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Mentoring Manual




Presenting your work


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Effective presentation strategies and designs


Penn State's Writing Center for Engineering and Science covers all forms of presentation, from Lab reports to posters. It also has a good resource devoted solely to presentation skills:

www.engr.psu.edu/speaking

Presentation Zen provides research-supported information and tactics as well as sound advice on presentations of all kinds. There are three fundamental principles that underlie the Presentation Zen approach:

  • Use a strong narrative to organize your argument for the listeners and to appeal to their interests and emotions. This will help to keep them paying attention.
  • Keep your slides as visually simple as possible and focused on the meaning behind your data, not on the data itself.
  • Unless you are showing a quote by someone else, avoid using lots of text in your slides. We do not retain information as well through language when receiving it through aural and visual channels simultaneously (this means bullet lists don't work as well as we think they should).

This article, What is good PowerPoint design? provides a good entry point for browsing the Presentation Zen site.

* Additional content is in process: Giving an effective 15-20 minute presentation

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Video examples of good presentations


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Examples of good slide presentations and posters


There are many good on-line resources providing information and strategies for slide and poster presentations. Just to name a few...

Penn State's Writing Center for Engineering and Science covers all forms of presentation, from Lab reports to posters. The Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium offers “The Basics of Poster Design” as a handout.

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Poster design


The Collaborative Learning and Integrated Mentoring in the Biosciences website provides some useful guides from experienced program directors and faculty mentors, including specific guidance on scientific posters.

The Penn State Writing Center for Engineering and Science also provides useful guidelines on scientific research posters, as does the Washington Space Grant Consortium.

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Working with mentor on the final aspects of the report and/or poster


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