As you may be aware, we are experiencing technical issues with the booking system and are unable to access the class lists for the following workshops:
- 8th March, 9:00-4:30, Presenting for Public Engagement
- 9th March, 9-12, Academic Presentations for School of Law & Social Justice
- 9th March, 13:00-16:00, Academic Presentations for Management School
- 10th March, 09:00-12:00, Academic Presentations for the School of Arts
- 10th March,13:00-16:00, Academic Presentations for the School of Arts
If you are booked onto one of these workshops, please consult the pre-workshop information outlined below and contact gssp@liv.ac.uk for information regarding venue. If you have questions regarding how to prepare for the workshops, please contact:
Dr Aimee Blackledge: aeb@liv.ac.uk
Workshop preparation for the Presenting for Public Engagement
Please prepare a three-minute talk about your research using the following structure:
1. Interest– Start off with an interesting fact, statistic, quote, topical news item, historical or personal narrative about your research area.
2. Need– Inform your audience why is your research needed and why they need to know more about it
3. Title- what is the title of your thesis and why have you chosen this title? What is your research question?
4. Range– what is the range of your research? What will you investigate and what will you not be exploring? Why have you made those decisions?
5. Objective– what is your objective with your research and what would you like your audience to do with the information you have given them?
You may also wish to consult Chris Anderson’s article on ‘How to Give a Killer Presentation’, Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2013/06/how-to-give-a-killer-presentation/
Workshop preparation for Academic Presentations for HSS Schools
This workshop aims to provide a friendly learning environment. To make the session work effectively please can you prepare the following before the workshop:
1) A five-minute presentation of on your research, which may be based on the introduction to a previous research presentation. You may use PowerPoint to accompany your talk if you feel it is appropriate. Please remember that the workshop has a mixed audience, and five minutes is a very short time. You will not be able to present all components of a normal presentation and we suggest you focus on the introduction, possibly supplemented with one or two prominent aims of completed this research.
2) Consider the feedback that will be most helpful to you in order to improve your presentation skills. (You may want to refer to the notes below)
Guidance notes: to help those who want to prepare for this session:
This session focuses on your presentation style, with an aim to give you direct and relevant feedback and ideas to take away to help present with more confidence in the situations that matter.
However many participants request advice to help them assess their own style. We have an online resource to offer ideas to improve your presentation style, which is found at:
http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~pgro/Presentations/index.htm
This resource includes The Good Presentation Video (personally I find this at quite a basic level). , but you may also like the short article, How to Give an Academic Talk .
Ultimately you will need to decide for yourself the key attributes of a good presenter, particularly in the context of your own subject area, and we hope the session will help form your ideas in this respect. According to the article ‘How to Give an Academic Talk’ the key features in giving a good talk are:
- communicate your arguments and evidence
- persuade your audience that they are true
- be interesting and entertaining
For our session, we will ask you to focus on the specific attributes:
- Aims of the talk – want do you want to gain from the presentation and what should the audience gain?
Can you summarise your talk in a sentence of two?
Can you define three or four ideas that you want audience to take away? How are these points emphasised in any visuals?
- Content – Does the content help support your main argument (without too many distractions) and help maintain interest?
- Structure – How persuasive is your structure? – Does it help present a clear argument? (i.e. one that the audience will recall afterwards)
- Visuals – how do these add to the communication and not distract your audience?
- Voice – how does your speech help communicate your message and maintain interest?
Consider rate of speech, variation of pitch and use of pauses.
- Body language – do you give a confident impression?
– do your gestures help your expression?
- Audience – do you maintain eye contact? Are you aware if the audience is still interested in your talk?
And not forgetting:
- Try to keep calm (there are techniques we will discuss at the workshop)
