While Presenting a Dissertation or Thesis, What Are the Points for Students to Consider?

So, you have written a thesis and you are in the last stages of thesis writing and must make a PowerPoint or slide presentation to impress your supervisors. In most cases, in coursework or PhD degree requirements, you will require a presentation after or alongside your thesis. Usually the PowerPoint presentation should be made with the writing of the thesis. That means while you are writing the last chapter or conclusion of your thesis, you must focus on or start creating your PowerPoint or slide presentation.

Creating your slide presentation require you to consider several points and these are some of the points that you must note.

1. Your presentation must directly represent your thesis. This means that your presentation must be a perfect shortened version of your thesis. Your thesis will be more than 10000 words and your presentation is only 15-20 slides, but within those 20 slides, the presentation must contain all aspects of the thesis and must include all points included in the thesis. The thesis must be comprehensive and your slide must also be very comprehensive but only an abridged or shortened version of the thesis.

2. Your presentation must have the major issues or points. Almost all major points included in your thesis. The thesis will obviously have several major points that you will have to analyze or describe. The PowerPoint presentation on the other hand will have fewer points, but must include all the more important points already mentioned in the thesis. The best way to do this is to come up with a list of main points or refer to the original outline of the thesis and if you haven't deviated from the outline, you should be able to create the presentation according to the thesis outline.

3. Your presentation must tell a story. Impress your supervisors and colleagues with a story and add images and graphs by showing why your area of research is interesting or relevant to the topic, and provide rationale or justification for doing the research that you have done. Impress with a storyline or a progression of ideas so ideas must flow towards explaining the smaller details to the larger picture or vice versa. There has to be some sort of flow, progression and build-up to the research analysis.

4. Your presentation must be comprehensive and analytical. This means that all the ideas presented in the thesis must be presented in a shortened but comprehensive manner and the presentation slides must also be very analytical in its approach. The comprehensiveness of the slides can be measured with the aid of the number of points presented and whether these points are aligned with the outline. The analytical aspect of the thesis would show how the points or issues raised in the thesis have been examined and the presentation highlights all aspects of these analyses within the theses.

5. Your presentation must be strong and effective. The slides that you present must be strong in message and content and create impact. This makes for an effective presentation as a weak presentation never makes an impact and cannot be effective. A strong presentation on the other hand has a direct impact on people and their thinking. A strong presentation is also about using the right kind of message, content, images and highlighting the direction of research. This brings us to the next point.

6. Your presentation must be according to the direction of research. This is a very important point. Your research or thesis will definitely have a direction along with rationale and justification and it is important to maintain the same research direction while presenting the slides. If you are trying to answer a research question in your thesis, maintain the same direction and flow for your presentation so that people can identify the thesis as a progression of the research question.

7. Your presentation must be timed and optimum. The timed nature of your slides, will help you to maintain a certain level of discipline while presenting your thesis. Time your presentation but also keep the number of slides optimum so that the presentation isn't too long or too short. Optimum timing, discipline and the optimum number of slides for your presentation would be very important in the process of maintaining the representativeness and relevance of your dissertation or thesis.

8. Your presentation must be easy to understand or comprehend. Too many graphs, numbers and charts can create unnecessary complications and wouldn't be a good thing for the researcher. While doing a presentation, it is important to consider that the numbers and charts that you include in your presentation must have relevance to the thesis and must also simplify the thesis. Remember the whole point of adding images, charts and graphs is to simplify the whole thesis and presentation, so you must focus on making the thesis very simple, and easy to understand within a short period of time. Usually a presentation is never more than 15-30 minutes and to keep the presentation within that time frame, add all those features that will simplify the process a bit further, so that the slides and the thesis become easier to comprehend and understand.

9. Your presentation must have bullet points. Your presentation must be precise and concise and all information must be presented in bullet points so that it is simple, easy to comprehend and easy to remember. Bullet points help to categorize different elements of a thesis or research areas, and within the presentation, bullet points will differentiate the most important issues and categorize these as well.

10. Your presentation must be clear, direct and impactful. It is necessary to create an impact with your presentation. You must focus on the direction and long term value of your thesis. Present a clear direction of your thesis within the presentation, present a clear research question, a clear analytical direction and keep your presentation free from clutter. The presentation has to create significant impact so that it can be easily remembered. A strong presentation for your thesis will help increase the value of your academic work.