Create Effective Presentations
[1]
How to Present Your Content to Make
the Most Sense
How you organize and structure your presentation greatly
affects what your audience will gain. It is important to look
at the following four key elements:
- Overall organization
- Opening
- Main body
- Closing
1. Choosing
an Overall Organizational Pattern
Presenters save planning time by plugging their information
and creative thoughts into an established format. Research
also clearly shows that listeners remember better and more
if they have a sense of the shape of the talk. The best presenters
make their organization very clear. In fact, you cannot make
it too obvious (Kushner). |
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Based on your topic, audience, and goals and objectives, choose
an appropriate pattern. Ask yourself what pattern will best help
you get your message across.
Time-tested, Logical Organizational Patterns
Audience Retention and the Organization
of Your Presentation
2. Building a Strong
Opening
The opening is the most important part of your presentation. It
serves four key functions:
- Gain attention - Your introduction must get the audience's attention.
If no one is paying attention, it doesn't matter what you say.
What you want is positive attention and to hold their
attention.
- Create rapport and establish your credibility - First impressions
are everything and you want to make a good one.
- Sell your audience on the need to listen - The audience has
that natural curiosity and interest at the beginning. Convince
them that it will be worthwhile to listen to you attentively.
- Describe what you are going to say - The introduction needs
to give the audience some idea of what you will present. In addition,
to help them know how to process the information, you should let
them know what organizational pattern you have used.
Tips for Creating a Great Introduction
Things to Avoid When Presenting
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3. Building a Rich Body
Your strong opening sets the stage for the main body of your presentation
and previews your organizational pattern. As this pattern unfolds,
you need to explain the key ideas that you are going to make in
as much detail as necessary for your audience to understand your
message. Knowing that this is where the retention curve dips, you
want to try to counter this effect by using a variety of techniques.
Keep in mind that these different strategies meet the needs of all
the different types of learners in your audience.
Techniques for Making Your Presentation
More Interesting
Strategies for Increasing Learning
Checking for Understanding
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4. Building a Powerful
Closing
Your closing, like your opening, should be as powerful and as magical
as you can make it because people remember their first impressions
and last impressions most vividlyand this is your last chance to
make a good impression.
Advantages to a Powerful Closing
Alerting Your Audience
Tips for Closings
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Finally, introductions and conclusions put the head and tail on
the body of your presentation. Without them, or with them not fully
developed, you don't have a complete presentation and it will be
evident to the audience. Neither takes much time, but they make
all the difference!
[1] Adapted with permission from Soil
and Water Conservation District Outreach: A Handbook for Program
Development, Implementation and Evaluation . Ohio Department
of Natural Resources, Division of Soil and Water Conservation, 2003.
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