Presentation Skills: Presentation Skills

Introductions

• Introduce yourself!
• Include a slide outlining your presentation.
• Tell the audience why they should be interested: why is this important? why is this relevant? 
  • For instance, use a surprising statistic. (Statista is one database for statistical information.)

Conclusions

• Recap the most important points, usually 2-5 things.
• Provide a verbal cue, i.e. ‘thank you for your time', to let the audience that you are done. 

Interactivity

• Ask audience questions to gauge prior knowledge and comprehension during/after the presentation
• Use games to polls to engage the audience.

Designing Slides

• Use phrases and words to guide your talk.
• Don’t write in complete sentences unless using a direct quote.  
• Use a large font size and sans serif font style
• Use color schemes with good contrast to improve ease-of-reading and accessibility.
  • Do NOT rely on color alone. For instance, use a combination of tools to highlight an important point. 
  • Consider using the GWU Color Palette or design your own using Adobe Color, Color Hunt, or Coolors

Find Images for Presentations

Accessible Slides