CREATING a POWERPOINT
Oral presentations can, on the surface, be a bit intimidating. There’s the whole “presenting at a podium with the spotlight on you” thing, the “cramming a 30 minute talk into 12 minutes” thing, and the “handling questions from a live studio audience” thing. That having been said, if you can handle an M&M conference, fending off aggressive attendings and vicious visiting professors, this should be a piece of cake.
Here are a few tips:
NUMBER OF SLIDES
Your first tendency may be to treat this like the lightning round, flashing 30 slides a second. This strobe light effect can cause seizures and is widely regarded as bad form. A good rule of thumb is to show one or two slides per minute, recognizing that extra time may be needed to orient your audience to slides displaying data.
COLOR
Make sure your slides consist of contrasting colors that will show up in a darkened room. Beware of the overly bright colors as well as overly distracting background
patterns.
SLIDE FORMAT
- For text slides, use a larger font; think 28 to 40 point, as opposed to 12 point
- No more than four or five bullets per slide; resist the temptation to put everything you’re going to say on the slide
- Data slides with a two-column table, should have no more than five rows; three-column tables, should have no more than three rows
PRESENTATION
Title slide (1 slide)
- The title in glorious, gigantic font
- All of the authors (tip – always include the middle initial for each author)
- All of the institutions (this includes the institutional affiliations for the
authors as well as the institution where the research was conducted)
- If a resident is involved, GRMERC should ALWAYS be listed
- If an MSU medical student is involved, MSU-CHM should ALWAYS be listed
Significance/Background/Specific Aims (2-3 slides)
- Appropriate attention getter
- Rationale for study
- Study questions/hypotheses
Methods (2-4 slides)
- Design
- Sampling
- Data collection
- Key variables
- Definitions
- Sample size/statistics
Results (4-5 slides)
- First choice for results presentation is a Figure
- Second choice: Table
- Third choice: Text
- Don’t overcram any of the above choices
- If you desperately need to include an overly complex Figure, Table or
Algorithm, please provide a handout to your audience as support material
- Highlight your most interesting results
Discussion (2-4 slides)
- Discuss your results, relative to the current literature
Conclusion (1 slides)
- The big finish
- No matter how weak your data, always include a conclusions slide
Acknowledgments (1 slide)
- List of organization(s) funding the project
- Thank you to any and all persons who helped with the study, but who
are not authors
For help with organization, design or review of your PowerPoint presentation, contact the GRMERC Research Department at least three weeks before you are scheduled to present. This will allow sufficient time for feedback and changes.