Talks for this course will follow the format of contributed talks at American Physical Society meetings. You can find the advice they provide for speakers here.

Plan to speak for 10-12 minutes, followed by 3-5 minutes for questions. Aim your talk at an audience of your peers -- advanced undergraduate physics majors.

• What? Start with a summary of what you did and what you plan to cover in your talk.
• Why? Explain the significance of the work.
• How? Describe your experimental methods and analysis.
• Results Report and discuss your results.
• What next? Briefly discuss ways of improving your work and carrying it forward.

• Speak to your audience (not to the screen, i.e.).
• Don't read your slides to your audience. Speak extemporaneously.
• Give your audience sufficient time to digest each slide.
• Speak slowly (enough) and clearly.

• Use sufficiently large font on your slides.
• Make sure graphics have appropriate resolution for the display.
• Use of various fonts, font sizes, italics, text color, background color etc. should serve to enhance the readability of the text. (Otherwise, keep it simple.)
• Always label axes of graphs.
• Use slides for non-verbal communication. Include as little text in your slides as possible. If people are reading, they aren't listening to you.
• Avoid overloading slides with information. If a high information density is unavoidable, consider using a series of slides in which you build a complex picture in steps.
• If you present material you did not produce yourself, include a citation on the slide.

Each audience member will give feedback on each talk using this form. You will present your talk two times. I will determine grades based both on how you respond to the feedback you receive on your first talk and on the feeback you receive on your second talk.

Copyright © 2003-2009, Lewis A. Riley

Updated Sun Mar 2 00:24:32 2008