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Do You Have To Do Presentations in College?

Through school, you may have had to do several presentations in front of your class. If you’re preparing for college, you may wonder whether you’ll have to continue doing them. Do you have to do presentations in college? 

You may have to do presentations in college if you are taking subjects like law or business. You will also have to do presentations if your teacher prefers presentations as an assessment. But, you might avoid presentations by choosing specific subjects or looking for alternative assessments.

This article considers when and why you may have to do presentations in college. It also has some tips about how to avoid presentations. 

When May You Have To Do Presentations in College?

You may have to do presentations if you take subjects where you need to develop your oral speaking skills. These include subjects like communications, law, business, and education. You may also have to do presentations if your professors use them as a form of assessment. 

The circumstances where you may have to do presentations in college are explored further below. 

If You Are Taking Subjects Like Law, Business or Education

Some subjects prepare you for career pathways that you may need public speaking skills for. If you take these subjects, you will need to do presentations to improve your oral speaking skills. 

Some of the subjects that you may need to do presentations for are: 

• Law : If you are studying for a Bachelor’s degree in Law, you may need to present cases or debate with your peers. This is to prepare you to present cases in courts, to clients, and other stakeholders in the legal world. 
• Education : If you plan to get into education as a teacher or administrator, you will likely have to talk in front of classes. As you study education, you may need to present or even deliver classes.
• Business : If you are looking to run or manage businesses, your college course will include many presentations. This will build on your confidence and your ability to organize your thoughts.
• Communications : If you are studying for a Bachelor’s degree in communication like PR or media relations, you will need to do presentations in college. 

In some cases, presentations will help you hone your skills and confidence. This will help you do better in your career. 

Source: Classroom

If Your Professor Uses Presentations As Assessments

Some professors design assessments that require you to present information. These presentations may be in front of your whole class, individually to your professor, or recorded. Presentations will require you to tap into your oral speaking skills but also your digital and organization skills. 

Professors use oral presentations as an assessment because they can build on a variety of skills. They will improve your cognitive skills and memory and require you to analyze and organize information to present it in a way. 

In addition, presentations by students can help make the classroom more engaging as students can learn from their peers’ presentations. 

Source: Australian Catholic University

How To Avoid Presentations in College?

You can avoid presentations by choosing subjects that don’t require presentations. You can also ask your professor for alternative assessment arrangements. If presentations cause you anxiety or stress, you may be able to get a medical exemption from doing them. 

Choose the Right Subjects

Some courses and subjects will not need you to do presentations. This is because they call upon other skills like writing or designing. 

Some of the subjects you are less likely to need to present for include: 

• Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and other sciences:  Science subjects require various skills, including the ability to conduct lab work and review research and literature. Your assessments will most likely be in the form of written work. 
• Computer and information sciences:  If you do a Bachelor’s in IT, most of your work will likely be presented in digital format. 
• Engineering : Most forms of engineering will have assessments in the form of designs, papers, or traditional exams. You will rarely be required to do an oral presentation unless you talk through a particular design or creation. 

Before deciding what subject to study, you should review the subject’s unit guide. This will give you a better understanding of what kind of assessments and requirements the course you are considering will have. 

This way, you can choose courses that do not have oral speaking or presentation requirements. 

Look for Alternative Assessments

Many college courses have different options for assessments. For instance, a professor may give students the option between a presentation and a paper. If your professor hasn’t given you an option, talk to them to see an alternative to an oral presentation. 

Get a Doctor or Psychologist’s Report

If presentations are causing you extreme anxiety or stress, you may be able to get a doctor or psychologist’s letter which states you can’t do a presentation. The letter should state that you cannot do a presentation as it would adversely affect you psychologically or medically. 

Source: The Guardian

How Can You Improve Your Presentation Skills?

You can build on your presentation skills by practicing your content and ensuring you have a deep knowledge of it. You can also improve by identifying your areas of weakness, or you can look for alternatives to traditional presentations. 

Here are more details about how you can build on your presentation skills. 

Know and Practice Your Content

Practice makes perfect in all areas, and presentations are no exception. Make sure that you research your content well and organize it into a structure you are comfortable with. Practice your presentation several times. If possible, try to practice it in front of family or friends. 

Identify Your Areas of Weakness

Your family and friends may help you identify areas that you can improve. For instance, you may be reading off your presentation slides rather than speaking to your audience. Or, you may fill your presentations with fillers like “umm” or long pauses. 

Once you identify your weak areas, you can focus on improving them. 

Source: Forbes

Look for alternatives to traditional presentations. Instead of a traditional presentation where you speak in front of a class, you can suggest alternative presentations. 

These alternative presentations may be: 

• A conversation:  If you are presenting with other peers, you may structure it like a conversation. As this is less formal than a presentation, it may be easier for you to navigate. 
• A team presentation:  Working in a team can help cut down on the amount of time you need to spend presenting. 
• Record a presentation : Pre-record your presentation and present it to your class. If you need a live component, hold a Question and Answer after the presentation, which can help you present more conversationally. 

Conclusion 

You may have to do some presentations in college depending on what subjects you’re taking. You may also need to present if your teacher is using presentations for assessments. However, you can avoid presentations by looking for alternative assessments or choosing not presentation-heavy subjects. 

Recommended Reading:

• Why Is Public Speaking Required In College?
• How To Avoid Taking a Speech Class in College

Emily is an engineer at a Fortune 100 company. Her degree is in Chemical Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Chemistry. She completed 4 internships in college and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2020. She is from Texas and currently lives in Seattle, WA. Emily loves hiking, traveling, and playing guitar. She is a very proud dog mom to her fur baby, Oliver.

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• 10 Effective Class Presentation Tips for College Students

Giving a presentation to your classmates can be a bit challenging, especially if you are new to visual or oral presentations or fear public speaking. 

However, class presentations foster an excellent opportunity for students to enhance their public speaking skills while broadening their perception and understanding of a particular subject matter. 

Also, the presentation provides a platform for students to connect with peers, professionals, and potential employers. 

By showcasing their skills and knowledge, they can build relationships and establish themselves as a better performer in their field. 

While presentation helps students to expand their horizons of knowledge and skills, beginners may be slightly concerned about where to start and how to master it. 

Worry not! Here, we discuss the best presentation tips for students for a flawless delivery of the subject.

10 Handy Presentation Tips for College Students

Effective delivery of a presentation requires efficient presentation techniques and exceptional presentation abilities. 

The following tips for presenting in class help students strengthen their public speaking skills, empowering them to effectively communicate their message or information to the audience.

1. Overcome Presentation Anxiety

While it is quite common to feel anxious before the presentation, it won’t allow you to deliver a presentation confidently. 

There are several reasons why students fear public speaking, including, worrying about committing a mistake, lack of experience, losing control, or what if their audience dislikes their speech. 

Nevertheless, don’t worry, as you can overcome your presentation anxieties with the following techniques:

• Prepare and practice your topic thoroughly.
• Just focus on the message you want to convey to your audience.
• Be open to feedback and criticism from others.
• Have a mindset that you are going to make it.
• Practice deep breathing to keep your mind calm and composed.

2. Learn the Art of Public Speaking

Learning and getting used to public speaking can help students feel more confident and comfortable in delivering their message to the audience. 

Also, it helps them to structure their thoughts and use perfect language to convey their content crisp and clean while engaging their audience.

There are several ways for students to learn public speaking skills, including:

• Online platforms and courses
• Local resources (community clubs, associations, etc.)
• Public speaking workshops
• Watching experienced public speakers and observing their techniques

Also Read:   17 Best Advice for College Students from Experts .

3. Craft Compelling Content

A robust opening statement sets the tone for the entire student presentation, helping you grab your audience’s attention. 

Ensure to develop a clear, concise, and thoughtful opening statement that talks about what the presentation is about and how it helps everyone out there. 

Moving on, your body content is the heart of your presentation, and that is what is going to keep your audience in the loop while conveying your ideas and thoughts. 

So, it should be well-structured, engaging, and easy to follow. Here’s how you can devise engaging content:

• Create a strong opening and ending statement with a powerful quote, thought-provoking question, or intriguing scenario.
• Clearly and precisely define your topic and its significance.
• Conduct in-depth research that is backed with statistical data or real-time stories.
• Organize your content with slides and images.

4. Add Engaging Visuals

Rather than constantly scrolling the loads of information, it is better to use visuals to engage your audience while helping them comprehend and retain complex matters and building emotional connections with them.

Tips for slideshow presentations:

• Use simple yet high-quality images.
• Add contrast and pleasing colors to make your slides look good.
• Incorporate snippets to support your visuals.
• Keep your slides consistent in terms of layout and design.
• Choose easy-to-follow fonts and numbers.
• Add data, icons, and infographics for illustration.

5. Balance Information and Entertainment

Adding humor to a presentation is a way to engage and connect with your audience more personally. 

It can help relieve tension, break the silence/drowsy state of mind, and make complex or dry information more perceivable during class presentation. 

Also, it helps keep your presentation memorable for a long time. Here is how you can add humor to your presentation:

• Know your audience and tailor your humor accordingly.
• Use humorous analogies, cartoons, catchphrases, or your own experiences.
• Try not to hurt others while using humor.
• You can make fun of everyday situations or activities, so people can relate with them.

6. Time Management in Class Presentation

Time management is one of the best tips for presenting in class. Starting and finishing your presentation in a predefined time frame is important. 

It helps you to convey your message precisely and effectively without disrupting the flow of the presentation and making it difficult for the audience to follow along. 

To manage your class presentation time, here are some presentation tips for students:

• Practice beforehand to know the required time.
• If you are going beyond the allotted time, cut short your content, delivering the most important points.
• Use visuals to quickly deliver messages.
• Use a timer to know that you are nearing the end.

7. Real-Life Examples

Listening to successful presentations helps you learn new techniques and gain insights on how to give better presentations. You can take note of key elements used, gestures followed, and eye contact made. 

Also, you can study the agenda of the presentation, like how it is structured, what topics are discussed, how properly visuals and icons are used, etc. 

Besides, you can pay attention to the language and tonality of the speaker to see how they used humor, stories, and emotional phrases to connect with audiences. 

Considering these insights, you can prepare your topic and present it flawlessly.

8. Take Peer Review and Feedback

Feedback is a way to learn where you lag and how you can improve further to build your credibility, professional knowledge and image. 

By receiving feedback from peers, you can identify blind spots, fragile areas, and how your content is perceived by others, enabling you to refine your work, address weaknesses, and develop new skills. 

Moreover, this presentation tip can strengthen your relationships with your peers while helping you present better every time.

Also Read:   Tips for Building Professional Relationships in College .

9. Stay Elegant and Attractive with Your Attire

What you wear and how you wear it matters when it comes to presenting in front of the public. 

The clothes you wear can greatly impact how your audience perceives you and your message. So, ensure to present yourself properly and professionally to attract your audience.

Here is how to dress up for class presentations:

• Keep your outfits simple, comfortable, and elegant.
• Avoid flashy colors and designs.
• Choose outfits according to the environment and temperature.
• Get your outfits properly stitched with the right fit. 
• Choose the right and soothing footwear.

10. Post-Presentation Reflection

Reviewing your past presentations can help drag strengths and areas for growth, which can help you make informed decisions and optimize your performance. 

For example, by analyzing your performance, you can assess what works well and what doesn't. This involves identifying areas for improvement concerning the use of visuals, snippets, icons, infographics, etc. 

Knowing these can help you make targeted improvements to enhance your future presentations.

Wrapping Up

A successful class presentation in college is vital for students’ academic and professional journey. 

It helps students develop valuable skills that will serve them in their future careers and provides them with an opportunity to showcase their knowledge and ideas to a wider audience. 

By mastering the art of presentation, students can set themselves apart from their peers and position themselves for success in their chosen careers.

 So, use the above-mentioned presentation tips for students to speak more confidently, sharing your thoughts and ideas.  

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Category: College Life Hack

Tags: Class Presentation Tips Class Presentation Tips for College Students college tips presentation tips

Tips for Online Students , Tips for Students

Presentation Tips For Students – Show And Tell Like A Pro!

Updated: July 15, 2022

Published: May 4, 2020

Giving a presentation to fellow classmates can be a bit daunting, especially if you are new to oral and visual presenting. But with the right PowerPoint tips, public speaking skills, and plenty of practice, you can present like a pro at your upcoming presentation. Here, we’ve laid out the best college presentation tips for students. And once you have one successful presentation, you’ll get better each time!

The Best Presentation Tips for Students

1. arrive early and be technically prepared.

Get to the room early and make sure you leave plenty of time for technical set up and technical difficulties. Have several backup drives (including an online version if possible) so that you are prepared for anything!

2. Know More

Be educated on more than just what you are sharing. That way, you can add points, speak candidly and confidently, and be prepared to answer any audience or teacher questions.

3. Share Your Passion With Your Audience

Connect with your audience by showing that you are passionate about your topic. Do this with the right tone, eye contact, and enthusiasm in your speech.

Photo by  Austin Distel  on  Unsplash

4. pace yourself.

When student presenters are nervous, they tend to speed up their speech. This can be a problem, however, because your speed may be distracting, hard to understand, and you may run under your time.

5. Rehearse Thoroughly

Don’t just practice, rehearse your college presentation. Rehearse the entire delivery, including standing up, using gestures, and going through the slides.

6. Show Your Personality

You don’t need to be professional to the point of stiffness during your college presentation . Don’t be afraid to show your personality while presenting. It will make your presentation more interesting, and you will seem more approachable and confident.

7. Improvise

You can’t be 100% certain what will happen during your presentation. If things aren’t exactly as you expected, don’t be afraid to improvise and run off script.

8. Pump Yourself Up

Get yourself excited and full of energy before your college presentation! Your mood sets the tone for your presentation, and if you get excited right before, you will likely carry that throughout and you’ll make your audience excited about your topic as well.

9. Remember To Pause

Pausing not only only prevents filler words and helps you recollect your thoughts, it can also be a powerful indicator of importance within your presentation.

10. Create “Um” Alternatives

Try hard not to use filler words as they make you look unprofessional and uncertain. The best alternatives to “um” “like” and “so” are taking a breath or a silent pause to collect your thoughts.

11. Using Your Hands

Using your hands makes your college presentation more interesting and helps to get your points across. Point at the slide, use common hand gestures, or mimic a motion.

12. Eye Contact

Eye contact is one of the most important presentation tips for students . Many students are nervous, so they look at their notes or their feet. It is important that you show your confidence and engage your audience by making eye contact. The more presentations you give, the more eye contact will feel natural.

13. The Right Tone

The best public speakers vary their tone and pitch throughout their presentation. Try to change it up, and choose the right tone for your message.

Preparing an Effective College Presentation

1. open strong.

Grab your fellow students’ attention by starting strong with a powerful quote, intriguing scenario, or prompt for internal dialogue.

2. Start With A Mind Map

Mind mapping is literally creating a map of the contents of your college presentation. It is a visual representation and flow of your topics and can help you see the big picture, along with smaller details.

Photo by  Teemu Paananen  on  Unsplash

3. edit yourself.

Some students make the mistake of including too much information in their college presentations. Instead of putting all of the information in there, choose the most important or relevant points, and elaborate on the spot if you feel it’s necessary.

4. Tell A Story

People love stories — they capture interest in ways that figures and facts cannot. Make your presentation relatable by including a story, or presenting in a story format.

5. The Power Of Humor

Using humor in your college presentation is one of the best presentation tips for students. Laughter will relax both you and the audience, and make your presentation more interesting

PowerPoint Tips for Students

1. use key phrases.

Choose a few key phrases that remain throughout your PowerPoint presentation. These should be phrases that really illustrate your point, and items that your audience will remember afterwards.

2. Limit Number Of Slides

Having too many slides will cause you to feel you need to rush through them to finish on time. Instead, include key points on a slide and take the time to talk about them. Try to think about including one slide per one minute of speech.

3. Plan Slide Layouts

Take some time to plan out how information will be displayed on your PowerPoint. Titles should be at the top, and bullets underneath. You may want to add title slides if you are changing to a new topic.

Photo by  NeONBRAND  on  Unsplash

4. the right fonts.

Choose an easy-to-read font that isn’t stylized. Sans serif fonts tend to be easier to read when they are large. Try to stick to only two different fonts as well to keep the presentation clean.

5. Choosing Colors And Images

When it comes to colors, use contrasting ones: light on dark or dark on light. Try to choose a few main colors to use throughout the presentation. Choose quality images, and make sure to provide the source for the images.

6. Use Beautiful Visual Aids

Keep your presentation interesting and your audience awake by adding visual aids to your PowerPoint. Add captivating photos, data representations, or infographics to illustrate your information.

7. Don’t Read Straight From Your Notes

When you read straight from your notes, your tone tends to remain monotonous, you don’t leave much room for eye contact. Try looking up often, or memorizing portions of your presentation.

8. Avoid Too Much Text

PowerPoint was made for images and bullets, not for your entire speech to be written in paragraph form. Too much text can lose your adiences’ interest and understanding.

9. Try A Theme

Choosing the right theme is one of those presentation tips for students that is often overlooked. When you find the right theme, you keep your college presentation looking interesting, professional, and relevant.

10. Be Careful With Transitions And Animations

Animations and transitions can add a lot to your presentation, but don’t add to many or it will end up being distracting.

Public Speaking Tips for Students

1. choose your topic wisely.

If you are able to pick your topic, try to pick something that interests you and something that you want to learn about. Your interest will come through your speech.

2. Visit The Room Beforehand

If your presentation is being held somewhere outside of class, try to visit the location beforehand to prep your mind and calm your nerves.

3. Practice Makes Perfect

Practice, practice, practice! The only way you will feel fully confident is by practicing many times, both on your own and in front of others.

Photo by  Product School  on  Unsplash

4. talk to someone about anxiety.

If you feel anxious about your college presentation, tell someone. It could be a friend, family member, your teacher, or a counselor. They will be able to help you with some strategies that will work best for you.

5. Remind Yourself Of Your Audience

Remember, you are presenting to your peers! They all likely have to make a presentation too at some point, and so have been or will be in the same boat. Remembering that your audience is on your side will help you stay cool and collected.

6. Observe Other Speakers

Look at famous leaders, or just other students who typically do well presenting. Notice what they are doing and how you can adapt your performance in those ways.

7. Remind Yourself Of Your Message

If you can come up with a central message, or goal, of your college presentation, you can remind yourself of it throughout your speech and let it guide you.

8. Don’t Apologize

If you make a mistake, don’t apologize. It is likely that no one even noticed! If you do feel you need to point out your own mistake, simply say it and keep moving on with your presentation. No need to be embarrassed, it happens even to the best presenters!

When you smile, you appear warm and inviting as a speaker. You will also relax yourself with your own smile.

The Bottom Line

It can be nerve racking presenting as a college student, but if you use our presentation tips for students, preparing and presenting your college presentation will be a breeze!

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Suggestions

How To Make a Good PowerPoint Presentation for College

A must-unlock skill of every college student is creating PowerPoint presentations. Whether you’re a freshman, sophomore or senior, you’re sure to come across an assignment that requires you to create a PowerPoint presentation.

Not only does it help you impress lectures and get straight As on your transcript, but it is also key to thriving in the corporate world.

Creating PowerPoint presentations enables you to hone creativity, build public speaking abilities, improve body language and boost confidence. Those interpersonal qualities are required, not only in classes but also in workplaces.

The study says that 77% agree that presentation skills are crucial for one’s career success. It becomes a plus when you join a company. But, developing presentation skills doesn’t happen overnight. College years are an ideal time to build and hone this skill.

To start off, you can train yourself to create eye-catching and attention-grabbing slides for tasks and exams. Below are practical steps for doing a good PowerPoint presentation for college students.

1. Identify the key points

Before anything else, a good comprehension of the topic you want to deliver is necessary. Understanding your materials helps you be more confident when presenting and providing better slides.

Those who aren’t knowledgeable about the topic they talk about most likely put a long string of words, leading to wordy slides. However, if you comprehend the discussion well, you can put short phrases in bullet points.

Choose the points you want to elaborate in short phrases. If possible, rewrite them interestingly to capture audiences. The points are like cue cards that will assist you throughout the presentation.

2. Choose an interesting template

Never present PowerPoint with plain slides because it’s the first step to a boring performance. Besides, finding PowerPoint templates online is a piece of cake.

Many online platforms provide downloadable and free PowerPoint templates. Some websites to dive into are Slide Carnival, Powerpointify, Slides and AllPPT. They have various categories, such as education, technology, business, medical, etc.

For college students, choosing a template depends on the topic they cover and personal taste. The best and safest way to decide on a template is to stay simple. Aim for a simple template with a good color combination.

Moreover, mind the background of your slides. You should use the same background for the entire slide. Ensure that your background and font color are in good contrast to present clear and readable slides.

3. Write impactfully

Now that you’ve decided on the points you want to deliver, put them into slides. Spread your points and use bullet points if possible. You can also mark some slides to add images , graphs or tables later.

There are rules of thumb that students must be aware of when creating PowerPoint presentations. The overall idea is to keep your slides concise. Here are some points worth taking notes on.

• Include up to five points with a margin error (+/-2) on each slide.
• If possible, discuss only one idea per slide.
• Include up to 30 words per slide (6 – 8 lines).
• Use a simple and clean font, such as Montserrat, Verdana, Calibri, Bentham and Roboto
• Keep your font to a minimum 18-point size.
• Use active and concise language.
• A presentation with no more than 15 slides is preferable.

If you have segmented your points, continue your work by making your slides more captivating and engaging by adding visual aids.

4. Add visuals

It’s vital to have visual aids on your slides to emphasize points better and engage audiences effectively. Use related images, graphs or tables to support your points. You can also embed a video if needed.

Create a good balance of visual aids and text on your slide. Commonly, a slide with a visual representation only carries one idea written in short. Consider some points below when embedding visual aids on your slides:

• Use photos instead of clipart.
• Use high-quality photos.
• Avoid using watermarked photos.
• Don’t clutter images on a slide.

You can go to Unsplash and Freepik to search for free photos. Remember to add credit for your photos to inform audiences.

5. Edit and tidy up your slides

The next step is editing your slides and ensuring that all elements blend well. Pay attention to your slides, especially those with images, graphs or tables.

Check again in case you put too many words on them. Here are some guides on editing and tidying up your slides:

• Use consistent font type, size and color.
• Size text and images for a distance view.
• Limit the colors use to one to three colors.
• Ensure the background has good contrast with your font color.

6. Add transitions and do a final check

The final step to complete your PowerPoint is adding transitions such as entrance, emphasis, exit and motion paths. Adding transitions makes your slides more dynamic and helps emphasize points.

Some recommendations include Fade, Push, Cut, Cover and Uncover. Consider using one type of entrance transition to begin each slide. Add emphasis transition to highlight crucial points, images or other elements.

Using entrance and emphasis transitions is enough for a good educational presentation. Don’t overdo it because too much animation can be distracting for audiences. Lastly, run a final check before presenting it.

Final Thoughts

As college students are a step away from joining corporate life, having the skill to create a good PowerPoint presentation becomes vital.

Do rehearsals before presenting your PowerPoint slides to maximize your performance. Pen down some notes if necessary to support you during the zero hours. Lastly, train yourself to develop good speaking skills, body language and eye contact to captivate your audience.

Daniel Reed

Impressive insights into the importance of mastering PowerPoint presentations for college students! The article provides valuable tips that are not only applicable for academic success but also crucial for future professional endeavors.

The emphasis on understanding the key points, choosing engaging templates, and writing impactfully is fundamental for creating effective presentations. The suggestion to keep slides concise, use simple fonts, and maintain a good contrast between background and font colors enhances readability.

The inclusion of visuals, such as images, graphs, or tables, adds a dynamic element to the presentations. The recommendation to use high-quality photos from platforms like Unsplash and Freepik while giving due credit is a thoughtful touch.

The steps for editing and tidying up slides, including consistent font usage and color schemes, contribute to a polished and professional presentation. The guidance on adding transitions for a dynamic effect without overdoing it is practical.

Lastly, the reminder to do rehearsals and focus on speaking skills, body language, and eye contact underscores the holistic approach to effective presentations.

For those seeking further assistance or professional help in creating impactful PowerPoint presentations, I recommend checking out domypowerpoin.net for reliable services.

Thank you for sharing these comprehensive tips! They will undoubtedly benefit college students aiming for success in both academic and professional realms.

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Is Public Speaking Required in College?

By: Author Shrot Katewa

Your college years are a time when you will inevitably have to learn new skills, push your boundaries, and try things that you might otherwise not have been inclined to do.

It is almost certain that you will be required to do some public speaking in college no matter what you major in. Whether it is contributing to a seminar, giving a presentation about your work, or as part of an examination; you will be required to stand up and speak in front of a group.

While this may sound discouraging to some of you, I’m sharing a list of scenarios in which you might need to do public speaking while at college, with some tips on how to approach them, in order to minimize stress and maximize your results.

Public Speaking at Seminars

In many cases, you might not think that contributing to a seminar discussion is classed as an act of public speaking. However, you’d be wrong. After all, you are speaking to a group of people, in public, about a particular subject of interest. You have a captive audience and they will be listening to you.

The only difference is that, unlike a typical presentation, the likelihood is that there will be an element of to-and-fro after you have finished speaking. One of your fellow students might reply with their thoughts, or your professor might ask you a question about what you said.

Either way, you can use these seminar discussions to build your confidence when it comes to airing your ideas in a public forum. If you are able to speak off the cuff about an idea in a seminar, then the chances are that you will be able to do so, confidently, when it comes to giving a more structured and serious presentation.

What’s more, if you regularly contribute in class discussions then the chances are that you will understand the subject matter more. This will make giving presentations on it easier when the time comes, and it will mean that you will be able to deal with the subject more confidently in your written work too.

You may also be asked to present in your seminar and lead the discussion in the class afterwards. This might appear daunting at first, but if you use this as a place in which to practice your public speaking then you will feel much more comfortable doing so in situations where you might actually be being marked.

Public Speaking during Lectures

In some courses, you may be asked to contribute to your lectures. Whether that is speaking up and asking questions when you are unsure about the subject matter, or actually standing in front of the class and contributing more formally.

In either case, you should see this in the same way you approach speaking in a seminar. Just because you might be in a lecture theatre, with your course mates sat in banks of rows staring at you in anticipation, doesn’t mean that you should approach it any differently to how you would speaking to the same group of people in a smaller seminar room.

One of the advantages to presenting as part of a lecture, is that you are likely to also be able to develop your skills when it comes to putting together a presentation on either Slides or PowerPoint – depending on which software you prefer.

This will make you think about how much or how little content you need to include and how you formulate this alongside what you are saying. Which are crucial skills you need to develop if you are going to be giving presentations in the workplace after you have graduated.

Some subjects have graded presentations, where your performance will go towards your overall grade at the end of the course. In many ways, these are the most daunting presentations you will have to do at college. However, you should also see them as an opportunity.

While a lot may be resting on them, you should use it as a chance to set yourself apart from your classmates. You can be more creative with a presentation than you can with an essay, and you can convey more of your individual personality.

If the situation calls for it, you can crack a joke, share an interesting anecdote or simply use an image that really grabs the attention of your audience.

Although this might feel strange given that you are being graded in an academic environment, this is how you should think about it if you want to achieve the bets marks.

After all, the top-grade brackets are differentiated not only by the best content but in the delivery of the person presenting. 

It’s also important to remember that almost everyone else who will be presenting as part of their own examination will be feeling exactly the same as you. Even those who appear to be naturally good speakers will probably have some nerves going into the exam.

Therefore, you must channel the nerves you do have into giving you the energy to provide an engaging talk, which will excite your examiner and propel you on to achieve the best marks possible.

Extra-curricular

You may also find that there are opportunities to develop your skills of public speaking beyond the remit of your given course. For example, you may wish to join a drama society or the debating team, in order to build your confidence, meet new people and develop crucial skills that will not only come in handy on your course, but also in life more generally.

You can also develop skills of public speaking more subtly in a variety of other extra-curricular activities that you can take part in at college. For example, even if you join a sports club you can try and be the member of the team who gives a rousing speech before the big game.

You might even become a member of a society , from a games club through to the group associated with people from your country of origin. In each and every case there will no doubt be a committee whose job it is to organize the activities and funding of such groups.

Therefore, getting involved with them will provide you with the chance to deliver regular presentations to the group about your role within the committee.

This can be a very relaxed and informal way to build your confidence with regards to public speaking, all while developing your social skills and making friends along the way!

Can you Avoid Public Speaking in College?

Unfortunately, the hard truth is that you can not avoid public speaking or giving presentations in college. However, the best way to overcome this challenge is to fight your fears and become confident at public speaking!

There are hundreds of ways in which people will suggest that you can eliminate your fears about presenting in public. However, the best place to begin is to understand that it is justifiable that you will be scared to speak publicly. It is natural to feel vulnerable in this circumstance – but knowing this can be used as a way of overcoming your fear.

We actually wrote a detailed post on why people fear giving presentations and speaking in public, and shared a few very specific tips on how to overcome this fear! Do give it a read!

Why Can’t People Give Presentations? [And How to Get Over It!]

Once you have addressed the issues why you are scared to speak in public, and once you then understand them; then you will be able to find the best methods which work for you in order to minimise the levels of stress you experience before, during and after giving a presentation.

If, for example, you are scared that your friends will judge you for not knowing enough; or if you are self-conscious about how you hold yourself when you stand in front of people, then you can ask your friends if you can practice in front of them in order to deal with these issues.

You can even film yourself on your phone to make sure that you come across how you like and that your timings are correct. It might be uncomfortable to listen to yourself back at first, but this can be a really useful tool in bettering your public speaking skills.

You’ll also find out the things you do that you find annoying. This is worth knowing because the chances are other people watching you will notice them too!

Remember, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Makes You More Employable!

Finally, it is important to remember that a bad presentation isn’t the end of the world. What’s more, the reason you will be being asked to put yourself out of your comfort zone in order to present, is so that you can develop your confidence and build skills (like public speaking) which are crucial when it comes to looking for a job when you leave college.

So, take every chance you can to master these skills at college. Then look for help from the college staff and your friends, in order to really nail down the skills you need to become a great giver of presentations.

Most colleges have teams of staff dedicated to helping students to build these skills, yet very few students make the most of their services.

Seek them out and ask for their help, especially if you are someone who does not feel confident in presenting when you first arrive on campus. If you do so, and take all the opportunities above, then you will be well set to speak confidently in public by the time you graduate.

50 Creative Ideas to Nail Your College Presentation

We’d be willing to bet that most college students enjoy presentations about as much as they like their 7am class. Whether they’re designing them, or in the audience, there are likely a million and one things they’d rather be doing (like napping in their dorm room). In fact, 79% will say that most presentations today suck. And 35% of millennials say that they will only engage with content they feel has a great story or theme. With a reputation like that, it’s no wonder students avoid presentations at all costs. 

As a result, many will end up procrastinating, losing sleep over choosing a topic, and piecing a deck together at the last minute. According to research, 47% of presenters put in more than eight hours into designing their presentations. You do the math. Eight hours at the eleventh hour equals an all-nighter.

Luckily, that doesn’t mean the final product has to be a poorly thought-out frankendeck. 

Creative presentation ideas for college students

A lot can ride on a class presentation. It might be your last project at the end of the semester that determines the fate of your final grade, or maybe it’s a group project that counts for half of your participation in the class. Whatever the stakes are, we’re here to help you nail your next college presentation.

Pick the right topic

Before committing to your topics for presentations in college, you should consider things like what excites you, what you’re knowledgeable in and what you’d be interested in learning more about, books or movies that inspire you, world events, buzz-worthy pop culture, and what topics relate to your class course. How can you apply these things to your next class presentation?

You’re in college, so it’s very likely that your classmates will be sleeping, or staring out the window, while you’re presenting at the front of the room. To keep them engaged, make it interesting with these unique college presentation ideas.

College presentation ideas

• The evolution of a specific product— like the cell phone
• A presentation on your favorite celebrity
• A history of the most influential presidents of the United States
• How modern medicine is made
• The highest paid [BLANK] in 2021
• A how-to presentation on something you’re passionate about— like building cars
• A book that you think should be made into a movie (and why)
• Your favorite cultural recipe
• Who built the Sphinx of Egypt
• Social media now and then
• Shakespeare’s hits and misses
• Debunking a conspiracy theory
• Unexpected traditions
• Who invented the SAT, and what is it?
• The most popular travel destinations for young adults in their 20s
• What is van life anyway?
• How is education different now than it was in the ‘70s
• How to live a more sustainable life
• The evolution of humans
• The history of the Internet
• Is organic really better?
• How to get the most out of an internship
• What employers are actually looking for on your resume, and how to write one
• Everything you need to know about global warming
• The top places with the most expensive cost of living in the United States
• The rise of TikTok
• What is influencer marketing and why is it so important?
• Classic movies that should be cancelled in 2021, and why
• Is eating vegan really better for your health?
• Are aliens real?
• Everything you need to know about the Big Bang Theory
• Why streaming services are the demise of classic cable
• Marijuana then and now: the process of getting it legalized
• 15 Memorable things about [blank]
• A comprehensive timeline of feminism
• Is print— newspapers, magazines, books— dead?
• The easiest foreign language to learn on your own
• The best life hacks I learned on TikTok
• What does white privilege mean to millennials and Generation Z?
• Understanding finance for young adults 101
• Everything you need to know about life after college
• The difference between electric cars and gas cars
• What is artificial intelligence anyway?
• How thrifting can help the environment
• The evolution of presentations: from caveman to TedTalks
• Applying your degree in real life
• The origins of your favorite music genre
• Everything you need to about becoming a surgeon
• The life cycle of [blank] 
• Life without technology: where would we be without modern technology?

Make it beautiful

You have your topic, now what? Did you wait until the absolute last second to get started? Here’s the good news: no need for an all-nighter. Beautiful.ai can help you nail your college presentation in a pinch. The ease of use, and intuitive controls, help you create something brilliant in minutes, not hours. Start inspired with our inspiration gallery of pre-built templates and customize them to fit your content.

It’s important to connect with your audience on an emotional level, so make sure to pick trendy colors, modern fonts, and high-quality visual assets to compliment your presentation and evoke emotion. Engage your audience (especially your professor) with dynamic animations, or videos, to help control the narrative and direct their attention to the key takeaways. 

Pro tip: use the shareable link to share your deck out with classmates, teachers, or social media friends after class. 

Jordan Turner

Jordan is a Bay Area writer, social media manager, and content strategist.

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• EXPLORE Random Article

How to Give an Excellent Presentation (College Students)

Last Updated: March 3, 2024 Approved

This article was co-authored by Patrick Muñoz . Patrick is an internationally recognized Voice & Speech Coach, focusing on public speaking, vocal power, accent and dialects, accent reduction, voiceover, acting and speech therapy. He has worked with clients such as Penelope Cruz, Eva Longoria, and Roselyn Sanchez. He was voted LA's Favorite Voice and Dialect Coach by BACKSTAGE, is the voice and speech coach for Disney and Turner Classic Movies, and is a member of Voice and Speech Trainers Association. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, 86% of readers who voted found the article helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 128,741 times.

College seminars are conducted to test the presentation skills of a student or a group and also allow the student to convey their knowledge to the audience. When students don't come prepared, the presentation may become disorganized, unclear, and dull. It would make them confused during the presentation and lead to vague answers during the questionnaires.

• Think of your main topic and break it down into 3 specific ideas. This will help you to focus your discussion and remain clear. Keep the 3 ideas simple and have them in your mind. Write out your main points, then picture what you're talking about so you can visualize what you're going to talk about.
• To help you create the "soft humor," don't take yourself too seriously. Second, identify the fears and insecurities around the topic so you can address these in a way that shows we all have these fears, insecurities and taboos and that our feelings are normal. This helps keep you in the moment and present with the audience and allows you to recognize the reality of the effect of your topic on yourself and the audience.
• Tell the audience you're excited about what you're talking about. This can make your excited mood infectious and lead them to be willing to come on this journey with you.

• You could try doing something fun, like bringing with you a relevant object, doing a magic trick or a dance move to take things out of the ordinary and add some life to your talk.
• Another fun approach is to try a meditation and ask the audience to relax - feel your toes relax, your feet, etc.
• If you want the audience to move around, don't hesitate to ask. Ask them to stand up and stretch, to shake hands with the person next to them, or to do a twirl on the spot.
• You could try asking the audience to say a bunch of affirmations out loud with you, to get them caught up in the mood you're creating and help them to see its relevance to them too.

• You can ask the audience to imagine something along with you, asking them to close their eyes and think about something with you, then resume with eye contact following this.

What Is The Best Way To Start a Presentation?

Community Q&A

• Take 10 belly breaths if you have last minute stage fright. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Use images in your slides. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Come early to the venue where you will be presenting. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Answer the questions asked after the presentation. Do not divert or change the topic. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ https://www.princeton.edu/~archss/webpdfs08/BaharMartonosi.pdf

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7.4 Public Speaking and Class Presentations

Learning objectives.

• Know how to overcome nervousness and anxiety associated with public speaking and giving class presentations.
• Effectively use the six-step process to prepare for and deliver a class presentation.
• Create effective visual aids for use in class presentations.
• Work with a group to successfully plan and deliver a class presentation.

Public speaking—giving an oral presentation before a class or another group of people—is a special form of interaction common in education. You will likely be asked to give a presentation in one of your classes at some point, and your future career may also involve public speaking. It’s important to develop skills for this form of communication.

Public speaking is like participating in class—sharing your thoughts, ideas, and questions with others in the group. In other ways, however, public speaking is very different. You stand in front of the class to speak, rather than from your usual seat—and for most students, that changes the psychology of the situation. You also have time outside of class to prepare your presentation, allowing you to plan it carefully—and, for many, giving more time to worry about it and experience even more anxiety!

Overcoming Anxiety

Although a few people seem to be natural public speakers, most of us feel some stage fright or anxiety about having to speak to a group, at least at first. This is completely normal. We feel like everyone is staring at us and seeing our every flaw, and we’re sure we’ll forget what we want to say or mess up. Take comfort from knowing that almost everyone else is dreading giving class presentations the same as you are! But you can learn to overcome your anxiety and prepare in a way that not only safely gets you through the experience but also leads to success in your presentation. The following are proven strategies for overcoming anxiety when speaking in public:

• Understand anxiety. Since stage fright is normal, don’t try to deny that you’re feeling anxious. A little anxiety can help motivate you to prepare and do your best. Accept this aspect of the process and work to overcome it. Anxiety is usually worst just before you begin and but eases up once you’ve begun.
• Understand that your audience actually wants you to succeed. They’re not looking for faults or hoping you’ll fail. Other students and your instructors are on your side, not your enemy. They likely won’t even see your anxiety.
• Reduce anxiety by preparing and practicing. The next section discusses the preparation process in more detail. The more fully you prepare and the more often you have practice, the more your anxiety will go away.
• Focus on what you’re saying, not how you’re saying it. Keep in mind that you have ideas to share, and this is what your classmates and instructors are interested in. Don’t obsess about speaking, but focus on the content of your presentation. Think, for example, of how easily you share your ideas with a friend or family member, as you naturally speak your mind. The same can work with public speaking if you focus on the ideas themselves.
• Develop self-confidence. As you prepare, you will make notes you can refer to during the presentation. You’re not going to forget what you want to say. The more you practice, the more confident you’ll become.

Guidelines for Presentations

Preparing and delivering a presentation in class (or in business or other settings) is a process very similar to the learning process discussed in Chapter 4 “Listening, Taking Notes, and Remembering” , Chapter 5 “Reading to Learn” , and Chapter 6 “Preparing for and Taking Tests” and the writing process discussed in Chapter 8 “Writing for Classes” . The process breaks down into these six basic steps:

• Analyze your audience and goals
• Plan, research, and organize your content
• Draft and revise the presentation
• Prepare speaking notes
• Practice the presentation
• Deliver the presentation

Step 1: Analyze Your Audience and Goals

Who will see and hear your presentation—and why? Obviously, other students and the instructor. But you still need to think about what they already know, and don’t know, about your topic. If your topic relates to subject matter in class lectures and readings, consider what background information they already have and be careful not to give a boring recap of things they already know. It may be important, however, to show how your specific topic fits in with subjects that have been discussed already in class, especially in the beginning of your presentation, but be sure to focus on your new topic.

New terms and concepts may become familiar to you while doing your research and preparation, but remember to define and explain them to other students. Consider how much explanation or examples will be needed for your audience to grasp your points. If your topic involves anything controversial or may provoke emotion, consider your audience’s attitudes and choose your words carefully. Thinking about your audience will help you find ways to get their attention and keep them interested.

Be sure you are clear about the goals for the presentation. Are you primarily presenting new information or arguing for a position? Are you giving an overview or a detailed report? Review the assignment and talk with the instructor if you’re unsure. Your goals guide everything in the presentation: what you say, how much you say, what order you say it in, what visual aids you use, whether you use humor or personal examples, and so forth.

Step 2: Plan, Research, and Organize Your Content

Starting with the assignment and your goals, brainstorm your topic. Jot notes on specific topics that seem important. Often you’ll do reading or research to gather more information. Take notes as you would with any reading. As you research the topic at this stage, don’t worry at first about how much content you are gathering. It’s better to know too much and then pick out the most important things to say than to rush ahead to drafting the presentation and then realize you don’t have enough material.

Organizing a presentation is similar to organizing topics in a class paper and uses the same principles. Introduce your topic and state your main idea (thesis), go into more detail about specific ideas, and conclude your presentation. Look for a logical order for the specifics in the middle. Some topics work best in chronological (time) order or with a compare-and-contrast organization. If your goal is to persuade the audience, build up to the strongest reason. Put similar ideas together and add transitions between different ideas.

While researching your topic and outlining your main points, think about visual aids that may help the presentation.

Also start thinking about how much time you have for the presentation, but don’t limit yourself yet in the outline stage.

Step 3: Draft and Revise the Presentation

Unless required by the assignment, you don’t need to actually write out the presentation in full sentences and paragraphs. How much you write depends on your own learning and speaking style. Some students speak well from brief phrases written in an outline, while other students find it easier to write sentences out completely. There’s nothing wrong with writing the presentation out fully like a script if that helps you be sure you will say what you intend to—just so you don’t actually get up and read from the script.

You can’t know for sure how long a presentation will last until you rehearse it later, but you can estimate the time while drafting it. On the average, it takes two to three minutes to speak what can be written on a standard double-spaced page—but with visual aids, pauses, and audience interaction, it may take longer. While this is only a rough guide, you can start out thinking of a ten-minute presentation as the equivalent of a three to four-page paper.

Never wait until the last minute to draft your presentation. Arrange your time to prepare the first draft and then come back to it a day or two later to ask these questions:

• Am I going on too long about minor points? Could the audience get bored?
• Do I have good explanations and reasons for my main points? Do I need more data or better examples? Where would visual aids be most effective?
• Am I using the best words for this topic and this audience? Should I be more or less informal in the way I talk?
• Does it all hold together and flow well from one point to the next? Do I need a better introduction or transition when I shift from one idea to another?

Visual Aids in Presentations

Except for very short informal presentations, most presentations gain from visuals—and visual aids are often expected. If encouraged or allowed to include visuals in your presentation, plan to do so. Consider all possible types:

• Charts or graphs
• Photos or other images
• Video clips
• Handouts (only when necessary—they can be distracting)

Use the available technology, whether it’s an overhead projector, PowerPoint slides, a flip chart, or posters. (Talk to your instructor about resources and software for designing your visuals.) Follow these guidelines:

Design your visuals carefully. Here are some basic rules:

• Use a simple, neutral background. A light-colored background with text in a dark color works best for words; a dark background used like matting works best for photos.
• Minimize the amount of text in visuals—more than eight words per slide is usually too much. Avoid simply presenting word outlines of what you are saying. Make sure text is large enough for the audience to read.
• Don’t use more than two pictures in a slide, and use two only to make a direct comparison. Montages are hard to focus on and distract the viewer from what you’re saying. Use images only when they support your presentation; don’t use clip art just as decoration.
• Don’t put a table of numbers in a visual aid. If you need to illustrate numerical data, use a graph. (Microsoft Excel can make them for you easily.)
• Don’t use sound effects. Use a very brief recording only if directly related to your main points.
• Don’t use visual special effects such as dissolves, spins, box-outs, or other transitions. They are distracting. Use animation sparingly and only if it helps make a point.
• Don’t use so many visuals or move through them so quickly that the audience gives all its attention to them rather than to you.
• Practice your presentation using your visual aids, because they affect your timing.
• Explain visuals when needed but not when they’re obvious.
• Keep your eyes on your audience, only briefly glancing at visuals to stay in synch with them.
• Don’t hand out a printout of your visuals. Your audience should keep their eyes on you instead of fiddling around with paper.

Step 4: Prepare Speaking Notes

As mentioned earlier, it’s not a good idea to read your presentation from a written page rather than deliver it. To keep your audience’s attention, it’s important to make eye contact with them and to use a normal speaking voice—and you can’t do this if you keep your eyes on a written script.

Speaking notes are a brief outline for your presentation. You might write them on index cards or sheets of paper. Include important facts and data as well as keywords for your main ideas, but don’t write too much. (If you forget things later when you start practicing, you can always add more to your outline then.) Be sure to number your cards or pages to prevent a last-minute mix-up.

Think especially about how to open and close your presentation, because these two moments have the most impact of the whole presentation. Use the opening to capture the audience’s attention, but be sure it is appropriate for your audience and the goals. Here are some possibilities for your opening:

• A striking fact or example (illustrating an issue or a problem)
• A brief interesting or humorous anecdote (historical, personal, or current event)
• A question to the audience
• An interesting quotation

Then relate the opening to your topic and your main point and move into the body of the presentation.

Your closing mirrors the opening. Transition from your last point to a brief summary that pulls your ideas together. You might end with a challenge to the audience, a strong statement about your topic, or a personal reflection on what you have been saying. Just make sure you have a final sentence planned so that you don’t end up uncomfortably fumbling around at the end (“Well, I guess that ends my presentation”).

Step 5: Practice the Presentation

Practice may be the most important step. It is also the best way to get over stage fright and gain confidence.

Practice first in an empty room where you imagine people sitting, so that you can move your eyes around the room to this “audience.” The first time through, focus on putting your outlined notes into full sentences in your natural speaking voice. Don’t read your notes aloud. Glance down at your notes only briefly and then look up immediately around the room. Practice two or three times just to find the right words to explain your points and feel more comfortable working with your notes. Time yourself, but don’t obsess over your presentation being the exact length required. If your presentation is much too long, however, adjust it now in your notes so that you don’t start memorizing things that you might accidentally still say later on even though you cut them from your notes.

Once you feel good speaking from your notes, practice to add some more polish to your delivery. You might want to record or videotape your presentation or ask a friend or roommate to watch your presentation. Pay attention to these aspects of how you speak:

• Try to speak in your natural voice, not in a monotone as if you were just reading aloud. If you will be presenting in a large room without a microphone, you will need to speak louder than usual, but still try to use a natural voice.
• In usual conversation, we speed up and slow down and vary the intensity of our words to show how we feel about what we’re saying. Practice changes in your delivery style to emphasize key points.
• Don’t keep looking at your notes. It’s fine if you use words that are different from those you wrote down—the more you rehearse without looking at your notes, the more natural sounding you will be.
• Be sure you can pronounce all new words and technical terms correctly. Practice saying them slowly and clearly to yourself until you can say them naturally.
• Don’t forget transitions. Listeners need a cue when you’re moving to a new idea. Practice phrases such as “ Another important reason for this is…” or “Now let’s move on to why this is so.…”
• Watch out for all those little “filler” words people use so often, such as “like,” “you know,” “well,” and “uh.” They’re very distracting to most audiences. Listen to or watch your tape to see if you are using these fillers or ask your friend to point it out.
• Pay attention to body language when practicing. Stand up straight and tall in every practice session so that you become used to it. Unless you have to stand at a podium to use a fixed microphone in your presentation, practice moving around while you speak; this helps keep the audience watching you. Use hand and arm gestures if they are natural for you, but don’t try to make up gestures for the presentation because they will look phony. Most important, keep your eyes moving over the audience. Practice smiling and pausing at key points.
• Finally, it’s a good idea to be ready in case of an accident. Most likely your presentation will go smoothly, you’ll stay on track with your notes, and your PowerPoint slides will work fine, but sometimes a mishap happens. Be ready to joke about it, rather than becoming flustered. If the computer fails and you lose your visuals, say something like, “Well, that’s a shame, I had some really great photos to show you!” If you drop your index cards or notes, or accidentally skip ahead in your presentation and then have to backtrack, make a joke: “Sorry about that, I was so excited to get to my next point that I’m afraid I lost control there for a moment!” Let your audience laugh with you—they’ll still be on your side, and you can defuse the incident and move on without becoming more nervous.

Step 6: Deliver the Presentation

Be sure to get enough sleep and eat a healthy breakfast. Don’t drink too much caffeine or else you’ll become hyper and nervous. Wear your favorite—and appropriate—clothing and comfortable shoes.

You may use computerized visual aids when you give a presentation to a class.

John Haynes Photography – OLPC – CC BY-ND 2.0.

Remember, your audience is on your side! If you’re still nervous before your turn, take a few deep breaths. Rehearse your opening lines in your mind. Smile as you move to the front of the room, looking at your audience. You’ll see some friendly faces smiling back encouragingly. As you start the presentation, move your eyes among those giving you a warm reception—and if you see some student looking bored or doing something else, just ignore them. But don’t focus on any one person in the audience for too long, which could make them nervous or cause them to look away.

Don’t keep looking at your watch or a clock: If your rehearsal times were close to your assigned time, your presentation will be also. If you do notice that you’re running behind schedule, it may be that you’re saying too much out of nervousness. Use your notes to get back on track and keep the pace moving. But it’s better to deliver your presentation naturally and fluidly and be a bit long or short than to try to change your words and end up sounding unnatural.

At the closing, deliver your last line with confidence, sweeping your eyes over the audience. If appropriate, ask if there are any questions. When you’re done, pause, smile, say “Thank you,” and walk back to your seat.

Later on, ask other students and your instructor for comments. Be open minded—don’t just ask for praise. If you hear a suggestion for improvement, file that in your memory for next time.

Group Presentations

You may be assigned to give a presentation in a small group. The six-step process discussed previously works for group presentations, too, although group dynamics often call for additional planning and shared responsibilities:

• Schedule a group meeting as soon as possible to get started. Don’t let another student put things off. Explain that you’re too busy and won’t have time at the last minute.
• Begin by analyzing your audience and your goals together as a group to make sure everyone understands the assignment the same. Discuss who should do what. While everyone should talk about what content to include, from here onward, you will take on specialized roles. One or more may begin research and gathering information. Others who are good writers may volunteer to draft the presentation, while one or more others may develop the visual aids. Those who have public speaking experience may volunteer to do all or most of the speaking (unless the assignment requires everyone to have a speaking role). You also need a team leader to keep everyone on schedule, organize meetings, and so on. The best team leader is an even-tempered student with good social skills, who can motivate everyone to cooperate.
• Steps 2 and 3 can likely be carried out individually with assigned tasks, but group members should stay in touch. For example, the person developing the visuals should be talking to those doing the researching and drafting to see what visuals are needed and get started finding or creating them.
• Before preparing notes in step 4, meet again to go over the content and plan for visuals. Everyone should be comfortable with the plan so far. Make final decisions about who will do each section of the presentation. Set the time for each segment. Then speakers should prepare their own speaking notes. Let someone with strong speaking skills open or close the presentation (or both), with others doing the other parts.
• The whole group should be present for practice sessions in step 5, even if not everyone is speaking. Those not speaking should take notes and give feedback. If one student is doing most of the presenting, an alternate should be chosen in case the first choice is sick on the scheduled day. The alternate also needs to practice.
• During the delivery, especially if using technology for visual aids, one student should manage the visuals while others do the presenting. If several students present different segments, plan the transition from one to another so that the presentation keeps flowing without pauses.

Additional Resources

For Class Presentations

Using PowerPoint. A step-by-step illustrated tutorial for learning how to create effective visual presentations with PowerPoint. https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/tutorials/powerpoint/

“How to Give a Bad Talk.” A humorous look (with some very good advice) on what not to do when preparing for and giving a class presentation. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pattrsn/talks/BadTalk.pdf

Class presentations on YouTube. Search YouTube with the phrase “class presentation” and look for video examples of actual students giving class presentations. Observing and critiquing the presentations of other students are good ways to get started preparing your own and learning from others. Here’s a good example of a student group presentation on a topic we can all relate to (how body language works):

In this presentation, take note of

• how students make good eye contact with the audience;
• the first student’s natural speaking voice and tone, and how she did not have to use her note cards very often (obviously she practiced well);
• some differences among these students;
• the use of PowerPoint slides within the presentation (some better than others);
• the appropriate occasional use of humor;
• the division of presentation responsibilities within the student group;
• each presenter’s interaction with the audience.

Key Takeaways

• Public speaking skills are important because you will likely give presentations in class and perhaps in a future job.
• Overcome anxiety about public speaking by understanding your feelings, preparing well and practicing your delivery, and focusing on your subject.

Follow a six-step process to prepare and deliver a presentation:

• Deliver the presentation and seek feedback
• Use visual aids to support a presentation, creating visuals that are relevant, attractive, and powerful.
• The success of a group presentation depends on effective group meetings, successful division of roles, and repeated group practices.

Checkpoint Exercises

If you have given a class presentation in the past, what worked best for you? (If you have not given a presentation yet as a student, what aspect do you think will be most difficult for you?)

__________________________________________________________________

Name the two most important things you can do to reduce anxiety about a class presentation you will have to give.

For each of the following statements about class presentations, circle T for true or F for false:

Describe how best to use body language (facial expressions, eye movements, gestures, etc.) when giving a presentation.

If you were assigned along with three other students to give a group presentation in the class using this textbook, what would be your preferred role in the preparation stages? Your least preferred role? If you had to take your least preferred role, what single thing would you want to work hardest on to make the presentation successful?

College Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

• Teaching and Learning

Student Presentations: Do They Benefit Those Who Listen?

• February 21, 2013
• Maryellen Weimer, PhD

Almost everyone agrees that student presentations benefit the presenter in significant ways. By doing presentations, students learn how to speak in front a group, a broadly applicable professional skill. They learn how to prepare material for public presentation, and practice (especially with feedback) improves their speaking skills. But those of us who have students do presentations in class know there’s a downside—and that’s how the rest of the class responds to these presentations. When the teacher talks, students more or less have to pay attention, at least some of the time, but when their classmates present, they can be comatose. Not only does this make it more difficult for the presenter, it means the students listening are not likely having any sort of learning experience.

Peer evaluations are one way to get students listening and learning from the presentations of others, as the authors of the article referenced below have documented. Students attend more carefully to what their classmates are saying when the evaluations they are doing “count.” In this article, which describes the use of peer evaluations in ten 300-level political science courses, students evaluated every presentation and those evaluations constituted between 3 and 5 percent of their course grade—an amount the authors describe as “just enough to make the students take this assignment seriously.” (p. 806) The quality of the feedback students provide is improved when they use criteria (in this case the same one the teachers used) to assess the presentations. Without much experience critiquing presentations and with no specific guidelines, they are likely to offer feedback that is generic and not particularly helpful, such as “Good presentation.”

These authors had students in each of the 10 classes evaluate the peer evaluation assignment, and that feedback indicates the merit of having students do the evaluations. Seventy-three percent of the students agreed or strongly agreed that completing the evaluations made them pay more attention to the presentations. Almost 60 percent said doing the evaluations gave them a different perspective. “Students indicated they gained a different insight into the process, rather than just sitting through presentations without having any objective or direction as an audience member.” (p. 806) Another sizable majority, almost 74 percent, agreed or strongly agreed that completing the evaluations clarified expectations for the presentation assignment.

Students were equally clear that they did not want the evaluations of their peers to have any role in determining their grade for the presentation. This response is interesting in light of the fact that an analysis of a subset of the data revealed a high correlation between instructor and student grades (r = .740). Instructor grades were slightly higher than student-assigned grades. Even though small, this difference was statistically significant. And even though students didn’t want the assessment of their peers to count, over 80 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the feedback of peers would be helpful in improving subsequent presentations.

It is appropriate for teachers to consider the learning potential of presentations, not just for the presenter, but for the audience. Peer evaluations can be used to increase the level of attention paid to those presentations and the learning that might result from listening. They can also develop critiquing skills. Rather than incorporating peer critiques into the grade of the presenter, maybe part or all of the critique grade could be determined by the presenter, who rates the quality of the feedback provided. As these authors note, sometimes the logistics of peer evaluations discourage faculty from using them—multiple evaluations to collect, record, sort, and return. What about an online system of peer reviews? Or assign a certain number of peer reviewers to each presentation. That ensures that at least a portion of the audience are attending, and with fewer evaluations to prepare, students could be expected to provide more detailed feedback. Or how about some bonus points to the students whose presentations are rated highest by their colleagues? The details associated with using peer evaluations can be handled in a variety of interesting and useful ways.

Reference: Baranowski, M., and Weir, K. (2011). Peer evaluation in the political science classroom. PS, Political Science and Politics, 44 (4), 805-811.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor , 26.1 (2012): 5.

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Digital Matters

An Emory blog about teaching with technology

Student Presentations in Remote Learning Environments

Synchronous (Live)

Technical details, general zoom live presentation tips.

• Keep student presentations short, about 10 minutes each, plus a few minutes for questions. This allows for setup time and questions and helps keep the attention of students watching (attention spans for remote meetings are typically lower than in-person ).
• To make up for shorter presentation times, you can add a complimentary activity to the assignment, such as a reflection essay or annotated bibliography, if desired.
• Try to replicate a live in-person class as much as possible. Have all students with webcam access turn on their cameras to help them stay accountable for being present. Have anyone not presenting mute their mic.
• Set up a practice session using Zoom breakout rooms. For example, split a class of 30 students into 5 breakout groups of four students each. Students can refine their work and give feedback on the others’ presentations.
• Students can also set up their own Zoom room to practice—make sure they know they have access to do so.
• Create a rubric so that students know what is expected. With online classes, it’s especially important to have clear communication about grading, and rubrics can help clear up any ambiguity. There are several examples like this one that can be found online.
• Be willing to host a Q&A session about the assignment for any further questions (this can reduce the number of last-minute questions).
• Share the Emory-themed Zoom backgrounds with students to use during their presentation, or encourage them to find a background image that suits their presentation. See this page for how to set Zoom backgrounds.

Asynchronous (Recorded)

Canvas studio.

• Submit a Studio file upload assignment  
• Submit a Studio text entry assignment
• Upload a Studio file in the Canvas Student app on iOS
• Upload a Studio file in the Canvas Student app on Android

Setting Up a Flipgrid:

• Follow the steps on Flipgrid’s Getting Started page for educators .
• Create a Flipgrid for each individual class that would normally meet in the same place (per FERPA regulations). Within the Flipgrid, you can add multiple discussion topics/assignments.
• Add co-instructors and TAs as “CoPilots” so they can help facilitate the grid.
• When creating your Flipgrid, choose the “Student Email” type. This will only allow access using their @emory.edu email address and prevent users outside Emory from accessing it.
• Turn on Video Moderation in the Topic settings to prevent students from seeing each others’ videos until you have reviewed them.
• Each grid has a unique link or code you can use to share the grid in Canvas or email.
• Students can also access the grid on their mobile devices via the free Flipgrid apps for iOS and Android.

General Recorded Presentation Tips

• Conduct a graded peer review round for students to practice their presentation and reply to each others’ videos with feedback.
• Create an ungraded or graded activity that allows students to practice using Studio or Flipgrid before starting the main assignment.
• Set a presentation time limit of 10 minutes. If you want to add more to the assignment, include a complimentary activity such as peer review, a reflection essay, or an annotated bibliography related to the presentation.
• As with live presentations, create a rubric for the assignment and host a Q&A session to clear up any ambiguity.

Photo by  Matthias Wagner  on  Unsplash

Center for Teaching

Making better powerpoint presentations.

Print Version

Baddeley and Hitch’s model of working memory.

Research about student preferences for powerpoint, resources for making better powerpoint presentations, bibliography.

We have all experienced the pain of a bad PowerPoint presentation. And even though we promise ourselves never to make the same mistakes, we can still fall prey to common design pitfalls.  The good news is that your PowerPoint presentation doesn’t have to be ordinary. By keeping in mind a few guidelines, your classroom presentations can stand above the crowd!

“It is easy to dismiss design – to relegate it to mere ornament, the prettifying of places and objects to disguise their banality. But that is a serious misunderstanding of what design is and why it matters.” Daniel Pink

One framework that can be useful when making design decisions about your PowerPoint slide design is Baddeley and Hitch’s model of working memory .

As illustrated in the diagram above, the Central Executive coordinates the work of three systems by organizing the information we hear, see, and store into working memory.

The Phonological Loop deals with any auditory information. Students in a classroom are potentially listening to a variety of things: the instructor, questions from their peers, sound effects or audio from the PowerPoint presentation, and their own “inner voice.”

The Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad deals with information we see. This involves such aspects as form, color, size, space between objects, and their movement. For students this would include: the size and color of fonts, the relationship between images and text on the screen, the motion path of text animation and slide transitions, as well as any hand gestures, facial expressions, or classroom demonstrations made by the instructor.

The Episodic Buffer integrates the information across these sensory domains and communicates with long-term memory. All of these elements are being deposited into a holding tank called the “episodic buffer.” This buffer has a limited capacity and can become “overloaded” thereby, setting limits on how much information students can take in at once.

Laura Edelman and Kathleen Harring from Muhlenberg College , Allentown, Pennsylvania have developed an approach to PowerPoint design using Baddeley and Hitch’s model. During the course of their work, they conducted a survey of students at the college asking what they liked and didn’t like about their professor’s PowerPoint presentations. They discovered the following:

Characteristics students don’t like about professors’ PowerPoint slides

• Too many words on a slide
• Movement (slide transitions or word animations)
• Templates with too many colors

Characteristics students like like about professors’ PowerPoint slides

• Graphs increase understanding of content
• Bulleted lists help them organize ideas
• PowerPoint can help to structure lectures
• Verbal explanations of pictures/graphs help more than written clarifications

According to Edelman and Harring, some conclusions from the research at Muhlenberg are that students learn more when:

• material is presented in short phrases rather than full paragraphs.
• the professor talks about the information on the slide rather than having students read it on their own.
• relevant pictures are used. Irrelevant pictures decrease learning compared to PowerPoint slides with no picture
• they take notes (if the professor is not talking). But if the professor is lecturing, note-taking and listening decreased learning.
• they are given the PowerPoint slides before the class.

Advice from Edelman and Harring on leveraging the working memory with PowerPoint:

• Leverage the working memory by dividing the information between the visual and auditory modality.  Doing this reduces the likelihood of one system becoming overloaded. For instance, spoken words with pictures are better than pictures with text, as integrating an image and narration takes less cognitive effort than integrating an image and text.
• Minimize the opportunity for distraction by removing any irrelevant material such as music, sound effects, animations, and background images.
• Use simple cues to direct learners to important points or content. Using text size, bolding, italics, or placing content in a highlighted or shaded text box is all that is required to convey the significance of key ideas in your presentation.
• Don’t put every word you intend to speak on your PowerPoint slide. Instead, keep information displayed in short chunks that are easily read and comprehended.
• One of the mostly widely accessed websites about PowerPoint design is Garr Reynolds’ blog, Presentation Zen . In his blog entry:  “ What is Good PowerPoint Design? ” Reynolds explains how to keep the slide design simple, yet not simplistic, and includes a few slide examples that he has ‘made-over’ to demonstrate how to improve its readability and effectiveness. He also includes sample slides from his own presentation about PowerPoint slide design.
• Another presentation guru, David Paradi, author of “ The Visual Slide Revolution: Transforming Overloaded Text Slides into Persuasive Presentations ” maintains a video podcast series called “ Think Outside the Slide ” where he also demonstrates PowerPoint slide makeovers. Examples on this site are typically from the corporate perspective, but the process by which content decisions are made is still relevant for higher education. Paradi has also developed a five step method, called KWICK , that can be used as a simple guide when designing PowerPoint presentations.
• In the video clip below, Comedian Don McMillan talks about some of the common misuses of PowerPoint in his routine called “Life After Death by PowerPoint.”

• This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education highlights a blog moderated by Microsoft’s Doug Thomas that compiles practical PowerPoint advice gathered from presentation masters like Seth Godin , Guy Kawasaki , and Garr Reynolds .

Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story , by Jerry Weissman, Prentice Hall, 2006

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery , by Garr Reynolds, New Riders Press, 2008

Solving the PowerPoint Predicament: using digital media for effective communication , by Tom Bunzel , Que, 2006

The Cognitive Style of Power Point , by Edward R. Tufte, Graphics Pr, 2003

The Visual Slide Revolution: Transforming Overloaded Text Slides into Persuasive Presentations , by Dave Paradi, Communications Skills Press, 2000

Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck: And How You Can Make Them Better , by Rick Altman, Harvest Books, 2007

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Preparing Effective Presentations

The purpose of a presentation is to communicate the  main ideas from your research.

Effective presentations make learning more likely. They also enhance the perception of the presenter in the eyes of the professional community. Boring, ineffective, or overly long presentations are quickly forgotten.

When you have prepared your presentation, practice it as many times as possible, and practice at least once in front of friends or family. Practicing will make you comfortable with your material so you don’t have to consult your notes as much, and you will know exactly how long each part takes. It will also help you refine your content so that you emphasize the most important points.

Academic presentations at conferences are typically limited to 10-15 minutes with 5 minutes allowed for questions, but this changes from conference to conference so you should make sure to check. Presentations at the Celebration of Undergraduate Research, for example, are 10 minutes long with 3 minutes for questions.

You will need to carefully budget your time and practice to ensure that you can complete your presentation within the time allotted. Practicing your presentation with a timer will help make sure you can consistently stick to the allotted time.

On average, you should plan on spending 1-2 minutes per slide. Changing slides frequently will help you avoid spending too long on any one part of your presentation and will keep your listeners engaged.

Usually a presentation is like a very short version of a research paper. It should include:

• Who you are and who else helped with the project (co-researchers, funding sources, advisors).
• What problem or issue you studied and why it matters.
• The most important things you found out. Briefly include how you got your results but don’t go into too much detail. This is often where people include too much detail that is only of interest to those working on a similar project, so keep it to 1-2 sentences.

Poor delivery can ruin an otherwise well planned presentation. Practicing in front of a mirror or recording yourself with your phone or computer camera can help you catch problems before you present publicly.

Good presenters:

• Stand up straight and remember not to fold their arms across their chests.
• Speak slowly, clearly, and loudly.
• Make eye contact with the audience or even interact with those present.
• Use simple words and short sentences to make their presentations easy to follow.
• Use stories or examples when possible.
• Avoid jargon or unnecessary vocabulary that only those in the field understand.
• Make and use notes, but don’t read directly from them word for word. Good speakers do not just read their slides out loud!
• Don’t apologize for images, text, or content of the presentation. The audience knows all research is ongoing so there is no need to apologize for there being further steps or more research to do. Apologizing for bad or incorrect content on the slides, on the other hand, suggests that the speaker has not prepared.

Most presenters accompany their presentation with a handout or powerpoint. These allow you to include more details and to provide visuals or data that support your research. However, often presenters try to include too much. A good powerpoint or handout should not substitute for the presentation, so it should not repeat information that you say aloud and you should not read directly from it.

To make a good PowerPoint:

• Use large fonts so people sitting at the back of a room can read it. 20-point font, in a simple style like Arial or another sans-serif type, is a good choice. If you can’t read it from 10 feet away when it’s on your laptop, there’s a good chance someone sitting at the back of a conference room can’t either.
• Limit the text to 8 lines per slide; try to use images or diagrams wherever possible in place of text.
• Keep graphs, charts and tables simple and legible – highlight the most relevant data using colors or cut the rest out. Avoid equations! They are usually not necessary to understand the results and you won’t have time to explain them.
• Use contrasting colors: either light-colored text on a dark background or the reverse. Even if the colors contrast a lot, using two similarly saturated colors will strain people’s eyes.
• Avoid including content on the edges of the slide. Many screens cut off the top, bottom, or one edge of a slide because the projector is not angled perfectly.
• Keep it simple. You know your material, but it is all new to your listeners. Avoid decorations and cute effects that distract from your key points.
• If you need to discuss the same slide at two different points, put a copy of the slide in at both points in the talk. Do not try to skip around in your slides. This is confusing to you and to your audience.
• Preview your slides carefully on the biggest screen you have access to. Some things will jump out at you on a large screen that you never noticed sitting in front of your laptop. It’s a good idea to have a friend look at it too.

College Presentation Masterclass: 8 Tips To Become a Star in 2024

Lindsie Nguyen • 07 April, 2024 • 10 min read

Making a presentation, especially a college presentation in front of hundreds of spectators for the first time, without thorough preparation can be a nightmare.

Do you want to assert your presence yet be too afraid to raise your voice in public? Tired of a conventional monologue presentation but have a few ideas of how to make a change and rock the room?

Whether running a classroom presentation, a big hall speech or an online webinar , get what you need here. Check these eight actionable tips on preparing and hosting your first college presentation as a student .

Table of Contents

• Know the Content
• Just Keywords and Images
• Wear a Confident Outfit
• Check Up and Back Up
• Let your Personality Shine
• Be Interactive
• Be Ready to Improvise
• End with a Bang

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• Types of presentation
• Visual Presentation Examples
• Business presentation
• Top 180 Fun General Knowledge Quiz Questions to try

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Offstage Tips for College Presentations

The best college presentations start with the best preparation. Making , learning , checking and testing your presentation are all vital to ensuring it runs as smoothly as possible.

Tip #1 : Know the Content

Whether or not you’re the researcher of the information, you’re definitely the one conveying them to the audience. This means, first and foremost, you should put a lot of effort into deeply and extensively learning the content of the presentation .

The audience can tell if you haven’t made reasonable preparation for the session, and don’t forget, you may later get asked tons of questions from other students and professors. To prevent embarrassment in both cases, gaining a thorough knowledge of the topic is an obvious, but a hugely valuable asset to your performance.

This is something that really just comes with a lot of practice . Practice with the words written down to start with, then see if you can transition to reciting them from memory. Try in controlled and uncontrolled settings to see if you can control your nerves and remember the content in a pressured environment.

Tip #2 : Just Keywords and Images

As an audience member, you wouldn’t want to be flooded with hundreds of words of text with no clearly stated point and no visualized information. The most powerful presentations, according to the 10-20-30 rule (as well as anyone who’s been to a decent presentation), are the ones from which the audience can extract the biggest learnings from the most straightforward slides.

Try to deliver your information within 3 or 4 bullet points per slide . Also, don’t shy away from using as many topic-related images as possible. If you’re confident in your speaking ability, you could even try using just images on your slides, and to save all your points for the speech itself.

A helpful tool to create these simple and easy-to-follow slides is AhaSlides , which is available for free!

🎉 Check out: 21+ Icebreaker Games for Better Team Meeting Engagement | Updated in 2024

Tip #3 : Wear a Confident Outfit

A trick to boost your sense of security and confidence is to get yourself a neat and tidy outfit which suits the occasion. Creased clothes mostly drag you into an embarrassing situation by shifting the attention of the audience away from your speech. A shirt and a pair of pants or knee-long skirt instead of something too fancy would be a rational choice for your first presentation at college.

Tip #4 : Check Up and Back Up

There was a time when it took me 10 minutes to fix an incompatible HDMI hook-up during my 20-minute presentation. Needless to say, I was hugely frustrated and couldn’t deliver my speech properly. Last-minute IT troubles like these can certainly happen, but you can minimise the risk with proper preparation.

Before you launch into your presentation, spend a good amount of time double-checking your presentation software, computer and projector or virtual conferencing platform. With them checked, you should always have backup options for each so it’s extremely unlikely you’ll be caught out.

Remember, it’s not just about being and looking professional; having everything under control from the start of your college presentation is a huge boost to your confidence, and ultimately your performance.

Onstage Tips for College Presentations

There’s only so much you can do in terms of preparation. When it comes to the big crunch , it pays to know what to do when all eyes are on you.

Tip #5 : Let your Personality Shine

Most people either worry that they’re over the top with their energy, or that they’re not interesting enough during the speech.

I’m sure you’ve already checked out a few TED videos to learn how to start your first college presentation from professionals, but the key here is this: don’t try to impersonate others on stage.

If you do, it’s more visible to the audience than you think, and it reeks of someone trying far too hard. This is easier said than done, of course, but try to be yourself on stage as much as possible. Practice in front of friends and family to see which elements of a speech you’re naturally the best at.

If you struggle with eye contact but excel in using your hands to illustrate points, then focus on the latter. Don’t pressure yourself to be fluid in every department; just isolate the ones in which you’re comfortable and make them the star of your show.

💡 Want to know more about body language ? Check out the dos and don’ts of presentation body language .

Tip #6 : Be Interactive

No matter how engaging you find your content to be, the strength of your presentation is often judged by the reaction of the audience. You may have memorised every word and have practised dozens of times in a controlled setting, but when you’re on that stage in front of your schoolmates for the first time, you may find your monologue presentation to be more of a snoozefest than you thought.

Let your audience have a say. You can make a presentation far more engaging by putting in slides to which the audience is asked to contribute. A poll , a word cloud , a brainstorm , a spinner wheel , a fun quiz , random team generator ; all of them are tools in the arsenal of a fantastic, attention-grabbing, dialogue-creating presentation.

Nowadays, there’s interactive presentation software that is proving a huge step up from traditional PowerPoints . With AhaSlides you can use slides that encourage your audience to respond to your questions using their phones.

Tip #7 : Be Ready to Improvise

Lady Luck doesn’t care how much time you spend rehearsing your first college presentation. If the audience starts getting bored and you haven’t got any interactive slides up your sleeves, then you might find it’s necessary to improvise.

Whether this is a joke, an activity, or a segue into another section – it’s really your choice. And although it’s great to improvise when need be, it’s even better to have these little ‘get out of jail free’ cards ready for if you feel you need them in your speech.

Here’s a great example of a presentation about improvisation that also uses improvisation.

Tip #8 : End with a Bang

There are two key moments that your audience will remember more than any other in your first college presentation: the way you start and the way you end .

We’ve got a whole article on how to start your presentation , but what’s the best way to end it? All presenters would love to finish in a flurry of energy and rapturous applause, so it’s natural that it’s often the part we struggle with the most.

Your conclusion is the time to bring all of the points you’ve made under one roof. Find the commonality between them all and emphasise that to drive your point home.

After the standing ovation, it’s always a good idea to have a live Q&A session to clear up any misunderstandings. Presentation legend Guy Kawasaki claims that in a 1-hour presentation, 20 minutes should be the presentation and 40 minutes should be the time for the appropriate Q&A tool .

🎊 Check out: 12 Free Survey Tools in 2024 | AhaSlides Reveals

Lindsie Nguyen

Public Speaking Trainer. ESL Teacher. Quiz Nut.

Tips to Engage with Polls & Trivia

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

Partner Center

14 Practical Tips to Improve Your Presentation Skills

• The Speaker Lab
• May 11, 2024

Table of Contents

Ever felt complete dread and fear at the thought of stepping up to deliver a presentation? If so, you’re not alone. The fear of public speaking is more common than you might think, but with the right presentation skills , it’s a hurdle that can be overcome.

In this article, we’ll help you master basic confidence-building techniques and conquer advanced communication strategies for engaging presentations. We’ll explore how body language and eye contact can make or break your connection with your audience; delve into preparation techniques like dealing with filler words and nervous habits; discuss tailoring content for different audiences; and much more.

Whether you’re prepping for job interviews or gearing up for big presentations, being prepared is key. With adequate practice and the proper attitude, you can crush your speech or presentation!

Mastering the Basics of Presentation Skills

Presentation skills are not just about speaking in front of a crowd. It’s also about effective communication, audience engagement, and clarity. Mastering these skills can be transformative for everyone, from students to corporate trainers.

Building Confidence in Presentations

Becoming confident when presenting is no small feat. But fear not. Even those who feel jittery at the mere thought of public speaking can become masters with practice and patience. Just remember: stage fright is common and overcoming it is part of the process towards becoming an effective presenter.

Taking deep breaths before you start helps calm nerves while visualizing success aids in building confidence. Also, know that nobody minds if you take a moment to gather your thoughts during your presentation—everybody minds more if they cannot understand what you’re saying because you’re rushing.

The Role of Practice in Enhancing Presentation Skills

In line with old wisdom, practice indeed makes perfect, especially when improving presentation skills. Consistent rehearsals allow us to fine-tune our delivery methods like maintaining eye contact or controlling body language effectively.

You’ll learn better control over filler words through repeated drills. Plus, the extra practice can help you troubleshoot any technical glitches beforehand, saving you the sudden panic during your actual presentations.

Remember that great presenters were once beginners too. Continuous effort will get you there sooner rather than later.

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Body Language and Eye Contact in Presentations

The effectiveness of your presentation can hinge on more than just the words you say. Just as important is your body language .

Impact of Posture on Presentations

Your posture speaks volumes before you utter a word. Standing tall exudes confidence while slouching could signal nervousness or lack of preparation.

If there’s one lesson to take away from our YouTube channel , it’s this: good presenters know their message but great ones feel it through every fiber (or muscle) of their being. The audience can sense that energy when they see open body language rather than crossed arms.

Maintaining Eye Contact During Your Presentation

Eyes are often called windows to the soul for a reason. They’re communication powerhouses. Making eye contact helps build trust with your audience members and keeps them engaged throughout your speech.

Avoid staring at note cards or visual aids too much as this might give an impression that you’re unprepared or uncertain about your chosen topic. Instead, aim to maintain eye contact between 50% of the time during presentations. This commonly accepted “50/70 rule” will help you exhibit adequate confidence to your audience.

If stage fright has gotten a hold on you, take deep breaths before you start speaking in order to stay calm. Make sure that fear doesn’t disrupt your ability to maintain eye-contact during presentations.

If body language and eye contact still feel like a lot to manage during your big presentation, remember our golden rule: nobody minds small mistakes. It’s how you handle questions or mishaps that truly makes a difference—so stay positive and enthusiastic.

Preparation Techniques for Successful Presentations

Presentation skills are like a craft that requires meticulous preparation and practice. Aspects like visual aids and time management contribute to the overall effectiveness of your delivery.

The first step towards delivering an impactful presentation is research and organization. The content should be well-researched, structured logically, and presented in simple language. This will make sure you deliver clear messages without any room for misinterpretation.

Dealing with Filler Words and Nervous Habits

Nervous habits such as excessive use of filler words can distract from your message. Luckily, there are plenty of strategies that can address these issues. For instance, try taking deep breaths before speaking or using note cards until fluency is achieved. In addition, practice regularly to work on eliminating these verbal stumbling blocks.

Avoiding Distractions During Presentations

In a digital age where distractions abound, maintaining focus during presentations has become an even more crucial part of the preparation process. This video by motivational speaker Brain Tracy provides insights on how one could achieve this level of focus required for effective presentations.

Maintaining Confidence Throughout Your Presentation

Confidence comes from thorough understanding of the chosen topic combined with regular practice sessions before the big day arrives. Make use of note cards or cue cards as needed but avoid reading from them verbatim.

Taking control over stage fright starts by arriving early at the venue so that you familiarize yourself with the surroundings, which generally calms nerves down considerably. So next time you feel nervous before a big presentation, remember—thorough preparation can make all the difference.

Engaging Your Audience During Presentations

Connecting with your audience during presentations is an art, and mastering it can take your presentation skills to the next level. Making the message conveyed reach an emotional level is essential, not just conveying facts.

Understanding Your Target Audience

The first step towards engaging your audience is understanding them. Tailor the content of your presentation to their needs and interests. Speak in their language—whether that be professional jargon or everyday slang—to establish rapport and ensure comprehension.

An effective presenter understands who they’re speaking to, what those individuals care about, and how best to communicate complex ideas understandably.

Making Complex Information Understandable

Dense data or complicated concepts can lose even the most interested listener if presented ineffectively. Breaking your key points down into manageable chunks helps maintain attention while promoting retention. Analogies are especially useful for this purpose as they make unfamiliar topics more relatable.

Audience Participation & Questions: A Two-Way Street

Incorporating opportunities for audience participation encourages engagement at another level. It allows listeners to become active participants rather than passive receivers of knowledge.

Consider techniques like live polls or interactive Q&A sessions where you invite questions from attendees mid-presentation instead of saving all queries until the end.

This gives you a chance not only engage but also address any misunderstandings right on spot.

• Treat each question asked as an opportunity—it’s evidence someone has been paying attention. Even challenging questions should be welcomed as they demonstrate an engaged, thoughtful audience.
• Encourage participation. It can be as simple as a show of hands or the use of interactive technologies for live polling during your presentation. This keeps your audience active and invested in the content.

Remember, your presentation isn’t just about putting on a show—it’s about meaningful interaction.

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Presentation Skills in Specific Contexts

Whether you’re nailing your next job interview, presenting an exciting marketing campaign, or delivering insightful educational content, the context matters. Let’s take a look.

The Art of Job Interviews

A successful job interview often hinges on effective communication and confidence. Here, the target audience is usually small but holds significant influence over your future prospects. Body language plays a crucial role; maintain eye contact to show sincerity and interest while open body language communicates approachability.

Bullet points summarizing key experiences are also helpful for quick recall under pressure. This allows you to present your chosen topic with clarity and positive enthusiasm without relying heavily on note or cue cards.

Pitching in Public Relations & Marketing

In public relations (PR) and marketing contexts, presentations need to capture attention quickly yet hold it long enough to deliver key messages effectively. Visual aids are valuable tools here—they help emphasize points while keeping the audience engaged.

Your aim should be highlighting presentation benefits that resonate with potential clients or partners, making them feel as though ignoring such opportunities would mean missing out big time.

Educational Presentations

An educational setting demands its own unique set of presentation skills where deep understanding trumps flashy visuals. You must make complex information understandable without oversimplifying essential details—the use of analogies can be beneficial here.

Keeping the audience’s attention is critical. Encourage questions and participation to foster a more interactive environment, enhancing learning outcomes for all audience members.

Tips for Becoming a Great Presenter

No single method is suitable for everyone when it comes to speaking in public. However, incorporating continuous improvement and practice into your routine can make you an exceptional presenter.

Tailor Your Presentation to Your Audience

Becoming an excellent speaker isn’t just about delivering information; it’s also about making a connection with the audience. So make sure that you’re taking setting, audience, and topic into consideration when crafting your presentation. What works for one audience may not work for another, so be sure to adapt your presentation styles according to the occasion in order to be truly effective.

The Power of Practice

The art of mastering public speaking skills requires practice —and lots of it . To become a great presenter, focus on improving communication skills through practice and feedback from peers or mentors. Try to seek feedback on every speech delivered and incorporate those pointers in your future presentations. Over time, this cycle of delivery-feedback-improvement significantly enhances your ability to connect with audiences and convey ideas effectively.

If you’re looking for examples of good speakers, our speech breakdowns on YouTube provide excellent examples of experienced presenters who masterfully utilize speaking techniques. Analyzing their strategies could give you great ideas for enhancing your own style.

Finding Your Style

A crucial part of captivating any audience lies in how you deliver the message rather than the message itself. Developing a unique presentation style lets you stand out as an engaging speaker who commands attention throughout their talk. Through — you guessed it — practice, you can develop a personal presentation style that resonates with listeners while showcasing your expertise on the chosen topic.

Your body language plays a pivotal role here: open gestures communicate confidence and enthusiasm towards your subject matter, two qualities essential for keeping audiences hooked. Similarly, using vocal variety adds dynamism to speeches by emphasizing points when needed or creating suspense during storytelling parts of your talk.

Cultivating Passion & Enthusiasm

Showcasing genuine passion for the subject helps keep listeners engaged throughout even lengthy presentations. Sharing stories related to the topic or expressing excitement about sharing knowledge tends to draw people in more than mere data recitation ever could.

Recognize that everybody is distinctive; don’t expect identical results from every speaker. The path to becoming a great presenter involves recognizing your strengths and working tirelessly on areas that need improvement.

FAQs on Presentation Skills

What are good presentation skills.

Good presentation skills include a clear message, confident delivery, engaging body language, audience understanding, and interaction. They also involve effective preparation and practice.

What are the 5 steps of presentation skills?

The five steps of presenting include: planning your content, preparing visual aids if needed, practicing the delivery aloud, performing it with confidence, and finally post-presentation reflection for improvements.

What are the 5 P’s of presentation skills?

The five P’s stand for Preparation (researching your topic), Practice (rehearsing your talk), Performance (delivering with confidence), Posture (standing tall), and Projection (using a strong voice).

What are your presentation skills?

Your personal set of abilities to deliver information effectively is what we call your presentation skill. It can encompass public speaking ability, clarity in speech or writing as well as visual communication talent.

Mastering presentation skills isn’t an overnight process, but practice and perseverance will put you well on your way to becoming an effective speaker.

You’ve learned that confidence plays a crucial role in effective presentations, so take deep breaths, make eye contact, and keep your body language open. As always, preparation is key. Tackle filler words head-on and get comfortable with visual aids for impactful storytelling.

Remember the importance of audience engagement — it’s all about understanding their needs and tailoring your content accordingly. This way, complex information turns into digestible insights.

Above all else: practice! After all, nothing beats experience when it comes to improving public speaking abilities.

• Last Updated: May 9, 2024

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The Types of Colleges: The Basics

Find the right college for you., sorting out colleges by their types.

Is a college the same thing as a university? What does "liberal arts" mean? Why are some colleges called public and others private? Knowing the basics in regard to different types of colleges is imperative to making the right decision.

Public and Private Colleges

Public colleges are funded by local and state governments and usually offer lower tuition rates than private colleges, especially for students who are residents of the state where a college is located.

Private colleges rely on tuition, fees, and non-government funding sources. Generous financial aid packages for students are often available thanks to private donations.

For-Profit Colleges

For-profit institutions are businesses that typically offer career training. Although these colleges offer a variety of degree programs, it's wise to exercise caution when applying to a for-profit school. The degree programs often come at a higher cost, meaning students graduate with more debt. Credits earned may not transfer to other colleges so be sure to check with the admissions office at each institution.

Four-year and two-year colleges

Four-year institutions are referred to as undergraduate colleges. Four-year colleges specifically offer bachelor's degree programs. These include universities and liberal arts colleges.

Two-year colleges offer certificate programs that can be completed in under two years. They also offer two-year associate degrees. These include community colleges, vocational-technical colleges, and career colleges.

Liberal Arts Colleges

These institutions offer numerous courses in liberal arts in areas such as literature, history, languages, mathematics, and life sciences. Most of these institutions are private and offer four-year bachelor's degree programs. These colleges prepare students for a multiplicity of careers as well as graduate studies

Universities

Universities are larger institutions that offer a wider variety of academic majors and degree options. These schools provide bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. Most universities contain several smaller colleges, such as colleges of education, engineering, or health sciences. These colleges can prepare you for a wide range of careers or for graduate study.

Community Colleges

Community colleges offer two-year associate degrees that prepare undergraduates for four-year institutions offering bachelor programs. They also provide career-specific associate degrees and certificates. Community colleges are an affordable option because of their low tuition costs. 

What is the difference between a college and a university?

A college is a smaller school that may offer a wide variety of educational programs or more focused specializations for those seeking undergraduate degrees. Standing alone or as part of a larger institution, a college is often a private institution with a lower student population and smaller class sizes. On the other hand, a university is a larger school offering both undergraduate and graduate-level degrees. Because they’re a component of a university's doctoral programs, such institutions also serve as research facilities for educational advancement.

Vocational-Technical and Career Colleges

Vocational-technical and career colleges offer specialized training in a particular industry or career. Areas of study include the culinary arts, firefighting, dental hygiene, and medical-records technology. These colleges usually offer students certificates or associate degree programs.

Colleges with a Special Focus

Some colleges focus on a specific interest or student population. These include:

• Arts colleges
• Single-sex colleges
• Religiously affiliated colleges
• Specialized mission colleges

Arts Colleges

Conservatories and colleges of this variety focus on the arts. In addition to regular coursework, these institutions provide training in areas such as photography, music, theater, sculpture, drawing, or fashion design. Most of these schools offer associate or bachelor's degrees in the fine arts or a specialized field.

Single-Sex Colleges

Some private colleges are specifically for men or women.

Religiously Affiliated Colleges

Some private, higher-education institutions are connected to a religious faith. Such connections may simply be historic in nature. Others incorporate religious study into day-to-day student life.

Specially Designated Colleges

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) focus on educating African American students. Colleges and universities are designated Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) when at least 25% of the full-time undergraduate students are Hispanic. HBCUs and HSIs may offer programs, services, and activities targeted to the underrepresented students they serve.

What is better, a university or a college?

Those who prefer a more intimate experience with a greater connection to faculty may prefer a college. However, a university may be better for those looking for a broader range of programs and more learning facilities. The ultimate answer will depend on your personal preferences and the school in question. Both colleges and universities can provide a rewarding educational experience.

What to Do Now That You Know About the Different Types of Colleges

Now that you’re familiar with the types of institutions available, you should decide which one will suit your future goals. It’s often helpful to create a vision board of what you plan to achieve before deciding how you plan to achieve it. Take some time to think about your trajectory while keeping the knowledge of these various types of schools in mind. If you need direction after you assess your needs, you may find it helpful to talk to your school's guidance office, a college recruiter, or a college alum to work through any other questions you might have.

Embarking on a journey through higher education can be both exciting and challenging. Using the information presented here should help you sift through your options so the decisions you make today will serve you better in the future. For more help finding the right colleges for you, check out College Search .

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Should We Force Shy Kids to Do Class Presentations?

Here’s what experts say..

Taylor Lorenz’s recent piece in the Atlantic about kids who want to abolish the in-class presentation has predictably triggered the kind of older people who think children today are far too pampered and indulged. But do these young critics of public presentations have a point? And—to pose a broader question about our requirements of the younger generation—should parents and educators force kids who are shy to do the social things that scare them? Lorenz asked kids and teachers their opinions. I wanted to see what psychologists thought.

There is a big difference between experiencing a garden-variety fear of public speaking, which is extremely common, and having social anxiety disorder. Young people with the latter, psychologist Jonathan Dalton told me, have extended physical responses to public speaking; it’s not the same as just being a little scared beforehand and coming through OK. “One of the things about social anxiety disorder that’s most pernicious is that nonsufferers have the illusion they understand it,” Dalton said. “They can say, ‘Oh, I understand this problem. I used to have a hard time giving a talk when I was in high school.’ That’s like saying ‘I have major depression’ and the teacher saying, ‘Oh, I used to be sad in high school too.’ ”

For people with anxiety disorders who have a fear of public speaking, Dalton said, the difference is physical. “The average person who’s giving a public presentation, their blood pressure and all those measurements of body activation will be elevated for about eight minutes when you begin a presentation,” Dalton said. “With someone with social anxiety disorder, it can be elevated for about 90 minutes.” The situation feels grave to the person suffering through it; Dalton said he once had a patient threaten suicide at school and end up hospitalized because of a mandated class presentation.

Still, Dalton said he doesn’t believe the answer should be to avoid presentations altogether. He said he counsels parents that avoidance of events that may provoke anxiety will only “make more room for anxiety to grow.” “So much of what we do is parent training,” Dalton, the director of the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change , told me. “The more compassionate the parent is, the more they want to reduce the child’s suffering. And I always tell the parents, ‘I promise you the anxiety will fill whatever space you give it.’ ”

Even setting aside a clinical diagnosis like social anxiety disorder, what we perceive as “shyness” itself may be partly biological—and not actually about shyness and sociability at all, but rather about a person’s reactions to unexpectedness and unfamiliarity. In their book The Long Shadow of Temperament , psychologists Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman wrote based on their findings that we could assess children as early as 4 months of age for a set of responses that would classify them as “inhibited” or “uninhibited.” “Inhibited” children react to unexpected events, like the appearance of a stranger or the popping of a balloon, with expressions of stress that “uninhibited” children don’t.

Kagan, Snidman, and other collaborators have followed children across their childhoods to see how those biologically determined temperaments did and didn’t affect children’s lives. In the end, they write, a naturally inhibited child might end up shy and reserved, or she might not; the temperamental bias “is embedded in a family context that, over time, creates a psychological profile.” The relationship between a child’s biologically determined temperament and the work that nurture does is infinitely complex, which is why this is an interesting research question .

Psychologist Doreen Arcus , studying these questions about temperament, found that inhibited children who lived with parents who practiced “authoritative parenting” in the kids’ first few years ended up what she described in a phone call as “less fearful, less timid, less stressed.” Children judged “inhibited” but whose parents placed strong limits on their behavior and let them protest those limits had experienced strong emotions, come through them, and realized that those emotions would come to a close. Arcus theorized this enabled those children to respond better to unfamiliar situations as they grew older. In explaining this to me, Arcus used the example of a toddler who is getting into the cat food. The parent might deny the child the experience of sticking her fingers in the kibble, by moving the bowl or the child, and endure the child’s protests before moving on to a new activity. Or the parent might distract the child with some other object of desire (Arcus used the Tupperware drawer as an example), so the baby never has the experience of being frustrated. The inhibited child who has been allowed to feel challenged in different situations had a better chance of losing some of his innate fearfulness.

Arcus said authoritative parenting—as opposed to permissive, neglectful, or authoritarian parenting, the less-effective alternatives —is about a mix of sensitivity and strong expectations. The steps she suggested to acclimate shy younger children to an activity they fear are the opposite of “throwing them in the deep end.” “Would your child really like to be swinging on the swings, but it’s just too painful?” she asked. “You can work up to things in small increments.” A parent could tell a child she can walk by the swings today, but she definitely needs to try to swing tomorrow. The next day, the parent could bring the child to the swings, and have her try swinging, but promise that she can leave after five minutes. “Sometimes, four minutes and 59 seconds comes, and the child is OK,” Arcus said. “And you can say, ‘You want to try another five minutes?’ ” Along the way, the parent should praise the victories. Authority, in this framework, looks more like responsive firmness than strict or angry insistence.

This concept of progressive acclimation, which Arcus described in the context of younger children who fear certain social situations, reminded me of the strategies Dalton told me he and his colleagues might pursue with patients with social anxiety disorder who were afraid of in-class presentations. He told me he might have the patient follow a multistep process: first, to read a kids’ book aloud, with an audience only of a psychologist; have the patient do an original presentation in front of a psychologist, with a camera on, and then email the file to the teacher; have the patient and the teacher watch that file together; have the patient do the presentation with a peer in the room; finally, have the patient do the presentation in class. It’s an art, Dalton said. “We don’t just throw the kid to the wolves and say, ‘It’s just anxiety, do this anyway.’ ” For kids without social anxiety disorder who have a more moderate fear of class presentations, teachers could do a modified version of this graduated introduction to the concept—presentations in pairs, then in groups, with conversations along the way about strategies you can use to cope with the fear that public speaking often arouses.

The answers I got from Dalton and Arcus, which confirm that avoidance is not the answer, might seem to reinforce the predictable arguments of people who think these kids need to suck it up. As the epigraph to the new Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt book The Coddling of the American Mind goes: “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” The saying is attributed to “Folk wisdom, origin unknown.” The authors hold this idea up as evident common sense (even as their critics strongly refute its implications). Why let shy kids, such people grumble, claim an exemption for themselves? After all, we all did class presentations, and we survived.

But when it comes to shyness and social anxiety, “the road” has changed before. In the United States in 2018 we reward boldness, curiosity, self-assuredness, and social ease; the parent of a naturally uninhibited child will get a lot of compliments, even if some of that brazen sociability and lack of fear comes from the child’s biology. But it wasn’t always so. “Before Freud,” Kagan writes, “a child who conformed to parental requests, was cautious in dangerous situations, and remained quiet with adult strangers was regarded as having a good character. After Freud, this child was classified as anxious.” Historian Barbara Benedict writes , in a history of early modern inquiry, that children and adults who were very curious about the world were once seen as dangerous and disruptive instead of laudable founts of ingenuity. The Victorians perceived shyness, Joe Moran writes in his delightful cultural history of the trait , “as an unwavering disposition, a force one could never defeat, as fixed and as little one’s fault as a tendency to suffer from gout or piles.”

We older people think of the “road” as common sense, “the world the way it is.” Of course you have to be able to talk to people you’ve never met. Of course you’ll need to do presentations. That’s just the way it is. But as a parent or a teacher, you always make personal judgments about the things children will need to do in order to survive “the road.” In this argument, as in so many intergenerational conflicts, a little adult humility would go a long way. Yes, your child probably should present in class. But you don’t have to be a jerk about it.

More From Forbes

Ea college football 25 full feature revealed, including huge return.

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College Football 25

On Friday, May 17, EA unveiled the trailer and full feature set for EA College Football 25 via press release.

While there's a plethora of features to explore, the one that truly captured the attention of countless fans of the NCAA Football series and me is the return of the 'Team Builder' feature.

We'll get into that in more detail, but here's what we learned from the press release. The game will be released on July 19 and available exclusively on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Here is a look at the trailer, and I’ll be honest. it’s pretty fantastic:

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Ea college football 25 - campus iq.

College Football 25 will introduce Campus IQ. The concept is described as “a suite of features that brings to life the true depth of college football through wide open, fast-paced gameplay across all 134 FBS schools in all areas of the game.”

That broad description leaves us wanting more specifics, but there is enough to keep us excited.

EA College Football 25 Brings Back Dynasty Mode, Road to Glory and Team Builder

College Football 25 will feature the return of Dynasty and Road to Glory. Dynasty mode is the college football version of franchise mode, and it sounds like it has received a decent level of attention.

The Dynasty mode has you create a coach tasked with taking over a program. You’ll have to hire a coaching staff and recruit athletes from high school or through the transfer portal.

The recruiting engine in NCAA Football was amazing, and the way this process works in College Football 25 will be scrutinized.

There are coaching archetypes that are handled via skill trees that sound similar to the staff management options in Madden’s franchise mode. Ultimately, you want to guide your team into the new 12-team CFP.

EA College Football 25

The best new piece of information on Dynasty mode is the return of the Team Builder website, which allows you to create your own football program.

I wanted to see it return, and I didn’t expect EA to oblige. We’ll have to see if it is as layered as before, but seeing the feature return is excellent. I’m hoping for an early look at the site before launch that previews the options available.

Road to Glory is the single-player career mode. It allows users to take control of a single player and guide him through his college career with the hope of winning the Heisman trophy.

You’ll have to manage your player’s GPA, earn your coach’s trust, and attempt to win the Heisman on your journey. You can also put your created player into the transfer portal if you want to change schools.

New Mode: Road to the College Football Playoff

We’ll also see a new mode called Road to the College Football Playoff. Based on the description, it sounds like a cross-platform, ranked, online head-to-head competitive mode. The press release describes it as follows:

“Experience a new way to play competitively across consoles in the Road to the College Football Playoff. Will you represent your university, or take a power school to climb the polls? Earn rank by upsetting the toughest opponents and securing the votes you need to progress and level up divisions. Play your way into the playoffs and battle for the National Championship.”

College Football Ultimate Team

Ultimate Team returns to the college football video game world. NCAA Football had the collector mode before the series was canceled. However, EA has built out the format exponentially over the past decade.

We know the mode will feature current college football stars and legends, and it makes sense to expect various challenges, themed packs, and more in this iteration of the proven collector mode concept.

How Will EA College Football Gameplay and Presentation Differ From Madden?

From a pure gameplay standpoint, College Football 25 will undoubtedly have some similarities to Madden, but there are some obvious reasons to expect some differences. College Football 25 will feature many school-specific offenses and playbooks.

Player ratings will “fluctuate throughout each game,” and EA says teams are tiered. The in-game passing mechanics have been custom-fitted for college football.

One new gameplay concept that excites me is the “Wear & Tear system.”

EA describes it as follows:

“As the hits add up, players wear down with the Wear & Tear System. Manage your players’ health, limit fatigue, assess risk of injury, and avoid on-field mistakes by using strategic substitutions to ensure your players are at their best with it counts the most.”

I hope this functions as described and that if it does, it makes its way into Madden 25. Fatigue and managing injury risk are difficult to master in sports video games, so it will be interesting to see what modes this is present.

Pre-snap recognition is another key feature. It sounds as if it is designed to separate experienced heady players from young, inexperienced guys. I hope this feature or concept makes its way into Madden.

The Homefield Advantage concept sounds like a carryover from Madden’s M-Factors. I love it in franchise mode, and it is a logical fit in College Football 25. You could argue that the effects should be even stronger on collegiate players.

The atmosphere is a massive part of the immersion associated with College Football 25. According to EA, chants, fight songs, and mascots will be used for the top programs.

There will be two commentary teams in the game. Rece Davis, Jesse Palmer, and David Pollack will commentate on most games. However, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit will man the mic for “all marquee matchups.”

Be on the lookout for more detailed information in the coming weeks.

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WELCOME TO COLLEGE FOOTBALL 25

Everything you need to know about the official college football 25 reveal..

Welcome to the Campus Huddle, your home for news on EA SPORTS™ College Football 25 for PlayStation®5 and Xbox Series X|S. Today, we have information on features and modes, straight from our development team. There will be even more in-depth content during the summer, as we prepare for worldwide launch on 7/19!  

However, you have waited long enough, here is the first look at EA SPORTS™ College Football 25.

In EA SPORTS™ College Football 25, you’ll experience explosive gameplay with CampusIQ™ across 134 schools. For the first time ever, athletes like Quinn Ewers, Donovan Edwards, and Travis Hunter are in the game thanks to a groundbreaking NIL deal in collegiate sports. Saturday will never be the same as you immerse yourself in the iconic atmospheres of college football and etch your own college legacy. Let’s dive into all the features, modes, presentation, and more coming when the game releases worldwide on 7/19, starting with gameplay.

Immerse yourself in authentic, fast-paced, college football gameplay with CampusIQ™, a suite of features built to deliver wide open, fast paced and uniquely college football gameplay. Test your strategic decision-making with an all-new composure system, player Wear & Tear, screen-shaking homefield advantages, and dozens of diverse playstyles across 134 FBS teams.

• Wide Open, Fast Paced Gameplay Powered by a wide range of player ratings that fluctuate throughout a game, team tiers, and new in-game passing mechanics, EA SPORTS™ College Football 25 delivers strategic, fast-paced gameplay reflecting the true depth of college football.
• Wear & Tear With the new Wear & Tear system, as the hits add up, players wear down. Manage your players’ health, limit fatigue, assess risk of injury, and avoid on-field mistakes by using strategic substitutions to ensure your players are at their best with it counts the most.
• Pre-Snap Recognition Pre-Snap Recognition makes the decision behind every snap matter more. Do you trust in your high-skill seniors, or take a risk with your untested freshman? Read the game then read your players to make the right decision when it matters most.
• Homefield Advantage Game-altering homefield advantages rattle your rivals in college football's toughest places to play. Test your squad’s road game composure and confidence levels as you play through distractions like screen shaking, missing pre-play icons, and moving play art.

ICONIC ATMOSPHERES

From The Big House to The Swamp. From Tuscaloosa to College Station. Experience the decibel-shaking soundscape of college football putting you inside the stadium, alongside all the iconic rituals and traditions that make you feel right at home.

• Pageantry & Traditions Revel in the storied traditions, sights and sounds that electrify college football stadiums every Saturday. With unique team run-outs, rivalry rituals, synchronized crowd-chants, loudness meters as well as real game-day audio, fight songs and, of course, mascots, it’ll feel like home everywhere you look.
• Commentary & Broadcast Listen to the iconic voices of Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit as they call marquee matchups, while Rece Davis, Jesse Palmer, and David Pollack take the mic for all your other games. Take in the sights and sounds around the stadium between plays with a dynamic picture-in-picture play-call system.

Set a new standard for college football greatness in classic modes like Dynasty and Road To Glory. Recruit a winning roster, develop a coaching staff, and lead your program to the Natty as a created coach, or balance student-athlete life and take home the Heisman as a player.

• Dynasty Create a coach, take control, upgrade their abilities and build a powerhouse college football program. Establish your coaching staff, then work to recruit the best talent either straight from high school or direct from the transfer portal. Take your team to the next level in Online Dynasty, where up to 32 players can compete against each other on and off the field.
• Road To Glory Live the life of a student-athlete with your created player and take home the Heisman as you build an unforgettable college football legacy. Manage your weekly schedule, GPA and your image, earn Coach Trust to get more playing time, or use the transfer portal to get the time and the glory you deserve.
• College Football Ultimate Team Build your dream team of college football stars and legends. Play Solo Challenges or H2H Seasons to upgrade your squad and take on the toughest contests. Test your skills across consoles in more competitive formats like College Football Ultimate Team™ Champs and Champs Gauntlet.
• Road To The College Football Playoff Experience a new way to play competitively across consoles, in the Road to the College Football Playoff. Will you represent your university, or take a power school to climb the polls? Earn rank by upsetting the toughest opponents and securing the votes you need to progress and level up divisions. Stack wins to earn your chance at making the playoffs and take home the National Championship.

TEAM BUILDER    

Create your own college football program with customization tools on the Team Builder website*. Design uniforms, helmets, fields, and upload your own logo. You can then upload your program to use in Play Now and Dynasty. Check out the download center to browse teams created by the entire community. You can learn more about Team Builder later this Summer.

*Team Builder content can be used in offline Play Now and private Dynasty modes. Internet connection & EA account required. Applicable platform account may be required. Age restrictions may apply.

Make sure to check out everything you need to know about pre-order for College Football 25. Stay tuned to the Campus Huddle as we will be back with in-depth deep dives on gameplay and your favorite modes leading up to launch on July 19th!

College Football 25 launches worldwide on July 19th, 2024. Pre-order the Deluxe Edition** or the EA SPORTS™ MVP Bundle† and play 3 days early. Conditions and restrictions apply. See disclaimers for details. Stay in the conversation by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , YouTube , and Answers HQ .

**Conditions & restrictions apply. See ea.com/games/ea-sports-college-football/college-football-25/disclaimers for details.

†Conditions & restrictions apply. See ea.com/games/ea-sports-football-bundle/disclaimers for details.

Pre-order** the MVP Bundle to make game day every day, and get both Madden NFL 25 and College Football 25 with exclusive content.

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Still unsure about college? It's not too late to apply for scholarships or even school.

Even with the May 1 deadline for college decisions come and gone , many students may still be undecided about which school to attend, or they may have given up after a botched FAFSA roll-out and other problems securing financial aid .

But education experts want students and families to know, that it isn’t too late to get scholarships or even apply to a school to attend this fall.

Students have access to 1.7 million private scholarships and fellowships whose total value tops $7.4 billion, according to the independent nonprofit foundation Educationdata.org. Some applications for that funding require essays and academic or athletic achievement. But many don’t. Some take as few as two minutes to complete, with a chance to win as much as $25,000. Scholarships are also gifts and don’t have to be repaid.

“This is important both from an emotional standpoint and a practical, financial standpoint,” said James Lewis, president of the National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS), a private foundation that works as a nonprofit to honor high-achieving students. “With the FAFSA delays and confusion, millions of young people feel helpless ," he said, "But there is one area where they can take control and that’s applying for scholarships.”

FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

Learn more: Best personal loans

Who can apply for scholarships?

“ Scholarships are available on a year-round basis and they’re not just for high school seniors – students of all grades and ages can apply,” Lewis said, noting college or graduate school students can also apply. “There’s literally a scholarship for everyone.”

Merit-based scholarships may require you to meet or exceed certain standards set by the scholarship-giver. Others may be needs-based. Many are geared toward specific groups of people: women; graduate students; where you or your parent work; military families; athletes, minorities; community service; music; and religious organizations.

Where can I find scholarships?

Everywhere.

“We generally start by suggesting students begin at home in their local communities,” Lewis said. “There, many business organizations and corporations provide scholarships. At the local level, there are also scholarships for virtually any extracurricular activity, from sports and dance to theater and STEM clubs.”

The Department of Education and NSHSS also offer suggestions and resources. Specific sites like StudentScholarships.org , Going Merry , Niche , and Scholly by Sallie Mae list scholarships.

Can I get a scholarship in time for school this fall?

Scholarship notifications vary widely, but most take one to three months, Lewis said.

“This should not discourage applicants,” he said. “Those who apply for scholarships will most likely have their awards by the start of the new school year if they win, and they can keep applying for scholarships even when they're in college.”

Some students are even able to pay for all of college by leveraging scholarships. The most famous one? Scholly founder Christopher Gray landed $1.3 million in scholarships and got a deal on Shark Tank for his company.

What if I haven’t even applied or gotten into a school yet?

It’s also not too late!

• National Association for College Admission Counseling lists schools that are still accepting applications.
• Niche allows students to be considered for immediate acceptance at 91 schools across 30 states through its Direct Admissions program through August 1 for the 2024-25 school year.

How does Direct Admissions work?

Students create a free Niche profile and select schools they’re interested in. If the student meets a school’s criteria, that school sends an immediate acceptance that includes a breakdown of the costs of attending and any scholarship money it can offer.

Students can compare offers and accept one without having to complete a separate, full school application or FAFSA to receive the offered scholarship.

Niche has 38 fields to complete, and the student never has to pay an application fee, said Luke Skurman, Niche’s chief executive.

Half of all U.S. college-bound high school seniors create an account on Niche each year, he said. This year, more than 900,000 students have at least one Niche Direct Admissions offer, but the average is more than five offers per student with an average scholarship of $18,500 per year, he said.

Alternative path: Is it possible to avoid student debt? These career, education tracks offer a different path

Bottom line

Higher education may feel especially unattainable this year due to soaring school costs , high interest rates and difficulty getting federal aid , but don’t give up, experts say.

“The main things are to be organized and to stick with it,” Lewis said. “The rewards can be amazing!”

Medora Lee is a money, markets, and personal finance reporter at USA TODAY. You can reach her at [email protected] and subscribe to our free Daily Money newsletter for personal finance tips and business news every Monday through Friday morning.   

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Undergraduates present research at Meeting of the Minds 2024

by E. Forney

Engineering undergraduate students had a wonderful showing at Meeting of the Minds, displaying posters, giving presentations, and demonstrating projects they have worked on this past academic year.

• Learn more about Meeting of the Minds

For one day at the end of each spring semester, the Cohon University Center becomes a hub of academic posters, presentations, and demonstrations of projects that undergraduate students have been working on throughout the year. Here are some highlights of what Engineering undergraduates are researching at Carnegie Mellon University.

Gravity-fed hydroponic rainwater management

Kate Hanson is a junior in civil and environmental engineering . Her project was inspired by a sight that Pittsburgh natives may remember from downtown a few years ago—a large green wall on a building owned by PNC Bank, brightening the intersection of Sixth Ave. and Grant St. The green wall has since been taken down due to the cost of upkeep, but this got Hanson wondering: was there a way to create a green wall that wasn't cost prohibitive?

After the upfront cost of installation, green walls require two main resources to maintain themselves: a supply of water to nourish the plant life and energy to work the water pumps. Pittsburgh is a city with heavy rainfall, so water comes from the sky for free. But making sure it is distributed along a wall in times of heavy or sparce rain without using an expensive pump was the calculation that Hanson tackled.

In her project, Hanson envisioned a long pipe system installed on the vertical face of any given wall, feeding the plant life. In times of heavy rain, flooding would be avoided by added a bobber below the rain collection tank. Working like a toilet flushing system, the floating bobber would be chained to a small door at the bottom of the tank. As the water level rises, the bobber rises, bringing the chain and door with it, allowing water to rush through the door until the water level lowers the bobber once more.

In dryer times, there may not be enough water to reach up to the roots of the plants from the bottom of the pipes. To make a small amount of water stretch further, the pipes are fitted with ribbed floors. These floors take up volume that water would otherwise fill, displacing the water level to raise it up to the plant roots. 

Hanson received the Undergraduate Environmental Award for her poster. She is advised by Greg Lowry , professor of civil and environmental engineering, and will continue her research with the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship to hopefully bring green walls to life in Pittsburgh. For a first installation, she has her sights set on Wean Hall, specifically the front face of the cube-like protrusion that houses a classroom above the fifth-floor entrance of the building.

Creating gold nanoparticles to sort chiral medicines

Alexander Henry (Harry) Burton is a sophomore studying chemical engineering and biomedical engineering . He worked on research in the all-undergraduate research lab overseen by Nisha Shukla , a special faculty member within the College. His research occurs at the nanoscale. In the lab, he can manipulate gold nanoparticles to give them a specific chirality, making them adept at sorting through chiral medicines.

Why gold? You may have asked the same question at the dentist's office. And the answer would be the same—gold is a largely non-reactive element, meaning that it does not interact with medicine or the human body in negative ways. Gold also has the added benefit of being easy to manipulate into different shapes at the nanoscale since it easily absorbs chiral amino acids, changing the gold into a desired chiral shape.

Chirality is a characteristic of nanoparticles that describes how they attach to other nanoparticles. You can think of it like the molecules having a clockwise or counterclockwise structure—a clockwise structure can never fit in with another clockwise structure, a counterclockwise structure can never fit in with another counterclockwise structure. Cells in our bodies have chirality. Therefore, to best administer medicine that needs to attach at the cellular level, clockwise medicine should be given to those with counterclockwise cells and vice versa. However, since the nanoparticles of medicine are basically identical, sorting out clockwise from counterclockwise particles is a difficult task.

That's where the gold comes in. By adding small amounts of chiral gold to the medicine, you can sort it into clockwise and counterclockwise parts. The counterclockwise medicine latches on to clockwise gold and vice versa, making it ready for administration into bodies.

When asked if the research was expensive, due to the nature of gold, Burton laughed and said, “It is expensive, but my lab’s principal investigator said it was okay.” The cost of the knowledge gained from the research outweighs the monetary price of gold.

Slug battery: an enzymatic fuel cell

Theophilos (Theo) Cockrell is a junior in electrical and computer engineering . He gave a presentation on a project he completed alongside post-doc Kevin Dai, Ph.D. candidate Michael J. Bennington, and Victoria Webster-Wood , an associate professor in mechanical engineering. They work in the Biohybrid and Organic Robotics Group , which seeks to find ways to bring electronic sensors to marine biomes for environmental sensing purposes. 

Getting an electrical device to survive underwater is no easy task. Typical circuit boards cannot be exposed to water. Solar power is limited the further down you dive. And there is an abundance of marine life that researchers try their best not to disturb while placing sensors. So Cockrell’s group tried a novel approach—put a sensor inside a sea creature and power it off of the creature itself.

Cockrell developed an Enzymatic Fuel Cell (EFC), an implantable battery that charges based on organic input, such as glucose and oxygen in an animal’s circulatory system. For their model animal, they chose Aplysia californica —California sea hare—a kind of sea slug that has a convenient body cavity where a fuel cell can fit without harming the slug. This slug has suitable chemistry in the hemolymph transported by its open circulatory system.

Cockrell worked to test variables that could help perfect the so-called slug battery. Many factors can change the effectiveness of the battery, such as whether the electronics are rolled up or lying flat, the addition of certain chemical compounds on the battery, and the use of synthesized saline or hemolymph from the slug around the battery. The team was able to produce promising findings in vitro (in the lab) and hopes to move their tech in vivo (into a specimen) in the future.

Material characterization of metal additive manufacturing

Lauren Fitzwater is a junior studying materials science and engineering who is also minoring in additive manufacturing . She gave a presentation about the research she did as the only undergraduate student in the Engineering Materials for Transformative Technologies (EMIT) Lab which is overseen by Sneha Prabha Narra , an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. Alongside Ph.D. students Misha Khrenov and Justin Miner, Fitzwater explored the lack of fusion (LOF) boundary in laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) of Inconel-718 (IN718).

There are a few acronyms to break down there: IN718 is a strong, non-corrosive nickel chromium alloy that is used in the production of jet engines and turbines. L-PBF is a manufacturing process that uses lasers to selectively melt metal powder to form it into the desired shape. LOF is a type of defect that can result from this form of additive manufacturing where pores form in the hardened metal where the melt pools have failed to overlap.

For typical L-PBF printing, parameters like laser speed and power will be carefully selected to avoid LOF and other defects like keyholing and metal balling up. Fitzwater noticed that the sweet spot was pretty rigid and difficult to achieve, and wondered if she couldn’t find a way to make the target a bit bigger. She noticed that traditional LOF research does not take into account melt pool geometry variability, instead basing calculations on average melt pool widths and depths.

The result for average melt pool geometry ends up being mostly a linear relation—a faster, more powerful laser will produce more defects. But Fitzwater tested a variety of melt pool sizes and found that the sweet spot started to wiggle around a bit more, resulting in a wavy pattern that showed that the laser could go faster and be more powerful at certain sizes. She hopes this research can be used in the future to improve the accuracy of process maps.

Fitzwater said after her presentation that finding this research opportunity with the EMIT lab opened her eyes to the world of additive manufacturing, a career path she had not previously considered. 

FRESH-printing meat from lab-grown cells

Daniel Aluko is a sophomore studying mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering. He works in the lab of Rosalyn Abbott , assistant professor of biomedical engineering, to study effective methods for 3D printing lab-grown meat . The hope is to offer alternatives to traditional meat, which is tasking on the environment and presents ethical issues around the treatment of livestock. 

Most people are familiar with 3D printers that extrude plastic—a rigid material that rapidly dries and takes form, holding itself aloft or supported on thin supports. However, when printing with something organic, the material cannot attach to itself quickly and take form without support since it is often squishy. This is why Aluko uses Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH) 3D printing. With the FRESH method, lab-grown fat cells called adipocytes are added to a base of alginate, a neutral polymer formed from seaweed. This creates a viscous liquid referred to as bioink that is somewhere between castor oil and molasses in consistency. This bioink is then extruded into a support bath where it crosslinks or cures into the desired shape. The support bath is basically a clear jelly that melts away at body temperature, so it sloughs away from the final printed meat with ease.

Aluko was advised by biomedical engineering Ph.D. student Lindsey Huff. His role in the project was to test variables to ensure the best quality prints. Adipocytes are somewhat delicate and large, so ensuring that they remain intact throughout the print is crucial for a successful outcome. He studied the speed of extrusion, the gauge of the printing needle, and the viscosity of the bioink. By simulating extrusion in fluid flow software, Aluko was able to test multiple combinations of factors to find a happy medium between them all.

Aluko hopes to see the research also work for myocytes (muscle cells) which are smaller and more likely to hold up to anything that adipocytes can handle. As a sophomore, he hopes to explore other areas of research in his remaining years as an undergraduate at CMU. By getting an early start in research, he has time to compare FRESH 3D printing work to other areas of interest, such as biomechanics or biomedical devices. Exploring multiple areas will allow Aluko to better decide what he might like to study, should he choose to pursue a Ph.D. in the future.