Science PowerPoint tips and tutorials

I. Significance of Scientific Presentation.

Modern science is communicated in three basic ways: (1) written scientific articles (mostly pre-peer reviewed), (2) oral presentations (on-site peer review) and (3) postings on boards (posters) - in a sense a combination of written and oral communications. Oral scientific presentation is critical because it shows how much in command of your research you are. No hiding behind editing and polishing process of delayed written articles. Oral communications are scrutinized on site and speakers are challenged in an immediate way. Although written work is more permanent, and thus the record could be examined by more scientists in a delayed fashion, scientific presentations on conferences are viewed as more challenging. On the upside, scientific presentations, if done with care, could show a broader aspect of your research, tell more about the discovery process in your lab or at your bench and more readily let the people inside your reasoning.

Secondly, scientific seminar offers fuller array of media that may help you better convey the message. Science communication is increasingly reliant on images. The growing complexity of science puts an increasing pressure on scientists, health professionals and students, to clearly communicate their scientific data and present their ideas and hypothesis. This is particularly critical in the broad field of biomedical sciences where images are important part of any presentation. Pictures speak a thousands words, however few scientist take time to develop slides representing complex structural, cellular and anatomical objects. Understandably so, they just take too much time and often require good knowledge of more advanced graphical software. For example signaling pathways have become so complex that making an illustrative slide is challenging for even proficient user of graphical software.
Therefore, a thorough preparation for a talk is a must. Sometimes your reputation may be on the line. Even if your data is cutting edge, remember, it is very easy to ruin your presentation with poorly prepared slides. If done right, scientific presentation offer something that is lacking in published work - speaker can interact with his/hers peers in a personal way, propose more challenging ideas or interpretations, to probe for their potential acceptance.

ScienceSlides is a new tool that helps you in the preparation of PowerPoint presentation. In its upcoming sixth update (ScienceSlides 2006 Fall Edition - released October 1st), it provides an in-depth content that is useful for any speaker in biochemistry, biology, pharmacology, molecular biology and medicine and may be useful even for nutritionists, environmentalists and general health professionals. ScienceSlides package is designed to provide ready to use and easily modifiable graphic material in the form of compound structures, illustrations and scientific artwork, to fill the need for the preparation of high quality scientific presentation. ScienceSlides is quickly becoming an indispensable tool for scientists who care about their scientific presentations.

II. Scientific Presentation Basics - Speaker and Audience

Know your audience:

Take formal approach in more distinguished settings such as national and international conferences and more casual at your own institution. You may get away with a funny remark at your institution but it may sound misplaced at the international meeting. When preparing for an out-of-town talk, spend 15-20 minutes on Medline to find out what they publish. This should influence the depth of your Introduction. Find a connection, common ground, etc. so you can refer to local publications to show you are on top of your field. In places where their research is somewhat different provide more thorough introduction and include slide describing complex and new technique.

Know yourself:

Know your limitations. Some scientists handle public presentation better than others. However, most scientists are a rather shy breed. They would rather publish than present their data orally. If so, take conservative approach (as if you had a choice!): spend extra time on preparing simple and clean data slides that are meticulously labeled and informative. Start with a thoughtful and focused introduction and end with a simple 2-3 point conclusions slide. Also, do not forget to add summary/content slide at the beginning that will tell the audience what you are going to talk about. Basically, let the slides bail you out! This way you may be less talkative but nevertheless the audience will get the message. This strategy is especially useful for foreign scientists where the language barrier may be a handicap. If you are an excellent speaker in you native language but your English is still not well polished, it may be at first hard to make the transition. Follow the rule: say less, show more.

Advice for younger speakers: practice, practice and practice. Only then you will get better and more relaxed during delivering scientific presentation. Being relaxed is a key - you will handle interruptions and unforeseen questions much better when calm. After all, you should know the subject better than anyone in the audience and should handle questions with ease. For all those shy and nervous scientists: never decline invitation for a talk. You just have to get through the first several nerve wracking experiences. Let be assured, you will get better. Ever noticed how easy prominent scientists deliver their seminars and how well they handle questions? This is simply because they are frequently invited and hear the same questions over and over.

III. Scientific Presentation Basics - Slides and Presentation Structure

Slide Text and Layout:

Keep the message simple and to the point. Write simple phrases and use clear unambiguous words. Its good to avoid abbreviations, jargon and complicated sentences. Take advantage of PowerPoints bullet points. Always align bulleted items flush left. Many people are scanners. This is especially true when viewing a presentation. Use a maximum of 6 short, clear bullets per slide, and a maximum of 6 words per bullet. Consider legibility. Remember, what seems clear on the computer screen may not be legible from across the room. Anticipate the size of the conference room and adjust the font size. Try reducing the spacing between lines rather than reducing the text size.

Introduction:

Introduction is important for one reason. It lets you set the tone and get the audience excited about your project. Identify potential implications for general medicine, etc. Just before showing the first data slide - show a bridging slide. Its function is to make a solid connection between the general idea and your specific project. Post a question that your data slides are going to answer.

Data Slides:

Data slides should be labeled in a way that helps the viewer assess the experiment without asking additional questions. If confused, most people will not ask these and stay annoyed. You just start seeing bored faces. Just labeling lanes 1,2,3 -> and refereeing to Legend, or describing them verbally is not good enough. Audience likes to analyze the data at its own pace and will go back and forth between gels lanes. Control what the audience is looking at during your talk. When making transition to a next aspect of your project, first just show the heading alone, not yet new data. Audience will not listen to you if you already show new data and still talk about how you got the idea leading to this particular experiment. If a complex experiment requires showing 3-4 gels on the screen at the same time, show them gradually, first one, make a comment, add second gel and continue with description, and so on. Final slide will have all 4 gels in it, but audience will not wonder around with attention. This way you control the eyes of the people in audience. This is also good for audience - it lets them follow you exactly and better understand your flow of thought. This aspect of scientific presentation is probably the most important for keeping the audience attention throughout the talk.

Presentation Pace:

Limit the number of slides in your presentation. It is always better to make it short and simple than long and complicated. Take advantage of PowerPoints rehearsal feature and time yourself to see exactly how long your presentation takes. Three most important suggestions for younger speakers: practice, practice and practice.

Reconsider the length of any presentation thats grown to more than 25-30 slides (per 45 minutes) - no matter what the time limit. Use speaker notes. If you have more content than can fit comfortably on slides, create speaker notes and provide them as audience handouts along with your visuals. If not sure - on average use 1 slide per 2 minutes. For an average 45 minutes seminar this is about 25 slides. Important: the conclusions slide is supposed to help finish your talk with a bang. Do not let over-extend your talk and skip it. This will ruin the overall impression.

Finishing touch:

Have a finishing slide that may include summary/ conclusions, take home message or summarizing scheme. Underline important findings and stress their importance for the future of your project. If you had strong definitive data, make a final scheme that will present a given pathway in a new way. Show a similar current understanding slide in the Introduction. That way you will tie the presentation together.

Use matching colors:

One of the most neglected aspects of slide design is selection of colors. The time of dark blue slides with white text or diagram is long gone. Color is an integral part of human perception and carefully designed multicolor slides will help you convey the message. The role of color objects, slide backgrounds and any other graphical enhancements in scientific slides is very simple: they all are supposed to enhance the presented data without causing distraction. Their tone should be subdued and color palette kept to minimum. Proper color matching is one important aspect that is frequently overlooked, and the most common result of poorly selected colors is distraction. There are colors that do not go well together and there are combinations that create pleasing effects. To help you select matching colors we recommend visiting a ColorSchemer Gallery web site (http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/index.php) where a large number of color schemes are available to choose from. Select the set which has an equal combination of light colors, which you will use for filling-in objects, and dark colors for letters and labels.

IV. How ScienceSlides will help you in your PowerPoint Presentations?

ScienceSlides is a new tool designed to make your PowerPoint presentation better in a fraction of time. To use it, all you need is to open PowerPoint and use pull-down menus to select biomedical discipline of your choice. Also, if connected to the Internet, you can access slide’s references from the dialog box which opens within PowerPoint.

Essential features of ScienceSlides:

1. Seamless integration with PowerPoint. ScienceSlides works from within PowerPoint and all tools and objects are only a click away from inserting into your presentation.
2. After insertion, end user can modify all objects and slides. This feature will help personalize your presentation. Although ScienceSlides has a vast library of objects and slides, end user can still make it more unique and personal by modifying them.
3. Content updated twice a year. Content is the most important feature of ScienceSlides. It covers almost all BioMedical fields from Biology, Biochemistry,
   Pharmacology, Signaling, Methods, and Molecular Biology to Molecular Pathology, etc. It is continuously reviewed and expanded to keep up with new developments.
4. Journal-like literature review via PubMed. Majority of Signaling slides and many
   other have references attached to them. These references (as abstracts) can be brought up directly from ScienceSlides dialog box so one can quickly view the source information!

Try to view ScienceSlides content as a source of
scientific information in a graphical form!

V. Most frequent mistakes in scientific presentations.

1. Ugly slides. Speaker did not put much effort to prepare slides or may even used an ancient slide from a meeting 15 years ago. Bad idea! It shows disregard for audience. This is where ScienceSlides is most helpful.
2. Presentation pace too fast. Audience attention lost after 10-15 minutes. Just remember the rule of 2 minutes per slide.
3. Disconnect between Introduction (too general) and data slides (too specific). Make bridging slide that will transit the attention from the general field to your particular project.
4. Data slides labeled too sparingly. Audience may be forced to interrupt and ask technical question - not good for the flow of your thought!
5. Data slides overloaded. Sometime you may need to show three to four gels at the same time. Do not put them all up at the same time! Use transitions, or better yet, have each consecutive slide add one additional experimental component. With long tables highlight the lines you are trying to emphasize on (for example using bold typeface).
6. Does not have a well polished finish slides. This may include summary/ conclusions, take home message or summarizing scheme. Underline important findings and stress their importance for the future of your project. Finish with a bang!