Formal Oral presentations

Your oral presentations must not be read verbatim from notes. You may wish to write out your complete presentation, but, then, do not bring this material to your presentation.

Good oral presentations make extensive use of visuals. In addition to presenting visual information for the audience, good visuals lead you through your talk so that you almost never have to refer to any notes.

Each student is expected to use visuals, presumably as part of a Powerpoint file. Make sure that your facilitator gets a copy of your Powerpoint file early enough to be transferred to the notebook computer you will be using during the talk. The facilitator will also need time to review your presentation to correct errors and formating problems. The visuals and other Powerpoint content will be evaluated as part of your grade for your talk.

In the past, students have prepared presentation files for which the scanned visuals have a very large file size. At presentation time, these visuals don't show up because there is insufficient computer RAM. This has been a serious problem with Powerpoint files. The presentations should, therefore, be checked out on the presentation computer prior to leaving on the industry visit so that the visuals can be changed if necessary.

Thus, early in the semester, make sure you learn how to make visuals files that are small in size.

Bring a backup disk containing your Powerpoint file.

Company engineers usually request that you forward a copy of your presentation to your company advisor/mentor for review prior to your visit. This means that you must complete your presentation earlier than the night before the planned presentation date. Discuss with your advisor what form of the presentation will be acceptable. Hopefully, it will be as simple as emailing him/her your Powerpoint file.