Like a “TEDTalk”, CityUTalk is a pre-recorded presentation related to your capstone. You can share your research, discuss your discoveries, reflect on your capstone and its impact.
Essence of the session: What would you like to share in relation to your capstone with the MC and MEd community in a 10 minute prerecorded video?
Pre-recorded presentations will be posted to an online platform for viewing during and after the unconference. You will be asked to sign the Use of Image or Video by CityU Consent Form before your video can be posted.
Preparing a good presentation always takes longer than you anticipate. The key is to start early and allow enough time to adequately prepare. Knowing the material well and being prepared are the best keys to success in giving a presentation. The following guidelines will assist you in adequately designing a solid CityU Talk.
What does the audience know about the material?
What do you want them to learn?
Try starting with the last slide or point first. If you do not know where you are going it is highly unlikely that you will be able to get there. Plan the conclusion first. Know what you want to convey to the audience, then make the rest of the slides lead to and support your final points.
Write out an introduction. Start with a 15-word summary. If you can’t summarize your idea in fifteen words, rewrite it and try again until you can.
Outline your story. You want your presentation to have a logical flow. You are telling a story that should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Tell you audience what you are going to tell them (beginning), tell it (middle), and then summarize it (end).
Stick to the key concepts. Avoid description of specifics and unnecessary details.
Strive for clarity. Are the words you are using unfamiliar jargon or acronyms? Are the words unambiguous?
Background: You need to give a sufficient but not a comprehensive background for your topic. Do not get bogged down covering your entire literature review, rather focus on key research and findings.
If using powerpoint, use only one message per slide. Each slide should address a single concept. Slides should follow a logical progression, with each building upon the other.
Here are some guidelines for creating and presenting using POWERPOINT.
Use brevity: Your presentation should contain no more than 10 slides. In general, using a few powerful slides is the aim.
Do not overload your slides with too much text or information. Too much text makes a slide unreadable.
Stick to a few key words. If your audience is reading the slides, ey are not paying attention to you.
Keep your points/fragments short, usually 10 to 20 words.
Maintain Parallelism: Use fragments not full sentences.
Use a font of 44 for titles, 28 to 34 for subtitles, and 24 to 34 with a bold font for text.
Use no more than five lines of text on any one slide and use both upper and lowercase text, not all caps.
Use contrast: Light on dark background or dark on light and be consistent. Colours appear lighter when projected so look at on a projection screen ahead of time.
Use as few numbers as possible (they are confusing to the audience).
Maintain professionalism, do not use animations or “cute” templates in your presentation.
Have all text appear at the same time that the slide does. Do not have text that appears as the speaker talks.
Number each of your slides and give them a title.
If you use charts remember that numbers in charts can be very hard to read.
Practice your presentation first
Talk through your presentation to see how much time you use for each slide. It can be helpful to use a timer (Powerpoint has a “timer” tool that can be useful).
Make a list of keywords/concepts for each slide.
Do not attempt to memorize your text.
Do not use PowerPoint or note cards as a “crutch”. Know the content of your presentation.
DO NOT READ YOUR SLIDES. Your audience can read them much faster than you can talk.
Avoid distracting mannerisms in both speech and movement (i.e., saying “um” of shifting your weight from side to side, etc.)
Have a rehearsed opening statement and use it. Do not attempt to improvise at the last moment.
To end within the allotted time, you must PRACTICE! When practicing try to end early.
Please use whatever technology is most comfortable for you. A couple of things to consider are:
We would like you to make sure that your face appears in the video as you are presenting
The presentation should be one continuous video
The recording should be saved as an MP4 file format.
Zoom is the easiest platform to use for recording. If you using PPT slides, you can present using the slides as a virtual background (see https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360046912351-Sharing-slides-as-a-Virtual-Background).
As your TALK session will not have any discussion component, your recording can be shorter if you wish (10 minutes).
Here are a few tips for recording:
Speak clearly with sufficient volume, be loud and clear.
Think about breathing. This limits the “ums” and “aahs” of your presentation.
Make eye contact with the camera (aka., Audience).
Think SLOW! You are almost always going faster than you realize.
Have a conclusion and reiterate. Stress again your value added (tell the people what you told them), this is why you are presenting. What do you want them to remember?
Check out the following link for a demonstration on creating an effective 10-minute presentation using PPT.
https://scwrl.ubc.ca/2016/07/21/10-tips-for-the-10-minute-conference-presentation/
In addition to your recording of your presentation, we will also be asking for a copy of the PDF of any PPT slides you use as well.
If you have signed up for a CityU Talk session, you will receive an email two weeks out from the conference with information about where to upload your video and pdf of your PPT (as application).