Sunday, March 22, 2009

Making research presentations

Notorious Ph.D. has some good suggestions for giving research presentations, two of which revolve around time--stay within your time limit, and don't cram too much in. I think the same is even more true of conference presentations because the time limit is so short. Strangely enough, I have found that if someone says, "I'll make this real quick" chances are very high that she or he will not.

I would also add that someone making a presentation should know the material well enough not to read from notes (or, worse, verbatim from the paper itself). I have seen some very interesting topics get crushed into boredom as someone looks down at the paper and reads in a monotone.

5 comments:

Lillie Langtry 11:56 AM  

I can't stand people not staying within the time limit. It's simply selfish when someone looks at the clock and then decides that they are more important than the next speaker anyway, who finds their presentation spilling into the lunch hour or after the conference should have finished for the day. The audience is then hungry and distracted. It's a problem which many experienced academics don't seem to have resolved though. Chairs are often very weak in telling the speaker to finish off as well.

I don't mind a read paper though, as long the person can read aloud quite well and look up from time to time!

Greg Weeks 4:12 PM  

Actually, after posting I did begin to wonder whether my pet peeves were shared by others. Not necessarily!

I did agree completely that at a conference, overly long presentations make it difficult for the presenters that follow. And I also agree that the panel chair has equal fault, because he/she should crack the whip (nicely).

Anonymous,  10:52 AM  

Totally agree, nothing drives me more insane than when people go over their time limit.

Anonymous,  10:53 AM  

Totally agree, nothing drives me more insane than when people go over their time limit.

Anonymous,  4:21 AM  

thanks for the information....

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