lecture on your phone
• Compare your notes with friends after class
• Type up your notes when you get home to reinforce the information in your mind

Look, I’m not going to lie.

Lectures aren’t the best learning environments. You can lose your attention pretty fast. And it can get boring at times.

But with the tips above you’ll be on track to doing a decent job of taking the notes you need to succeed in class.

4. You’re Absorbing new Information

Lectures are all about learning something new.

Seminars are all about consolidating information you have already learned.

In your lecture, it’s likely the first time you’ve ever heard this new information.

So come to your lecture ready to learn something new!

But, that means the learning style is totally different – and you need to do something different, too!

Learning by listening isn’t enough. You need to test the ideas, put them into action and try them out.

That means you should pick up all of that information you gathered from your class and do something with it.

Here’s three ways you can make sure you absorbed the information well:

• Try out the information you learned in real life. If you learned something you can apply in your life, have a go! It will help consolidate your knowledge.
• Come up with discussion points for your Seminar. If there’s something interesting that you learned that you want to talk about and flesh out some more, write it down so you can chat about it in the seminar.

Lectures usually come before seminars in your week for this very purpose. You learn the new information in the lecture then apply it in the seminar.

5. The Lecturer gives away Tips about the Exams

Every one of my friends do this. And so do I.

In fact, I’ll often say something like “Write this down…” or “Listen to this tip…” to make sure my students know a little nugget of information is really important.

Here’s two reasons we give away exam tips in lectures:

• To give you an incentive to come to the lecture.
• To make sure you keep paying attention throughout the whole lecture.

But even if your lecturer doesn’t mean to give away tips about the exam, they’ll leave little breadcrumbs that are very important.

Think about it: your teacher is the person who writes the exam.

They’re also the person who gives the lecture.

Therefore, they’re going to be teaching the same content as they put in the exams.

So pay close attention and take detailed notes in lectures. Use those notes when you’re studying for exams, because they’ll be the most relevant exam information you will find.

6. Question time is usually Saved for the End

In a lecture you’ll get to ask questions, but it’s very different to a seminar.

In seminars you spend the whole time chatting away. You’ll be able to have free flowing discussions with your teacher.

In fact, your conversations in seminars will often be directed by you and your peers. One person will ask a question, then that will lead to a different conversation for the next 15 minutes. It might end up being a conversation the teacher never planned for!

Lectures are much more structured.

The teacher will follow a set routine, usually structured around lecture slides projected onto the screen.

That doesn’t mean you don’t get to ask questions.

Usually your teacher will open the floor for questions right at the end and you can ask for clarification on any points you need.

People often feel really shy about asking questions in lectures.

Let me reassure you – if you have that question, other people in the class probably will, too.

Furthermore, your lecturer will really appreciate that you asked a question. As I’ve said before, it’s important to have a good relationship with your teacher. If you want to impress your lecturer and show them you’re a top student, feel free to ask questions at the end!

7. You get to listen to Experts

Traditionally lecturers are employed as they’re experts on the topics they’re teaching.

They do a lot of research into the topics they teach. In fact, most professors will spend a few days a week in labs or out conducting research into your topics.

That means you’ll get the most up to date, detailed (and hopefully interesting) information on the topic you’re there to learn about.

Your teacher might also seek out other experts to come to teach to you.

One of my specialties is learning theories . Often, I’ll get contacted by colleagues asking me to give lectures to their students on learning theories.

Similarly, I’ll often ask those teachers to come to talk to my students about their areas of specialty. I’m not an expert on literacy. So, I might ask my friend Sally who’s a great literacy expert to talk to my students about that topic.

In other words, you should get an opportunity in lectures to hear from some of the top minds in your region on all the various topics in your course.

Summary: Differences between Seminars and Lectures

Seminars and Lectures are both central elements of university level learning.

But they have different purposes.

Lectures are for learning new information, Seminars are for consolidating and exploring the information you learned in the lectures.

Below is one last fly-by summary of the key elements of lectures and seminars:

Definitions:

• A lecture is a large group session where the teacher is the central discussant.

What to Expect in Seminars:

• Small Classes
• Self-Directed Learning
• Discussion of your Readings
• Active Learning
• Opportunities to ask your Teacher Questions
• Getting to know your Teacher more Intimately

What to Expect in Lectures:

• Large Classes
• Teacher is the Center of Attention
• You’ll be Learning by Listening
• You’re Absorbing new Information
• The Lecturer gives away Tips about the Exams
• Question time is usually Saved for the End
• You get to listen to Experts

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1 thought on “17 Differences between Seminar vs Lecture”

Thank you for this informative piece. I am starting graduate school in Mathematics and I just saw that one of my courses will be a seminar. I wanted to know what to expect. This clearly explained all I needed to know. Thank you.

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8 Evidence-Based Tips to Make Your Lectures More Engaging—and Memorable

When done right, lectures remain an invaluable tool for building student knowledge. Here’s the research on how to optimize your time in front of the class.

“Lecture is not a dirty word,” writes education professor Jess Gregory, pushing back on the idea that only student-centered learning has merit. While it’s true that lengthy, uninterrupted “sage on the stage”-style monologues are increasingly outdated, guiding students toward specific learning goals by using a whiteboard and prepared notes is often the most efficient means to build content knowledge and tackle complex topics. It’s really a matter of getting the right pedagogical mix.

There is a sweet spot, according to the research. In a large-scale 2017 analysis of PISA scores for over half a million students, researchers concluded that “the students with the best outcomes receive a blend of inquiry-based and teacher-directed instruction,” with direct instruction making up a slightly greater part of a successful learning mix. Meanwhile, a 2014 study found that when students attended classes that emphasized traditional lectures, they were 1.5 times more likely to fail the course than their peers in classrooms that buttressed lectures with a diverse range of activities such as low-stakes quizzes, group discussions, and projects.

While direct instruction and lectures are not entirely synonymous—teachers impart knowledge directly during group activities and demonstrations, for example—the lecture remains a useful mainstay of direct instruction in classrooms around the world. Still, lectures have some obvious drawbacks: They can rapidly become boring or overwhelm students with information, causing them to lose focus and tune out. Here are eight tips to make your lectures more engaging, and the material more memorable, based on the research.

1. Review Background Knowledge

It’s hard for students to engage with your lecture if they can’t make sense of it to begin with. In a 2019 study , researchers discovered that student comprehension of a topic was severely hampered if they didn’t meet a “knowledge threshold”—being unfamiliar with 59 percent of terms in the topic resulted in “compromised” comprehension.

A simple review of key vocabulary terms and concepts before the lecture is a useful scaffold, but there are more structured ways to bolster background knowledge. Before jumping into new material, Jeanne Wanzek, a former elementary school teacher and current professor of education at Vanderbilt University, suggests a “ comprehension canopy ,” a review activity that involves making connections to previously covered material before posing a broad, engaging question that hooks students. You can also show an introductory video to help build interest in a topic, and then debrief with a short discussion before jumping into your lecture. 

Finally, pretests are surprisingly effective, a 2018 study shows. When students are quizzed before they’re exposed to new material, they make the kinds of productive mistakes that pique curiosity and lead them to seek out the correct answers as the lesson unfolds. 

2. Take Breaks—They’re More Important Than We Think

The longer you talk, the more students will struggle to pay attention. In a 2016 study , researchers concluded that elementary students were unable to focus for more than 10 minutes. Middle and high school students can hold on a little longer, but a landmark 2011 study reveals the same linear relationship between time and retention: Material presented earlier in a lecture is retained more reliably than material presented later. 

Brief brain breaks —such as a short bout of exercise, a mindfulness break, or a fun off-topic activity to stimulate conversation—can reset students’ attention and provide space to process new learning.

Such breaks are more fundamental to learning than we assume. In a 2021 study , neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health concluded that “‘much, if not all’ skill learning occurs offline during rest rather than during actual practice.” After learning a new skill, downtime allows the brain to process the information, resulting in improved skill acquisition and memory consolidation. Instead of cooling off, brain activity actually spiked during breaks: The researchers observed a 20-fold increase in neural activity between the hippocampus and neocortex, brain regions responsible for memory and higher cognitive functioning. 

3. Check In to Make Sure You’re Getting Through

Periodically, take a few minutes to check for student understanding. These probing exercises help unearth gaps in student understanding, briefly change the dynamics of your lecture, and provide an opportunity to review the materials and make the information stick.

You can try quick dipsticks like the popular Muddy Moment, during which you ask students, “What about this information so far frustrates or confuses you?” or ask students to use hand gestures like an up, down, or sideways thumb to signal their understanding of a concept. 

Brief, low-stakes quizzes are also extremely effective. In a 2014 study , middle and high school students who took practice tests shortly after a lesson scored an average of 18 percentage points higher than their peers who didn’t—the equivalent of almost two full letter grades. When quizzing, it’s better to get all students to respond and to ask a mix of questions, ranging from factual to higher-order complex ones, researchers suggest in a 2013 study , because “repeatedly asking the same type of questions might intimidate students”—or bore them.

4. Slow It (Way) Down

It’s easy to fall victim to the curse of knowledge , writes high school teacher Christopher Reddy. You may be an expert in the subject you’re teaching, which can lead to assumptions about the clarity of your lessons. Try putting yourself in the shoes of your students, and explicitly walk them through connections that may be obvious to you.

Every new concept requires students to grapple with new vocabulary, connect information to previously learned material, and then formulate a coherent view of the topic. “A major threat to learning during lecture is cognitive overload, which occurs when the cognitive demands of the situation exceed students’ cognitive capacities,” explains psychology professor William Cerbin in a 2018 study , pointing to the “sheer volume of new information in lectures” as a common source of strain. 

Students will follow your lecture at different paces—many will still be mulling information as you introduce a brand-new concept—so avoid going too fast, and build in pauses to let them catch up, ask questions, finish their notes, and process the material.

5. Provide Recorded Versions of Lectures

Traditional lectures can create a bottleneck, says high school math teacher Kareem Farah. “One size does not fit all in learning; there’s no replay, rewind, or fast-forward button in a lecture; and a large group of students are all dependent on one teacher to access learning.”

So instead of lecturing in front of his class, Farah  creates his own instructional videos . Because student engagement drops after the 6-minute mark , he chunks videos so that each one covers a single learning objective or task, and to ensure that students aren’t just passively watching his lectures, he embeds questions throughout the video using  Edpuzzle .

Farah’s approach—which can be used to replace or merely supplement in-class lectures—is based on a large body of research showing that instructional videos have a significant impact on student learning, largely because they are flexible and self-paced. In a 2022 study , for example, researchers discovered that the presence of a simple pause button on a video may “prevent cognitive overload if the complexity of the video increases.” Meanwhile, a 2021 study found that while in-person lectures were often riddled with digressions and distractions, videos were condensed and thus “more time efficient.”

6. Incorporate Visual Aids and Graphic Organizers

Lecturers can become too reliant on words—a mistake that may lower engagement and comprehension. Sprucing up your lecture by presenting information in multiple ways, such as verbally and visually, can help students see connections more clearly. Imagine trying to explain how an engine works without a visual aid: What may take a few minutes to explain verbally takes a few seconds with a diagram. In a 2015 study , students who listened to a physics lecture and were given visual aids scored nearly 70 percent higher on a follow-up test than their peers who listened to the lecture without the visual aids.

In addition to visual ways of representing information, you can also organize lecture information in different ways to boost student understanding. For example, while a model of the solar system can help students remember the order of planets, an anchor chart can serve as a reference point to help students learn the differences between terrestrial planets, gas giants, and ice giants. 

7. Relate the Work to Students’ Lives

Students are more receptive to lectures when they see their backgrounds and cultures reflected in the materials used in class. 

In a 2019 study , researchers discovered that Black students were more responsive to lectures when the materials included clear references to Black people—leading to academic performance that was almost a full letter grade better than that of their Black peers who were exposed to materials that focused on White people. A 2014 study , meanwhile, demonstrated that a lack of diversity in the role models featured in school signaled who did and didn’t belong, revealing a blind spot that had “far-reaching consequences for students’ educational choices and achievement.” 

Before lecturing, audit your prepared materials and consider whether they reflect the diversity of your classroom. You can use a student interest survey  to determine student passions and then incorporate relatable materials into your lecture—articles, song lyrics, speeches, or short video clips, for example.

8. Be Yourself—and the Rest Will Follow

Be careful with tone and disposition: Projecting an authoritative demeanor can come across as aloof and cause kids to tune you out. Students prefer teachers who have an authentic, conversational style, a 2017 study finds, and passion for the material goes a long way. Not only do students report richer, more meaningful learning in these environments—they’re also more willing to invest time and effort into a lesson, stepping outside of their comfort zone to engage with the material.

Being authentic is more than just being yourself, however. It’s also about signaling to your students that you care about their well-being. Avoid treating lectures as merely a transfer of information, and focus on making plenty of room for your common humanity: Promote dialogue, take brief breaks to relax together, ask questions about how students feel as you progress through lessons, and show concern if they struggle. “The process of teaching authentically need not be more complicated than making simple and direct statements regarding the level of concern and care that a teacher holds for their students,” the researchers say.

Speech vs. presentation: What’s the difference?

• Written by: Joby Blume
• Categories: Visual communication , Industry insights
• Comments: 6

What’s the difference between a presentation and a speech? Many people use the words interchangeably, but there are two main areas of difference according to the dictionary definitions. Whether one accepts the dictionary definition is another matter – my four year-old daughter sometimes refuses – but that makes further discussion pretty difficult.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a speech is defined as:

a formal address or discourse delivered to an audience

According to the Scrabble fan’s choice – the Collins English Dictionary – a speech is:

a talk or address delivered to an audience

Note that in the Collins definition, the part about being formal is missing.

Presentation

Both the Oxford English and Collins dictionaries define presentation as including some sort of visual element. The OED definition is:

a speech or talk in which a new product, idea, or piece of work is shown and explained to an audience

Note that this includes the word ‘shown’. The Collins definition is even clearer in explicitly mentioning the use of illustrative material:

a verbal report presented with illustrative material, such as slides, graphs, etc

The Collins Dictionary also notes how the word presentation is used more generally to talk about how things are  shown – ‘ the manner of presenting, esp the organization of visual details to create an overall impression’.

Presentations and speeches

Does the distinction hold perfectly? No. Firstly, people use the terms interchangeably, so of course the real world is full of speeches that are called presentations and presentations that are called speeches. Which leads to a natural blurring of the boundaries. Second, some presentations are very formal indeed, and some set-piece speeches (e.g. The State of the Union Address ) can have visuals added to them but without the orator interacting with them.

The boundaries aren’t sharp. But, according to the definition, a speech is a talk or address, and a presentation is a talk  with the use of some sort of visual aid. 

Speech vs. presentation

Why does this matter? Because giving a speech – for a lot of people – seems harder than giving a presentation. Bad slides are actually worse than no slides . But the reason so many speakers want slides or props is because they find it too hard to deliver speeches, and because effective visual aids makes it easier for them to get their points across.

Effective visuals – that  support  a speaker – make delivering presentations easier than delivering speeches for most people. Not everyone feels they can hold an audience with simply the sound of their own voice.

Great speeches are, well… great. But they aren’t the same as presentations, and shouldn’t be held up as examples of what those giving presentations should emulate.

P.S. For more on words and definitions, see Meaning and Necessity by Saul Kripke.

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This is very interesting. I do appreciate it.

well… i found this information very useful,,,, thanks

This has helped me with my assignment thanks a lot

It is useful information it helps me doing anassignment.thanks

Deference between speech and presentation

Speech Vs Presentation Vs Debate Compitation? Speech: Speech Eleborate In Your Ideas That You Have Crammed(Ratafication). Presetation:To Suggest Anything Infront Of All Student By Using Your Slides Its Own Way That You Have Worked For Project. Debate Compitation:To Disscuss Your Ideas With One Another..

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Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

Kristen m. naegle.

Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

Introduction

The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. A slide is a single page projected on a screen, usually built on the premise of a title, body, and figures or tables and includes both what is shown and what is spoken about that slide. Multiple slides are strung together to tell the larger story of the presentation. While there have been excellent 10 simple rules on giving entire presentations [ 1 , 2 ], there was an absence in the fine details of how to design a slide for optimal effect—such as the design elements that allow slides to convey meaningful information, to keep the audience engaged and informed, and to deliver the information intended and in the time frame allowed. As all research presentations seek to teach, effective slide design borrows from the same principles as effective teaching, including the consideration of cognitive processing your audience is relying on to organize, process, and retain information. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Each slide should have one central objective to deliver—the main idea or question [ 3 – 5 ]. Often, this means breaking complex ideas down into manageable pieces (see Fig 1 , where “background” information has been split into 2 key concepts). In another example, if you are presenting a complex computational approach in a large flow diagram, introduce it in smaller units, building it up until you finish with the entire diagram. The progressive buildup of complex information means that audiences are prepared to understand the whole picture, once you have dedicated time to each of the parts. You can accomplish the buildup of components in several ways—for example, using presentation software to cover/uncover information. Personally, I choose to create separate slides for each piece of information content I introduce—where the final slide has the entire diagram, and I use cropping or a cover on duplicated slides that come before to hide what I’m not yet ready to include. I use this method in order to ensure that each slide in my deck truly presents one specific idea (the new content) and the amount of the new information on that slide can be described in 1 minute (Rule 2), but it comes with the trade-off—a change to the format of one of the slides in the series often means changes to all slides.

Top left: A background slide that describes the background material on a project from my lab. The slide was created using a PowerPoint Design Template, which had to be modified to increase default text sizes for this figure (i.e., the default text sizes are even worse than shown here). Bottom row: The 2 new slides that break up the content into 2 explicit ideas about the background, using a central graphic. In the first slide, the graphic is an explicit example of the SH2 domain of PI3-kinase interacting with a phosphorylation site (Y754) on the PDGFR to describe the important details of what an SH2 domain and phosphotyrosine ligand are and how they interact. I use that same graphic in the second slide to generalize all binding events and include redundant text to drive home the central message (a lot of possible interactions might occur in the human proteome, more than we can currently measure). Top right highlights which rules were used to move from the original slide to the new slide. Specific changes as highlighted by Rule 7 include increasing contrast by changing the background color, increasing font size, changing to sans serif fonts, and removing all capital text and underlining (using bold to draw attention). PDGFR, platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

When you present your slide in the talk, it should take 1 minute or less to discuss. This rule is really helpful for planning purposes—a 20-minute presentation should have somewhere around 20 slides. Also, frequently giving your audience new information to feast on helps keep them engaged. During practice, if you find yourself spending more than a minute on a slide, there’s too much for that one slide—it’s time to break up the content into multiple slides or even remove information that is not wholly central to the story you are trying to tell. Reduce, reduce, reduce, until you get to a single message, clearly described, which takes less than 1 minute to present.

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

When each slide conveys only one message, use the heading of that slide to write exactly the message you are trying to deliver. Instead of titling the slide “Results,” try “CTNND1 is central to metastasis” or “False-positive rates are highly sample specific.” Use this landmark signpost to ensure that all the content on that slide is related exactly to the heading and only the heading. Think of the slide heading as the introductory or concluding sentence of a paragraph and the slide content the rest of the paragraph that supports the main point of the paragraph. An audience member should be able to follow along with you in the “paragraph” and come to the same conclusion sentence as your header at the end of the slide.

Rule 4: Include only essential points

While you are speaking, audience members’ eyes and minds will be wandering over your slide. If you have a comment, detail, or figure on a slide, have a plan to explicitly identify and talk about it. If you don’t think it’s important enough to spend time on, then don’t have it on your slide. This is especially important when faculty are present. I often tell students that thesis committee members are like cats: If you put a shiny bauble in front of them, they’ll go after it. Be sure to only put the shiny baubles on slides that you want them to focus on. Putting together a thesis meeting for only faculty is really an exercise in herding cats (if you have cats, you know this is no easy feat). Clear and concise slide design will go a long way in helping you corral those easily distracted faculty members.

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

An exception to Rule 4 is to include proper citations or references to work on your slide. When adding citations, names of other researchers, or other types of credit, use a consistent style and method for adding this information to your slides. Your audience will then be able to easily partition this information from the other content. A common mistake people make is to think “I’ll add that reference later,” but I highly recommend you put the proper reference on the slide at the time you make it, before you forget where it came from. Finally, in certain kinds of presentations, credits can make it clear who did the work. For the faculty members heading labs, it is an effective way to connect your audience with the personnel in the lab who did the work, which is a great career booster for that person. For graduate students, it is an effective way to delineate your contribution to the work, especially in meetings where the goal is to establish your credentials for meeting the rigors of a PhD checkpoint.

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

As a rule, you should almost never have slides that only contain text. Build your slides around good visualizations. It is a visual presentation after all, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, on the flip side, don’t muddy the point of the slide by putting too many complex graphics on a single slide. A multipanel figure that you might include in a manuscript should often be broken into 1 panel per slide (see Rule 1 ). One way to ensure that you use the graphics effectively is to make a point to introduce the figure and its elements to the audience verbally, especially for data figures. For example, you might say the following: “This graph here shows the measured false-positive rate for an experiment and each point is a replicate of the experiment, the graph demonstrates …” If you have put too much on one slide to present in 1 minute (see Rule 2 ), then the complexity or number of the visualizations is too much for just one slide.

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

The type of slide elements, the number of them, and how you present them all impact the ability for the audience to intake, organize, and remember the content. For example, a frequent mistake in slide design is to include full sentences, but reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly), as a result of cognitive overload [ 4 ]. The visual channel is separate, allowing images/videos to be processed with auditory information without cognitive overload [ 6 ] (Rule 6). As presentations are an exercise in listening, and not reading, do what you can to optimize the ability of the audience to listen. Use words sparingly as “guide posts” to you and the audience about major points of the slide. In fact, you can add short text fragments, redundant with the verbal component of the presentation, which has been shown to improve retention [ 7 ] (see Fig 1 for an example of redundant text that avoids cognitive overload). Be careful in the selection of a slide template to minimize accidentally adding elements that the audience must process, but are unimportant. David JP Phillips argues (and effectively demonstrates in his TEDx talk [ 5 ]) that the human brain can easily interpret 6 elements and more than that requires a 500% increase in human cognition load—so keep the total number of elements on the slide to 6 or less. Finally, in addition to the use of short text, white space, and the effective use of graphics/images, you can improve ease of cognitive processing further by considering color choices and font type and size. Here are a few suggestions for improving the experience for your audience, highlighting the importance of these elements for some specific groups:

• Use high contrast colors and simple backgrounds with low to no color—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment.
• Use sans serif fonts and large font sizes (including figure legends), avoid italics, underlining (use bold font instead for emphasis), and all capital letters—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment [ 8 ].
• Use color combinations and palettes that can be understood by those with different forms of color blindness [ 9 ]. There are excellent tools available to identify colors to use and ways to simulate your presentation or figures as they might be seen by a person with color blindness (easily found by a web search).
• In this increasing world of virtual presentation tools, consider practicing your talk with a closed captioning system capture your words. Use this to identify how to improve your speaking pace, volume, and annunciation to improve understanding by all members of your audience, but especially those with a hearing impairment.

Rule 8: Design the slide so that a distracted person gets the main takeaway

It is very difficult to stay focused on a presentation, especially if it is long or if it is part of a longer series of talks at a conference. Audience members may get distracted by an important email, or they may start dreaming of lunch. So, it’s important to look at your slide and ask “If they heard nothing I said, will they understand the key concept of this slide?” The other rules are set up to help with this, including clarity of the single point of the slide (Rule 1), titling it with a major conclusion (Rule 3), and the use of figures (Rule 6) and short text redundant to your verbal description (Rule 7). However, with each slide, step back and ask whether its main conclusion is conveyed, even if someone didn’t hear your accompanying dialog. Importantly, ask if the information on the slide is at the right level of abstraction. For example, do you have too many details about the experiment, which hides the conclusion of the experiment (i.e., breaking Rule 1)? If you are worried about not having enough details, keep a slide at the end of your slide deck (after your conclusions and acknowledgments) with the more detailed information that you can refer to during a question and answer period.

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Well-designed slides that follow the first 8 rules are intended to help you deliver the message you intend and in the amount of time you intend to deliver it in. The best way to ensure that you nailed slide design for your presentation is to practice, typically a lot. The most important aspects of practicing a new presentation, with an eye toward slide design, are the following 2 key points: (1) practice to ensure that you hit, each time through, the most important points (for example, the text guide posts you left yourself and the title of the slide); and (2) practice to ensure that as you conclude the end of one slide, it leads directly to the next slide. Slide transitions, what you say as you end one slide and begin the next, are important to keeping the flow of the “story.” Practice is when I discover that the order of my presentation is poor or that I left myself too few guideposts to remember what was coming next. Additionally, during practice, the most frequent things I have to improve relate to Rule 2 (the slide takes too long to present, usually because I broke Rule 1, and I’m delivering too much information for one slide), Rule 4 (I have a nonessential detail on the slide), and Rule 5 (I forgot to give a key reference). The very best type of practice is in front of an audience (for example, your lab or peers), where, with fresh perspectives, they can help you identify places for improving slide content, design, and connections across the entirety of your talk.

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

The real presentation almost never goes as we planned in our heads or during our practice. Maybe the speaker before you went over time and now you need to adjust. Maybe the computer the organizer is having you use won’t show your video. Maybe your internet is poor on the day you are giving a virtual presentation at a conference. Technical problems are routinely part of the practice of sharing your work through presentations. Hence, you can design your slides to limit the impact certain kinds of technical disasters create and also prepare alternate approaches. Here are just a few examples of the preparation you can do that will take you a long way toward avoiding a complete fiasco:

• Save your presentation as a PDF—if the version of Keynote or PowerPoint on a host computer cause issues, you still have a functional copy that has a higher guarantee of compatibility.
• In using videos, create a backup slide with screen shots of key results. For example, if I have a video of cell migration, I’ll be sure to have a copy of the start and end of the video, in case the video doesn’t play. Even if the video worked, you can pause on this backup slide and take the time to highlight the key results in words if someone could not see or understand the video.
• Avoid animations, such as figures or text that flash/fly-in/etc. Surveys suggest that no one likes movement in presentations [ 3 , 4 ]. There is likely a cognitive underpinning to the almost universal distaste of pointless animations that relates to the idea proposed by Kosslyn and colleagues that animations are salient perceptual units that captures direct attention [ 4 ]. Although perceptual salience can be used to draw attention to and improve retention of specific points, if you use this approach for unnecessary/unimportant things (like animation of your bullet point text, fly-ins of figures, etc.), then you will distract your audience from the important content. Finally, animations cause additional processing burdens for people with visual impairments [ 10 ] and create opportunities for technical disasters if the software on the host system is not compatible with your planned animation.

Conclusions

These rules are just a start in creating more engaging presentations that increase audience retention of your material. However, there are wonderful resources on continuing on the journey of becoming an amazing public speaker, which includes understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind human perception and learning. For example, as highlighted in Rule 7, David JP Phillips has a wonderful TEDx talk on the subject [ 5 ], and “PowerPoint presentation flaws and failures: A psychological analysis,” by Kosslyn and colleagues is deeply detailed about a number of aspects of human cognition and presentation style [ 4 ]. There are many books on the topic, including the popular “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds [ 11 ]. Finally, although briefly touched on here, the visualization of data is an entire topic of its own that is worth perfecting for both written and oral presentations of work, with fantastic resources like Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” [ 12 ] or the article “Visualization of Biomedical Data” by O’Donoghue and colleagues [ 13 ].

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the countless presenters, colleagues, students, and mentors from which I have learned a great deal from on effective presentations. Also, a thank you to the wonderful resources published by organizations on how to increase inclusivity. A special thanks to Dr. Jason Papin and Dr. Michael Guertin on early feedback of this editorial.

Funding Statement

The author received no specific funding for this work.

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What is the difference between keynote, invited, and oral conference presentations?

I'm a PhD student, and I'll soon be presenting some of my work at a conference. In the program, my presentation is labeled "invited" while others have "oral" and others "Keynote". I am a bit confused, as I was never invited (maybe one of my professors was) and would like to know the difference between these kind of presentations.

• presentation

• 1 it doesn't help that Apple makes presentation software labeled "Keynote". –  Michael Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 4:36
• related: academia.stackexchange.com/q/15611/258 –  David LeBauer Commented Jun 30, 2015 at 0:45

2 Answers 2

Having an invited talk and not having been invited is unusual, indeed. Maybe your professor was invited and passed the ball to you; the best thing to do is asking him/her.

"Oral" also is unusual for me (but maybe not in other fields). As noted in the other answer, typically the hierarchy is, from most to least prestigious:

• keynote/plenary : people who were invited to participate by the organizers, who may also be paying their expenses. Unlike the rest of the talks, they are not in parallel sessions or have a reduced level of parallelism. Sometimes, when there are no parallel sections, "keynote talks" are simply longer.
• invited : talks given by speakers that were explicitly invited by the organizers. Typically (but not always), the travel and registration expenses of these speakers are paid by the organizers.
• contributed : people who applied themselves for participation (and were accepted) and are going to give a talk, usually in parallel.
• poster : people who are going to present a poster instead of giving an oral talk. Sometimes people are given the option to present either a contributed talk or a poster.

I assume that "oral" means "contributed" here.

A keynote speech or presentation is a high-profile talk intended to be of interest to everyone at the conference, and is one of the selling points of the conference. Invited speakers are those who have been invited to give a talk by the organisers of the conference. My assumption is that 'oral' is just every other talk, i.e. speakers who applied to the conference and were selected to deliver their presentation.

• 11 In conferences where there are multiple presentations going on at once in different rooms, the keynote presentations will typically be "plenary sessions" in a very large room with no other talks going on at the same time. Keynote or plenary speakers typically have much more time for their presentations (1 hour or 1.5 hours compared with a typical 20 minute or 30 minute slot for an individual invited or submitted presentation.) –  Brian Borchers Commented Jun 28, 2015 at 16:19
• 1 Not all plenary talks are "keynote" talks. I have given the former at a number of conferences, but not the latter. A conference generally would have no more than one (or maybe two) keynote talks, given by the most featured senior researchers present. (If the conference has a banquet, it's usually on the same day as the keynote talk.) Even if there are numerous parallel sessions, there may be two or three plenary talks per day, and they can't all be keynotes. In fact, at a couple of conferences I attended, each session organizer gave a plenary talk. –  Buzz Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 15:01

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What Is the Difference Between a Speech & a Presentation?

by Barbara Bean-Mellinger

Published on 22 Oct 2018

Many people use the words "speech" and "presentation" interchangeably since both involve speaking in front of a group. It's true that both can be dreaded for that very reason. Others note the difference is that speakers in a presentation use visual aids, while those in a speech typically don't. While that's true enough, there are many other distinct differences between the two.

Formal or Not So Formal

Don't tell the speaker giving a presentation in front of the company CEO and other bigwigs that it isn't a formal occurrence. His sweaty palms say otherwise. But, nervousness aside, presentations are given many times throughout the year in business, from sales meetings to conferences, while speeches are reserved for high profile, public events and special occasions like retirement parties and company mergers. Because of this, speeches are more formal. Not that the speaker has to wear formal attire; if only it were that simple to pull off a great speech! Also, the audience is more interested in what your presentation will show them, than they are in you and how you present. Whereas in a speech, it’s just you up there, so all eyes and ears are on you.

Emotional or Just the Facts?

If you think speeches tug at the listeners' emotions while presentations present the facts with visual backup, you're partially right. Speeches make use of anecdotes that pull you in. As you listen you may be thinking, "That's happened to me too!" Or, if the story is unique or outlandish, it leaves you feeling amazed that such a thing happened to the speaker. Stories people can relate to can help presentations, too, but they're not as critical and they can even be distracting. You're already talking and showing visuals; adding stories can seem like too much of a diversion.

Caring Versus Passion

Caring about your work always makes it better. But in a presentation, you can and should dazzle people with your visuals. They're not your backup; they're as critical to your presentation as your explanations. It's a lot like show-and-tell. Without the things to show, you'd have nothing to tell. If you make sure all the charts and graphs you show are easy to understand, your audience will get your messages. A speech, on the other hand, is just you. This is where your passion really comes through, or your lack of it turns your speech into a dud. It's important to decide what your speech's core message is, then build out from that with quotes, anecdotes and humor to convey your message in a memorable way.

Speech and Presentation and More

You may be wondering about other types of public speaking. What's the difference between a seminar and a presentation; or a speech and a lecture? How about the difference between a speech and a debate?

A seminar is different from a presentation in that it's more interactive. While a presentation is given by one person, a seminar involves the participants in some way. It could include small group discussions or a panel. Since seminars are typically several hours in length, they often have many parts that vary in structure to keep people interested.

A lecture is similar to a speech because both are rather formal and one person is doing the talking. Lectures are more often used to teach something, particularly in a college class. Since lectures are typically given during every class period, they aren't expected to be as dramatic or dynamic as a speech, though it might be more motivating if they were!

A debate differs from both a speech and a presentation because it's between two sides that are equally involved. Each side usually takes an opposing view on the debate question or subject. It's often like a contest where, at the end of it, a vote is taken to decide who won the debate.

Difference Between | Descriptive Analysis and Comparisons

Search form, difference between seminar and lecture.

Key difference: A lecture is when a professor or teacher stands in front of a large class and just gives the information that is required by the students. A seminar, on the other hand, is a more discussion oriented lesson.

According to Dictionary.com, a seminar is “a small group of students, as in a university, engaged in advanced study and original research under a member of the faculty and meeting regularly to exchange information and hold discussions.” It is “any meeting for exchanging information and holding discussions.” Whereas, a lecture is “a speech read or delivered before an audience or class, especially for instruction or to set forth some subject.” For example: a lecture on Picasso's paintings.

The term ‘lecture’ dates back to the 14th century and originated from the Latin lectus, pp. of legere ‘to read.’ ‘Lecture’ means the ‘action of reading, that which is read.’ In the 16th century, the term came to denote an “oral discourse on a given subject before an audience for purposes of instruction.”

The modern lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or to teach people about a particular subject. The lecture can be by a university or college teacher or professor, a politician's speech, a minister's sermon, or even a businessman's sales presentation. The lecture aims to convey critical information, history, background, theories and equations to its target audience.

Lectures are often criticized as a teaching method, claiming that most students are not able to pay attention and absorb the required knowledge by listening to a professor droll on about a topic for an hour and a half. However, lectures are cheap for the universities or colleges, as one professor can lecture around 100 to 200 students in the same hour and a half. However, many claim that in this form of learning, there is: no hands on approach; no practical knowledge gained; minimal professor – student relationship; and no special attention on the students learning needs. Due to this many support or sponsor a learning environment similar to a seminar.

A seminar is “a form of academic instruction that has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some particular subject, in which everyone present is requested to actively participate.” Basically, it allows a small group of students, such as anywhere between 10 and 40, to discuss the relevant topic or lesson on hand. They are often supervised or guided by a professor, teacher, seminar leader or instructor. Students may discuss the topic, or do an individual/group project or research and present their findings. In a seminar, assigned readings can be discussed, questions can be raised and debates can be conducted.

Normally, in universities and college, especially in countries, such as the US and Canada, the lectures are conducted for entry level students to acquaint them to the subjects and topic in the particular field of study. Whereas, seminars are reserved for upper-class and advanced students, who are required to learn more and are expected to be knowledgeable in their field of study. However, in UK and Australian universities seminars are often used for all years, entry-level as well as advanced.

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What is the Difference between a Presentation and a Slide?

By: Author Shrot Katewa

People often use the terms “Presentation” and “Slide” interchangeably. But, do these terms mean one and the same thing? If not, what exactly is the difference between a Presentation and a Slide?

The main difference between a presentation and a slide is that a slide is just a single page of a presentation document whereas a presentation is an actual process of sharing and presenting the information present on the slides.

There are several other similar terms that are used when referring to presentations. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of these terms and clear the confusion around it!

Difference between a Presentation and a Slide?

Hopefully, you have already understood the main difference between a presentation and a slide. Let’s look at the two in further detail, and understand the nuances.

What is a Slide?

A slide, as we may have already understood, is a single page of a presentation.

In the above image, as you may notice, all the individual pages that we get within a presentation is referred to as “ Slides “. You may even notice the numbers on the top left corner of each slide in the normal view much like the page numbers on a word document.

These numbers indicate the slide number within a particular presentation file. Even though they indicate the slide number, these are not visible when giving the presentation in the slide show mode (we’ll talk about slide show a bit later in the article).

In order to create a presentation file, you’ll be required to work on each individual slides.

However, many people tend to make this one big mistake! That is, creating slides by writing content as though they would on a page of a word document. One needs to keep in mind that creating a slide is not just about putting a bunch of words together, rather sharing it in a visually appealing and engaging manner with the audience.

Creating a beautiful slide is an art in itself, and it takes skills and an eye for design to create an aesthetically pleasing slide.

What is a Presentation?

A presentation is a means of communication. It is the process of sharing the information present on the slides! A presentation can also take the form of a demonstration of a product, design, or ideas!

A presentation differs from a slide from the fact that the person giving a presentation ideally uses the slide as a base to build upon the points he/she wants to communicate with the audience.

It is quite common to use slides while giving a presentation in today’s modern world. That said, a presentation goes beyond even having any slides! What I mean is that a presentation can be given even without having any slides.

While a single slide can also be construed as a presentation in a scenario when while giving the presentation, the presenter uses just 1 slide. Although, this is an extremely rare occurrence!

It is important to note that some people are really good at creating an aesthetically pleasing slide, while others are great at presenting or sharing the information present on a slide!

Both of the aforementioned activities require a different set of skills. It is quite common to hire or outsource the activity of creating the slides in order to deliver a successful presentation.

Difference between Slide and Slideshow?

Now that we’ve understood the difference between a slide and a presentation, let’s compare another term that people often get confused with – slide vs. slideshow

While a slide is a single page of the presentation document, a slide show is when multiple slides are put together for the purpose of supplementing the presentation to be delivered.

In a nutshell, when a series of slides, usually comprising of images, are displayed using an electronic display device such as a projector screen, it is known as a slide show.

A slide show can also have some background music (an example would be a slide show given at a friend’s wedding). A slide show may either be controlled (for example when giving a presentation), or it may run in a loop (for example in a company booth at a business conference).

Difference between a Slide and Slide Deck?

Another term that you may hear a lot is a “Slide Deck”. It may also be used in combination with other words such as “Pitch Deck” or a “Presentation Deck”. So, let’s understand what it means.

A slide deck is basically a group of slides together used for giving a presentation.

While this may feel similar in meaning to a slide show, the only major difference is its history!

The term slide deck evolved from the olden days when physical slides were used to give a presentation.

Each slide would have a particular piece of information (just as it does today), and all these slides were physically stacked together in the particular desired order to form a deck; much like a deck of cards.

This was done to ensure that the order of the slides doesn’t get changed. This made the term “Slide Deck” synonymous with a presentation.

Today, with the advent of technology, one cannot imaging using physical slides to give a presentation! Just like the technology for presentations, the terminology also changed from Slide Deck to Slide Show. However, the core principle remains the same.

Difference between PowerPoint and Presentation?

Another pair of terms that people highly used interchangeably is PowerPoint and Presentation. So far, we’ve already understood the terms slide, slide show, slide deck and presentation. So, how does the term PowerPoint fit in this?

PowerPoint is a presentation design software owned and provided by Microsoft to its customers as part of its Office Suite. There are several versions of Microsoft PowerPoint. The software is usually updated with new features in its newest release version.

PowerPoint was first launched by a software company “Forethought Inc.”. The software was initially designed to work only on Macintosh computers only. However, in it’s first major acquisition, Microsoft bought PowerPoint and was first brought to the market in 1990 for Windows.

The software became so popular with the users that a presentation is often referred to as “PowerPoint” or “PPT” (which is the file extension of the PowerPoint files).

So, the key difference between PowerPoint and Presentation is that PowerPoint is basically a tool or software to create digital presentations. A presentation can be given with or without a PowerPoint file.

By the way, the screenshot that you saw earlier in the article that showcases the meaning of slides is from a PowerPoint file.

PowerPoint is not the only presentation design software available to the users. In fact, there are literally hundreds of tools to design a presentation. But, PowerPoint by far is the most commonly used and most successful presentation design software.

How many Slides should a Presentation have?

This is a question that haunts most people who need to give a presentation and create the deck. Is there a good number that you should restrict your slides in a presentation to?

While there is no fixed “one size fits all” approach when it comes to creating presentations and limiting the number of slides in a presentation, ensuring that your presentation doesn’t go beyond 20 slides on average !

In a research published in the Marketing Education Review on the topic of Optimizing Learning by Examining the Use of Presentation Slides , it was cited that blank stares were visible amongst audience members when listeners were overwhelmed with too many slides are text-heavy slides.

Thus, it is important to restrict our presentation to no more than 20 slides. Consider the time available at hand when giving a presentation. A 20-slide presentation can be delivered in about 30 minutes.

According to Guy Kawasaki, an angel investor who reviewed several hundreds of pitch presentations every day, is a strong evangelist of the 10 slide rule (now popularly known as the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint)

However, a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation may work well for an investor pitch, it may not suffice for most of the other purposes.

How to Create an Attractive PowerPoint Presentation?

Everyone wants their presentation to look attractive. After all, we all understand the importance of a good first impression !

But, when you don’t necessarily have the required skills, how then can you create an attractive presentation?

Fortunately, we wrote a detailed post on how anyone could make their presentation attractive even if they are a complete beginner! Be sure to check out the article!

7 EASY tips that ALWAYS make your PPT presentation attractive (even for beginners)

The tips shared in that article are absolute GOLD! I’m not sure why people are not giving these such simple tips to others.

If you are not comfortable using even the tips mentioned in the article, and you feel like you need some time to gain the skills, then I would recommend hiring a good design agency who will ensure that your presentation turns out to be an attractive one!

Speech vs. Presentation — What's the Difference?

Difference Between Speech and Presentation

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George Eastman Medal Presentation & Lecture - Dr. Larry Tabak

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University President Sarah Mangelsdorf will present Lawrence A. Tabak, DDS, PhD, the principal deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, with the prestigious George Eastman Medal in recognition of his significant achievements and service. Following this, Tabak will give a lecture titled " A View from NIH: The Many Challenges and Opportunities of Biomedical Research."

Tabak's many years of successful leadership led to his appointment in late 2021 as acting director of the NIH for nearly two years. He was appointed as the NIH principal deputy director and the deputy ethics counselor in 2010 following his tenure as director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research from 2000-2010.

Before joining NIH, Tabak was the first dentist-scientist to serve as the UR’s senior associate dean for research. He also served as a professor of dentistry, biochemistry and biophysics at the UR’s School of Medicine and Dentistry. Tabak bolstered the prominence of oral biology research programs and provided the foundation for today’s Eastman Institute for Oral Health. 

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