how to assess a powerpoint presentation

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Use Clear Criteria and Methodologies When Evaluating PowerPoint Presentations

Dr. Fred Mayo explains the three major methods for presentation evaluation: self, peer and professional. An added bonus: ready-made student evaluation form.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

In the last issue, we discussed making interactive presentations and this month we will focus on evaluating presentations. For many of us, encouraging and supporting students in making presentations is already a challenge; assessing their merit is often just another unwelcome teaching chore.

There are three major methods for evaluating presentation – self evaluations, peer evaluations, and professional evaluations. Of course, the most important issue is establishing evaluation criteria.

Criteria for Evaluating Presentations One of the best ways to help students create and deliver good presentations involves providing them with information about how their presentations will be evaluated. Some of the criteria that you can use to assess presentations include:

• Focus of the presentation
• Clarity and coherence of the content
• Thoroughness of the ideas presented and the analysis
• Clarity of the presentation
• Effective use of facts, statistics and details
• Lack of grammatical and spelling errors
• Design of the slides
• Effective use of images
• Clarity of voice projection and appropriate volume
• Completion of the presentation within the allotted time frame

Feel free to use these criteria or to develop your own that more specifically match your teaching situation.

Self Evaluations When teaching public speaking and making presentations, I often encouraged students to rate their own presentations after they delivered them. Many times, they were very insightful about what could have been improved. Others just could not complete this part of the assignment. Sometimes, I use their evaluations to make comments on what they recognized in their presentations. However, their evaluations did not overly influence the grade except that a more thorough evaluation improved their grade and a weak evaluation could hurt their presentation grade.

Questions I asked them to consider included:

• How do you think it went?
• What could you have done differently to make it better?
• What did you do that you are particularly proud of accomplishing?
• What did you learn from preparing for and delivering this presentation?
• What would you change next time?

Peer Evaluations One way to provide the most feedback for students involves encouraging – or requiring – each student evaluate each other’s presentation. It forces them to watch the presentation both for content and delivery and helps them learn to discriminate between an excellent and an ordinary presentation. The more presentations they observe or watch, the more they learn.

In classes where students are required to deliver presentations, I have students evaluate the presentations they observe using a form I designed. The students in the audience give the evaluation or feedback forms to the presenter as soon as it is over. I do not collect them or review them to encourage honest comments and more direct feedback. Also, students do not use their names when completing the form. That way the presenter gets a picture from all the students in the audience – including me – and cannot discount the comments by recognizing the author.

A version of the form that I use is reproduced below – feel free to adopt or adapt it to your own use and classroom situation.

Professional Evaluations When conducting your professional evaluation of a presentation, remember to consider when and how to deliver oral comments as opposed to a completed form. I complete a written evaluation (shown above) along with all the students so they get some immediate feedback. I also take notes on the presentation and decide a grade as well. After the conclusion of the presentation, whether it was an individual or team presentation, I lead a class discussion on the presentation material. That way, students get to hear some immediate comments as well as reading the written peer evaluations.

I usually ask for a copy of the presentation prior to the delivery date. (Getting the PowerPoint slides ahead also helps me ensure I have all the presentations loaded on the projector or computer so we do not waste class time.) Students either email it to me or place it on our classroom management system. I will provide their letter grade and make comments on the design of the presentation on the copy they gave me. However, I don’t explain the final grade right after the presentation since it is often hard for students who have just made a presentation to hear comments.

Summary Each of these suggestions may prompt you to try your own ideas. Remember that students improve when they receive thoughtful and useful feedback from their peers and you as their teacher. I encourage you to use this form or develop a form so that the criteria used to evaluate the presentations are clear and explained ahead of time. Now, you can enjoy evaluating their presentations.

Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT, is retired as a clinical professor of hotel and tourism management at New York University. As principal of Mayo Consulting Services, he continues to teach around the globe and is a regular presenter at CAFÉ events nationwide.

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How to Evaluate PowerPoint Presentation Slides?

Home  > Presentation Tips  > How to Evaluate PowerPoint Presentation

In this article we will cover 3 rules by which you can evaluate your PowerPoint presentation slides.

Every presenter knows that simplicity is a virtue that wins business presentations. But when it comes to slides, they make their message difficult to understand.

The reason is these presenters confuse clever slides with good slides.

Let’s understand the 3 questions you need to ask yourself to evaluate the effectiveness of your PowerPoint presentation slides.

Question 1: Are your images too clever?

What do you think of these slides with beautiful pictures

That is exactly the reason why such slides can kill your business presentations.

The reason why clever slides are not good…

Take a moment to consider…

When you project these slides to your customers, what kind of questions pop up in their head?

Here is our guess:

“Is that sunrise or sunset? Those rocks look like bar graph. Wow!”

“How are those rocks balancing so well? How are they connected to our software? Is he subtly hinting at modular development of software by using that image?”

“Hey! This reminds me of my trip to Mauritius. I really loved that vacation. I haven’t called Sandy for a long time. Let me note that in my diary.”

As you can see, none of these questions will help your audience make a meaningful decision about your presentation.

Rule 1: Don’t allow your core message to be hijacked by any ‘decorative’ element in your slide.

Let us move to the next question…

Question 2: Are your graphs too complicated?

Presenters assume that complicated graphs show their expertise. So they put in graphs and charts that are as complex as this…

If your audience can’t understand your graph in less than 5 seconds, you need to simplify it. Otherwise you run the risk of losing your audience for the rest of your presentation.

Rule 2: Simplify. When your audience strain to understand your information, they avoid making a decision.

Let us move to the last question…

Question 3: Are you saying it all in one go?

When you try to say everything, you convey nothing. Here is a slide that dumps information on the audience…

Realize that your audience will never tell you that they cannot follow your slides.

They just switch off their minds. They won’t come back, even if you present some really simple slides following the complex ones.

Why kill your critical business presentations with such information dump?

Rule 3: Convey 1 thought per slide.

There is a foolproof way to evaluate if your slides are simple and effective.

Apply the Last Person Test

Check if your slides pass the Last Person Test

The last person in your audience is the one with the least knowledge or experience.

Picture that last person in your mind and ask yourself this question for every slide in your presentation:

Will this person be able to understand and repeat the core message of my slide easily?

If the answer is NO , then it is time to rework your slides.

Remember, your only purpose in making a business presentation is to influence your audience to make a decision . Let nothing come in the way of achieving that objective.

This is the best way to evaluate PowerPoint presentation slides once your create them.

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6 Ways You Can Evaluate Your Own Presentation

Hrideep barot.

• Body Language & Delivery , Presentation , Public Speaking

Naturally, giving a presentation is a skill that falls on the professional side of the spectrum. It involves a lot of formality along with practice to get good at it. 

But how do you decide what exactly it is that you need to work on? Read on to find out about six ways to evaluate your presentation skills.

Evaluating your presentation requires the ability to analyze your performance based on some very specific criteria related to delivery and content. More importantly, you must do it in an objective sense, without letting your self-bias come in the way.

Importance and benefits of evaluating your presentations yourself

Public speaking requires skills that are developed over time. Whether you’re a pro at it or a beginner, there is always room to grow because people have a varying set of abilities. 

Presentations are all about influence. You aim to create a dynamic with your audience so they buy into whatever it is that you’re trying to convey. 

And if you keep innovating your techniques and find your strength (which all comes with self-evaluating), you’ll essentially be enhancing your power to influence. 

In addition to that, it makes you a better presenter. The lack of being told what to do by someone else gives you a sense of self-confidence and patience. 

Additionally, you being a good presenter would mean more successful meetings, which in turn means you’d profit your business.

Basically, the better your presentation, the more likely are your chances to successfully fulfill your agenda. So grab a paper and a pen and embark upon your journey of getting better!

What criteria do I need to follow for evaluation?

Let’s address the skills we need for pulling off a good presentation.

Quality of content

• Engagement with audience
• Visual aids
• Focusing on strengths. 

Based on these categories, you need to form criteria to test yourself. Think of it like setting a frame of reference for yourself, placing yourself on a scale ranging between good and bad would help you track your progress. 

Following are the pointers you need to keep in mind while evaluating your presentation skills-

The two most things to keep in mind about structure is that you need to have a very intriguing start to your presentation, something that hooks the audience. (an anecdote, perhaps)

Secondly, make sure your ending is clear and in alignment with the purpose of the presentation. And include a call to action. For example, if your presentation is about mental health awareness, make sure one of your end slides has a comprehensive contact list of psychologists/therapists. 

Apart from that, the transitions between your pointers have to be smooth. Try adding segues (which is basically building context for your next point) In the previous example, a personal anecdote involving someone with depression can be a good segue to talk about the importance of mental health. 

If you’re new to structuring content or making presentations, here’s an article of ours that might help- The Ultimate Guide to Structuring a Speech

Delivery is everything. From gestures to hand movements, your body language must emphasize CONVEYING something. 

When you say something especially important, there must be some emphasis on part of your delivery. Like slowing your speech, or knocking the table, or repetition of the point, etc. 

There should be some sort of continuity to your narrative, the ‘flow’ must come naturally. This can be done using the smooth transition technique mentioned above. 

Adding a story-like quality to your speech might help. (having proper segregation between the beginning, middle, and end)

You cannot be providing generic content. Always remember, in presentations, quality surpasses quantity. 

Rambling about your topic on and on would not only bore your audience but also hinder the aforementioned flow and transitions that are so important. 

You need to make sure you’re adding something of value that is unique to you, and not general. You may refer to our article that might help further with this- Should a Presentation Have an Agenda?

Engagement with the audience

Your content must always be altered according to your audience. Knowing your audience is a very crucial step. You cannot say the same things in front of an MNC board meeting members as you would in front of a bunch of college students.

Knowing your audience helps you decide your content, flow, transition, practically everything. 

Also, engagement with the audience means the interaction that takes place between you and them. You need to appear approachable for them to talk to you. 

But at the same time, you need to prepare yourself in advance to be able to answer the questions that might come your way. A little prediction here and there can save you a lot of anxiety. 

Visual Aids

Visual aids during a presentation include everything from the design and arrangement of content in your presentation to your appearance. (But mostly the former)

Now when it comes to visual aids in a PPT, there is no better advice than the 5 by 5 rule.

The Powerpoint 5×5 slide rule states that-

a. Each of your slides should have no more than 5 lines.

b. Each of those lines should have no more than 5 words.

It ensures keeping your content crisp and to the point. A tip to apply this rule would be to not focus on including the main content in the ppt. Instead, write only pointers and elaborate on them yourself.

This way, you prevent your audience from getting too caught up in reading the slides hence getting distracted from you. 

How exactly do I evaluate my presentation?

Here are the six-pointers that will guide you through it step-by-step.

Identify patterns

Keeping in mind the above-mentioned pointers, start looking for what you’re doing wrong.

Is there something that you repetitively keep doing wrong? Maybe the topics you choose aren’t relevant, maybe you use too much text in slides, maybe you don’t captivate your audience by raising vocals, maybe you don’t move enough. 

There are always patterns. You need to develop attention to detail. 

Focus on the audience

Your audience engagement can make or break the deal. While you’re presenting, make sure you make eye contact with as many people as you can. And keep an eye out for people’s reactions. It helps you get real-time feedback. 

Now there’s a chance this might not work and you get distracted or disheartened. In which case, drop this tactic. Nothing is worth blowing your confidence down during the presentation. 

Take feedback

Part of the reward for good audience engagement is honest feedback. If people like your content but find your delivery a little off, if you engage well with them, they will be a little more open to bringing it to your attention.

Maybe to make it a little more certain, announce at the end that you’re open to constructive criticism. It also adds to the impression you make. People find people who are willing to admit their flaws, admirable. 

Make sure you maintain a record of your progress, right from making those criteria scales to your speeches through successive presentations. You could do it on paper or a device, whatever is more comfortable. 

Make notes about what you need to work on right after presentations, and tick them off when you do in the next ones. It brings along a sense of accomplishment. 

In reference to keeping track of practicing, you may check out our 13 Tips For Rehearsing A Presentation

Objective set of eyes

Ask a friend or a colleague to give you honest advice. Truth is, no matter what, your clients would always be skeptical of telling you what’s wrong. And there’s only so much you would criticize about yourself.

Asking someone you trust can help you get a fresh perspective on your progress since we get a little over in our heads sometimes. 

Use your strengths and weaknesses

After having acquainted yourself with this whole system of evaluation, it is no doubt you’d be very aware of your strong and weak points. It is a good thing. 

Honestly, there could always be some little things here and there that we cannot wrap our heads around, and that’s okay. Because we also have our strengths to cover up for them.

For example, you could be a little off with a smooth transition between subpoints, but if you drop a super-strong call to action, in the end, it gets compensated. 

And the best part is, only you can use them to your benefit since you’re the only one who knows about them!

Additionally, watching content related to your topic can be of massive help too. For example, if your speech is on mental health , then maybe watching a TEDTalk by a mental health professional can add on to the authenticity of your content.

To go that extra mile, you could also record yourself while giving the speech in front of a camera and review the recording to see where exactly you went wrong. Sometimes, watching your presentation from the audience’s perspective gives you a peak into what they see, and consequently, allows you to have a bigger impact on them.

Here’s a checklist to keep in mind while self-evaluating:

Print the checklist out for easy accessibility, mark yes or no after every presentation to keep track of your progress.

Practical Tools to use for self-evaluation

Feedback forms.

Feedback from your audience is important, as stated before. However, you can’t store all of the verbal feedback in your brain, let alone use it for self-evaluation later. Moreover, sometimes the audience might be vague with how they respond and that is unhelpful.

What you can do, instead, is devise a feedback form enlisting specific questions, the answers to which would be relevant for your purpose. This not only lifts the burden of remembering all you heard after presenting, but also eliminates unnecessary jargon from the audience.

Self-reflection

Self-reflection is the most important part of this process. Now, this does not only involve you going to the feedback forms but also reviewing specific areas that you need extra work on. You can make a categorized list or a scale of easily ‘fixable issues’ to issues that need relatively more practice and work.

If there is an issue that you don’t seem to be able to work around, another form of self-reflection you can do is record yourself. As mentioned before, use the camera and present as you would in the conference room. Looking at a tape of yourself after presenting(as opposed to while presenting in front of the mirror), can help you detect what’s wrong in a better way. Plus, it helps you check body language.

Presentation rubrics are one of the handiest tools you can use for evaluation. It is a specific set of criteria that sets qualitative standards for the things/skills you need to have in your presentation to qualify as a good one.

For example, For a college research paper, the categories of criteria would be creativity, research element, use of sources and references, innovative aspects, etc. These categories would then be assessed on a scale of good to excellent or 1 to 5 and be marked accordingly.

It provides a quantified version of assessment which helps tremendously to analyze where specifically, and how much do you need to work on.

Apart from this, if you’re a techno-savvy person who is not inclined to write with a journal to keep track or implicate any of the other tools, worry not! We happen to have just the thing to help you! In today’s technology and smart phone driven world where most things are online, we can do self-evaluation up there too!

Here is a detailed and comprehensive article about 34 Best Smartphone Apps for Presenters and Professional Speakers that will guide you through that process.

Well, with all these tools and techniques, you’re all set to begin your self-evaluation! Remember, different techniques work for different people. It’s all a matter of trial and error. Some patience and practice can take you a long way to become the presenter you aspire to be.

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How to Evaluate Presentation Effectiveness and ROI

Your presentation’s success is non-negotiable. Motivating your audience and reaching your goals requires a break-through presentation, but sinking time and money into designing elaborate decks can decrease efficiency and your ROI before you’ve even presented. Your time is best spent crafting the message you need to share to attain your business goals.

Setting goals and measurable outcomes

Before you can gauge the success of your presentation , you’ll need to outline the information you want your audience to absorb and perfect your call to action. 

First, break your content down into 3 steps:

• Spark excitement with an exciting or fun intro that fits your style and aligns with your material.
• Present the problem or issue and propose your solution.
• Close it out with a strong call to action. Don’t leave your audience guessing how they should feel or what they should do.

You should know what you want your audience to do after your presentation. Consider ways you can track their behavior and set quantifiable goals. You’ll need to set goal behavior(s) and identify the time each action should occur by (ie. 25% of viewers go to your site within 48hrs and/or 10% of viewers make a purchase within 30 days).

Create profitable presentations

A presentation’s effectiveness is only as good as your audience’s engagement. 

Make sure to emphasize visuals while keeping everything as clean and legible as possible. Feel free to sprinkle in a bit of color, movement, or other eye-catching excitement but don’t over-do it. Not a design guru? No problem, don’t be afraid to use a template and customize it as needed! Staring at a blank white slide doesn’t have to be your reality the night before a big presentation. Templates help you and your team get started with less stress so you can focus on the message and delivery of your presentation. 

Additionally, having standard decks ready for your teams to use will allow them to edit slides quickly and create new iterations in a snap. Keep your old slides stored safely on the cloud and revisit them whenever you’d like. Technology allows us to be extremely agile in today’s fast-paced business world. Better organization and access can give your company the advantage it needs to stay ahead of competitors. 

Don’t forget: presentation engagement directly correlates with presentation success and profitability. If you can capture your audience’s attention with the visual interest of your deck and delight them with your content on and off the slides, you will be set up for success.

Why presentation ROI matters

Measuring the value of each presentation is a great way to hone in on what’s working and what needs to be reworked. If a certain strategy isn’t producing the results you want, revamp or restart quickly to minimize your losses. Businesses that are flexible and willing to pivot as needed can thrive even in difficult environments.

Setting goals, tracking your audience, and calculating ROI lets you learn more about your target audience and leverage your business strengths all while minimizing any weaknesses. If you know what works, you can consistently improve your tactics and therefore your presentation, product, company, and teams.

Calculate presentation ROI

Quantifying a presentation’s value may seem impractical but it doesn’t have to be. 

Traditionally, presenters observe their audience and ask them for feedback directly but in today’s digital world a lot of this physical information is lost via video conference calls. You can always try to determine effectiveness by sending out post presentation emails... but how many people are willing to fill out an email survey after sitting through a presentation? Luckily, with current technology and analytics, there are better (and easier) ways to know exactly where and for how long people are viewing your presentations.

Increase returns with successful presentations

Time is money, so the faster you can create beautiful presentations, the more money you can invest back into other aspects of your business. Less time fiddling with misaligned bullet points or finding the perfect stock photo means more time focusing on refining your message and polishing your speech. If you can decrease the time needed to build out solid decks you can reinvest those savings. Beautiful.ai can cut the time spent building presentations in half without sacrificing professionalism or design quality.

Minimize investment and maximize return with Beautiful.ai

Tools to track and increase your presentation’s ROI

Save time without missing out on stylish design.

Beautiful.ai applies the rules of great design automatically to every presentation. Add content without worrying about having to resize fonts or double-check every slide for design faux pas. Plus you get quick, easy access to libraries full of icons and photographs.

Access presentation views and analytics

With Pro, you have access to an analytic dashboard that lets you easily track who views your presentation, which pages they spend the most time on, what the average completion rate is, and more.

Cloud collaboration and organization

Sending ZIP files and presentations via email is a thing of the past. With storage online, you can work and share with your team in real-time without any hassle.

You can get started here .

Cassie Ricci

Cassie is a tech writer, SaaS support specialist, and self-proclaimed nerd.

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• Create and Assess Your Slides

strategies, techniques, and tools for strong slide design, and maximum presentation quality.

Prior to delivering a talk, it is important to prepare and set yourself up for success with a strong slide deck. Depending on the nature of your presentation, the type of speaking engagement, your institution, and other factors and considerations, there are different kinds of approaches and priorities when it comes to slide design. This section includes some tips that will assist you with designing your slides to prepare for your presentation.

Slides drive home the main ideas of your research and play an important role to deliver a strong presentation. After reviewing the Fundamentals of Slide Design , use these resources to create and assess your slides to ensure that you have considered and included important components that make for an effective presentation.

Qualities of Strong Slide Design

Use this self-assessment checklist to design and review your slides. Check all boxes that incorporate key qualities of strong slide design. In addition to focusing on the style, typography, and layout, consider thinking about your use of visuals and color along with other elements to enhance the design of your slides.

Checklist for

Assertion-evidence slides.

The assertion-evidence slide structure is one effective technique to designing effective slides. In conjunction with the webinar on “Better Than Bullets: Transforming Slide Design” by Melissa Marshall, this checklist was developed as a resource for assertion-evidence slides but can be applied more generally to other types of slide designs. Consider the style, typography, and layout of your slides and what it might look like to incorporate these elements with an assertion-evidence slide structure in mind.

Research Presentation Rubric

The format of research presentations can vary across and within disciplines. Use this rubric to identify and assess elements of research presentations, including delivery strategies and slide design. This resource focuses on research presentations but may be useful beyond. 

Templates and Examples for

Check out tips, templates, layout suggestions, and other examples of assertion-evidence slides on  Rethinking Presentations in Science and Engineering by Michael Alley, MS, MFA, from Pennsylvania State University. Download the Assertion Evidence Presention template for Microsoft PowerPoint.

Additional Resources

Create and deliver standout technical presentations, present your science.

Melissa Marshall’s website explores how speakers can transform the way they present their research.

"The Craft of Scientific Presentations: Critical Steps to Succeed and Critical Errors to Avoid" book by Michael Alley

By distinguishing what makes a presenter successful, this book aims to improve your presentation skills.

Want to learn more about how to strengthen your presentation skills?

Visit the delivery authentically page for more information.

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Presentation Rubric for a College Project

We seem to have an unavoidable relationship with public speaking throughout our lives. From our kindergarten years, when our presentations are nothing more than a few seconds of reciting cute words in front of our class…

...till our grown up years, when things get a little more serious, and the success of our presentations may determine getting funds for our business, or obtaining an academic degree when defending our thesis.

By the time we reach our mid 20’s, we become worryingly used to evaluations based on our presentations. Yet, for some reason, we’re rarely told the traits upon which we are being evaluated. Most colleges and business schools for instance use a PowerPoint presentation rubric to evaluate their students. Funny thing is, they’re not usually that open about sharing it with their students (as if that would do any harm!).

What is a presentation rubric?

A presentation rubric is a systematic and standardized tool used to evaluate and assess the quality and effectiveness of a presentation. It provides a structured framework for instructors, evaluators, or peers to assess various aspects of a presentation, such as content, delivery, organization, and overall performance. Presentation rubrics are commonly used in educational settings, business environments, and other contexts where presentations are a key form of communication.

A typical presentation rubric includes a set of criteria and a scale for rating or scoring each criterion. The criteria are specific aspects or elements of the presentation that are considered essential for a successful presentation. The scale assigns a numerical value or descriptive level to each criterion, ranging from poor or unsatisfactory to excellent or outstanding.

Common criteria found in presentation rubrics may include:

• Content: This criterion assesses the quality and relevance of the information presented. It looks at factors like accuracy, depth of knowledge, use of evidence, and the clarity of key messages.
• Organization: Organization evaluates the structure and flow of the presentation. It considers how well the introduction, body, and conclusion are structured and whether transitions between sections are smooth.
• Delivery: Delivery assesses the presenter's speaking skills, including vocal tone, pace, clarity, and engagement with the audience. It also looks at nonverbal communication, such as body language and eye contact.
• Visual Aids: If visual aids like slides or props are used, this criterion evaluates their effectiveness, relevance, and clarity. It may also assess the design and layout of visual materials.
• Audience Engagement: This criterion measures the presenter's ability to connect with the audience, maintain their interest, and respond to questions or feedback.
• Time Management: Time management assesses whether the presenter stayed within the allotted time for the presentation. Going significantly over or under the time limit can affect the overall effectiveness of the presentation.
• Creativity and Innovation: In some cases, rubrics may include criteria related to the creative and innovative aspects of the presentation, encouraging presenters to think outside the box.
• Overall Impact: This criterion provides an overall assessment of the presentation's impact on the audience, considering how well it achieved its intended purpose and whether it left a lasting impression.

“We’re used to giving presentations, yet we’re rarely told the traits upon which we’re being evaluated.

Well, we don’t believe in shutting down information. Quite the contrary: we think the best way to practice your speech is to know exactly what is being tested! By evaluating each trait separately, you can:

• Acknowledge the complexity of public speaking, that goes far beyond subject knowledge.
• Address your weaker spots, and work on them to improve your presentation as a whole.

I’ve assembled a simple Presentation Rubric, based on a great document by the NC State University, and I've also added a few rows of my own, so you can evaluate your presentation in pretty much any scenario!

CREATE PRESENTATION

What is tested in this powerpoint presentation rubric.

The Rubric contemplates 7 traits, which are as follows:

Now let's break down each trait so you can understand what they mean, and how to assess each one:

Presentation Rubric

How to use this Rubric?:

The Rubric is pretty self explanatory, so I'm just gonna give you some ideas as to how to use it. The ideal scenario is to ask someone else to listen to your presentation and evaluate you with it. The less that person knows you, or what your presentation is about, the better.

WONDERING WHAT YOUR SCORE MAY INDICATE?

• 21-28 Fan-bloody-tastic!
• 14-21 Looking good, but you can do better
• 7-14 Uhmmm, you ain't at all ready

As we don't always have someone to rehearse our presentations with, a great way to use the Rubric is to record yourself (this is not Hollywood material so an iPhone video will do!), watching the video afterwards, and evaluating your presentation on your own. You'll be surprised by how different your perception of yourself is, in comparison to how you see yourself on video.

Related read: Webinar - Public Speaking and Stage Presence: How to wow?

It will be fairly easy to evaluate each trait! The mere exercise of reading the Presentation Rubric is an excellent study on presenting best practices.

If you're struggling with any particular trait, I suggest you take a look at our Academy Channel where we discuss how to improve each trait in detail!

It's not always easy to objectively assess our own speaking skills. So the next time you have a big presentation coming up, use this Rubric to put yourself to the test!

Need support for your presentation? Build awesome slides using our very own Slidebean .

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Home Blog Presentation Ideas 23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations

23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations

PowerPoint presentations are not usually known for being engaging or interactive. That’s often because most people treat their slides as if they are notes to read off  and not a tool to help empower their message.

Your presentation slides are there to help bring to life the story you are telling. They are there to provide visuals and empower your speech.

So how do you go about avoiding a presentation “snoozefest” and instead ensure you have an engaging and interactive presentation?  By making sure that you use your slides to help YOU tell your story, instead of using them as note cards to read off of.

The key thing to remember is that your presentation is there to compliment your speech, not be its focus.

In this article, we will review several presentation tips and tricks on how to become a storytelling powerhouse by building a powerful and engaging PowerPoint presentation.

Start with writing your speech outline, not with putting together slides

Use more images and less text, use high-quality images, keep the focus on you and your presentation, not the powerpoint, your presentation should be legible from anywhere in the room, use a consistent presentation design, one topic per slide, avoid information overwhelm by using the “rule of three”.

• Display one bullet at a time

Avoid unnecessary animations

• Only add content that supports your main points

Do not use PowerPoint as a teleprompter

• Never Give Out Copies of the Presentation

Re-focus the attention on you by fading into blackness

Change the tone of your voice when presenting, host an expert discussion panel, ask questions, embed videos, use live polling to get instant feedback and engage the audience.

• He kept his slides uncluttered and always strived for simplicity
• He was known to use large font size, the bigger, the better.
• He found made the complex sound simple.

He was known to practice, practice, and keep on practicing.

Summary – how to make your presentation engaging & interactive, fundamental rules to build powerful & engaging presentation slides.

Before we go into tips and tricks on how to add flair to your presentations and create effective presentations, it’s essential to get the fundamentals of your presentation right.

Your PowerPoint presentation is there to compliment your message, and the story you are telling. Before you can even put together slides, you need to identify the goal of your speech, and the key takeaways you want your audience to remember.

YOU and your speech are the focus of this presentation, not the slides – use your PowerPoint to complement your story.

Keep in mind that your slides are there to add to your speech, not distract from it.  Using too much text in your slides can be distracting and confusing to your audience. Instead, use a relevant picture with minimal text, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

This slide is not unusual, but is not a visual aid, it is more like an “eye chart”.

Aim for something simpler, easy to remember and concise, like the slides below.

Keep in mind your audience when designing your presentation, their background and aesthetics sense. You will want to avoid the default clip art and cheesy graphics on your slides.

While presenting make sure to control the presentation and the room by walking around, drawing attention to you and what you are saying.  You should occasionally stand still when referencing a slide, but never turn your back to your audience to read your slide.

You and your speech are the presentations; the slides are just there to aid you.

Most season presenters don’t use anything less than twenty-eight point font size, and even Steve Jobs was known to use nothing smaller than forty-point text fonts.

If you can’t comfortably fit all the text on your slide using 28 font size than you’re trying to say and cram too much into the slide, remember tip #1.4 – Use relevant images instead and accompany it with bullets.

Best Practice PowerPoint Presentation Tips

The job of your presentation is to help convey information as efficiently and clearly as possible. By keeping the theme and design consistent, you’re allowing the information and pictures to stand out.

However, by varying the design from slide to slide, you will be causing confusion and distraction from the focus, which is you and the information to be conveyed on the slide.

Technology can also help us in creating a consistent presentation design just by picking a topic and selecting a sample template style. This is possible thanks to the SlideModel’s AI slideshow maker .

Each slide should try to represent one topic or talking point. The goal is to keep the attention focused on your speech, and by using one slide per talking point, you make it easy for you to prepare, as well as easy for your audience to follow along with your speech.

Sometimes when creating our presentation, we can often get in our heads and try to over-explain. A simple way to avoid this is to follow the “ Rule of Three ,” a concept coined by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.

The idea is to stick to only 3 main ideas that will help deliver your point.  Each of the ideas can be further broken into 3 parts to explain further. The best modern example of this “Rule of Three” can be derived from the great Apple presentations given by Steve Jobs – they were always structured around the “Rule of Three.”

Display one sentence at a time

If you are planning to include text in your slides, try to avoid bullet lists, and use one slide per sentence. Be short and concise. This best practice focuses on the idea that simple messages are easy to retain in memory. Also, each slide can follow your storytelling path, introducing the audience to each concept while you speak, instead of listing everything beforehand.

Presentation Blunders To Avoid

In reality, there is no need for animations or transitions in your slides.

It’s great to know how to turn your text into fires or how to create a transition with sparkle effects, but the reality is the focus should be on the message. Using basic or no transitions lets the content of your presentation stand out, rather than the graphics.

If you plan to use animations, make sure to use modern and professional animations that helps the audience follow the story you are telling, for example when explaining time series or changing events over time.

Only add engaging content that supports your main points

You might have a great chart, picture or even phrase you want to add, but when creating every slide, it’s crucial to ask yourself the following question.

“Does this slide help support my main point?”

If the answer is no, then remove it.  Remember, less is more.

A common crutch for rookie presenters is to use slides as their teleprompter.

First of all, you shouldn’t have that much text on your slides. If you have to read off something, prepare some index cards that fit in your hand but at all costs do not turn your back on your audience and read off of your PowerPoint.  The moment you do that, you make the presentation the focus, and lose the audience as the presenter.

Avoid Giving Out Copies of the Presentation

At least not before you deliver a killer presentation; providing copies of your presentation gives your audience a possible distraction where they can flip through the copy and ignore what you are saying.

It’s also easy for them to take your slides out of context without understanding the meaning behind each slide.  It’s OK to give a copy of the presentation, but generally it is better to give the copies AFTER you have delivered your speech. If you decide to share a copy of your presentation, the best way to do it is by  generating a QR code  for it and placing it at the end of your presentation. Those who want a copy can simply scan and download it onto their phones.

Tips To Making Your Presentation More Engaging

The point of your presentation is to help deliver a message.

When expanding on a particularly important topic that requires a lengthy explanation it’s best to fade the slide into black.  This removes any distraction from the screen and re-focuses it on you, the present speaker. Some presentation devices have a built-in black screen button, but if they don’t, you can always prepare for this by adding a black side to your presentation at the right moment.

“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”

Part of making your presentation engaging is to use all the tools at your disposal to get your point across. Changing the inflection and tone of your voice as you present helps make the content and the points more memorable and engaging.

One easy and powerful way to make your presentation interactive is experts to discuss a particular topic during your presentation. This helps create a more engaging presentation and gives you the ability to facilitate and lead a discussion around your topic.

It’s best to prepare some questions for your panel but to also field questions from the audience in a question and answer format.

How To Make Your Presentation More Interactive

What happens if I ask you to think about a pink elephant?  You probably briefly think about a pink elephant, right?

Asking questions when presenting helps engage the audience, and arouse interest and curiosity.  It also has the added benefit of making people pay closer attention, in case they get called on.

So don’t be afraid to ask questions, even if rhetorical; asking a question engages a different part of our brain. It causes us to reflect rather than merely take in the information one way. So ask many of them.

Asking questions can also be an excellent way to build suspense for the next slide.

(Steve Jobs was known to ask questions during his presentations, in this slide he built suspense by asking the audience “Is there space for a device between a cell phone and a laptop?” before revealing the iPad) Source: MacWorld SF 2018

Remember the point of your presentation is to get a message across and although you are the presenter, it is completely fine to use video in your PowerPoint to enhance your presentation.  A relevant video can give you some breathing time to prepare the next slides while equally informing the audience on a particular point.

CAUTION: Be sure to test the video beforehand, and that your audience can hear it in the room.

A trending engagement tool among presenters is to use a live polling tool to allow the audience to participate and collect immediate feedback.

Using a live polling tool is a fun and interactive way to engage your audience in real-time and allow them to participate in part of your presentation.

Google Slides has a built-in Q&A feature that allows presenters to make the slide deck more interactive by providing answers to the audience’s questions. By using the Q&A feature in Google Slides, presenters can start a live Q&A session and people can ask questions directly from their devices including mobile and smartphones.

Key Takeaways from one of the best presenters, Steve Jobs

He kept his slides uncluttered and always strove for simplicity.

In this slide, you can easily see he is talking about the battery life, and it uses a simple image and a few words. Learning from Jobs, you can also make a great presentation too. Focus on the core benefit of your product and incorporate great visuals.

Source: Macworld 2008

SlideModel.com can help to reproduce high-impact slides like these, keeping your audience engagement.

He was known to use large font sizes, the bigger, the better

A big font makes it hard to miss the message on the slide, and allows the audience to focus on the presenter while clearing the understanding what the point of the slide is.

He found made the complex sound simple

When explaining a list of features, he used a simple image and lines or simple tables to provide visual cues to his talking points.

(This particular slide is referencing the iMac features)

What made Steve Jobs the master of presentation, was the ritual of practicing with his team, and this is simple yet often overlooked by many presenters.  It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking you don’t need to practice because you know the material so well.

While all these tips will help you create a truly powerful presentation , it can only achieve if applied correctly.

It’s important to remember when trying to deliver an amazing experience, you should be thoroughly prepared. This way, you can elevate your content presentation, convey your message effectively and captivate your audience.

This includes having your research cited, your presentation rehearsed.  Don’t just rehearse your slides, also take time to practice your delivery, and your tone.  The more you rehearse, the more relaxed you will be when delivering. The more confident you will feel.

While we can’t help you with the practice of your next presentation, we can help you by making sure you look good, and that you have a great design and cohesiveness.

You focus on the message and content; we’ll focus on making you look good.

Have a tip you would like to include?  Be sure to mention it in the comments!

Like this article? Please share

Audience, Engaging, Feedback, Interactive, Poll, Rule of Three, Steve Jobs Filed under Presentation Ideas

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2 Responses to “23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations”

Very great advices!

Greetings ! A compact composed communication for the host to have an impact -VOICE

Thank You ?

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How-To Geek

How to practice your presentations with powerpoint's presenter coach.

Rehearsing presentations gets easier with PowerPoint.

Quick Links

How the presenter coach helps you with your presentations, what you'll need, how to launch the presenter coach in powerpoint, reading your rehearsal report.

Microsoft PowerPoint now has a Presenter Coach to let you rehearse your presentations before going to the audience. This coach gives you a detailed report telling you how well you did and suggesting areas for improvement. Here's how to use it.

Consider the Presenter Coach in PowerPoint as a trusted friend who listens to you practice performing  your presentations . This coach reviews your entire presentation and creates a report detailing your performance.

For example, it will grade you on how fast you speak and how much you use filler words like "um" and "ah." It will also inform you of words you might want to avoid and encourage you not to simply read the words on your slides aloud.

Basically, if you need a second opinion on your presenting style, this is a great way to get it.

Related: 8 Tips to Make the Best PowerPoint Presentations

To use the Presenter Coach in PowerPoint, you must have:

• a Microsoft account or a Microsoft 365 work or school account
• a working internet connection
• a microphone (so that PowerPoint can listen to what you're saying)

Also, the Presenter Coach only works if you use the English language in PowerPoint. Other languages are not yet supported as of April 2021.

PowerPoint's Presenter Coach works for any presentation. You can use it with your commercial, educational, and even family presentations.

To start using this feature, open your presentation with PowerPoint.

In the PowerPoint window, click the "Slide Show" tab on the ribbon at the top of the window.

If you don't see the Slide Show tab, you're probably in Slide Master View. Close this view by selecting "Slide Master" at the top and then clicking "Close Master View."

In the Slide Show tab, click "Rehearse with Coach" to open PowerPoint's Presenter Coach.

Your presentation will open in fullscreen mode. To activate the Presenter Coach, click "Start Rehearsing" in the bottom-right corner of your window. Optionally, enable "Show real-time feedback" if you want the coach to give you tips while you're still presenting.

Now, begin your presentation like you normally would. If you enabled the real-time feedback option, you'll see some tips appear in the bottom-right corner of your window.

Press "Esc" when you're done presenting to exit fullscreen mode. PowerPoint will now open your rehearsal report.

It's important to read and analyze the Presenter Coach's report properly. This will help you find areas for improvement and see whether you're doing well.

The report will vanish as soon as you close the report window. To save the report, take a screenshot of it.

Here's what each section in the report tells you about your presentation:

• Summary : Summary tells you the amount of time you spent practicing your presentation. It also shows the number of slides you rehearsed.
• Fillers : In the Fillers section, you'll see the filler words (umm, ah) that you used during your presentation. Using these filler words makes you sound less confident, and you should try to avoid using them.
• Sensitive Phrases : Sensitive Phrases highlights culturally sensitive phrases that you used in your presentation, which you might want to avoid. It considers the following areas sensitive: disability, age, gender, race, sexual orientation, mental health, geopolitical topics, and profanity.
• Pace : The Pace section tells you the pace of your presentation. If you were too fast or too slow, you'll find that information here.
• Originality : Microsoft suggests that you avoid reading out the text written in your presentation slides, as this makes your presentation boring. Instead, you should use original content in your speech. The Originality section informs you if you only read the text from your slides.

Now that you know where you need to improve, click the "Rehearse Again" button at the top of the report to re-present your presentation. When you're done, PowerPoint will make another report detailing your new presentation performance.

Related: How to Add Music to Your PowerPoint Presentation

10 PowerPoint Tips for Preparing a Professional Presentation

Use these Microsoft PowerPoint tips to avoid common mistakes, keep your audience engaged, and create a professional presentation.

Professional presentations are all about making an impact. Your slides should look the part. Once you know what makes a presentation look professional, you can customize any half-decent PowerPoint template or create your own custom slides.

Our PowerPoint tips will help you avoid common mistakes, keep your audience engaged, and create a professional presentation, in form and content.

PowerPoint Slide Design

The design can leave a first and lasting impression. Give it a professional touch to win your audience's trust and attention.

1. Carefully Compose Your Slides

Don't copy and paste slides from different sources. You don't want your presentation to look like a rag rug. What you're aiming for is a consistent look. This will help your audience focus on the essential; your speech and the key facts you're highlighting on your slides.

To that end, use a basic template or make your own . PowerPoint comes with a wide selection of professional PowerPoint presentation templates , but you can also find free ones online.

PowerPoint Tip: When you open PowerPoint, note the search field at the top. One of the suggested searches is "presentations". Click it to see all of PowerPoint's default presentation templates. Choose a category on the right to narrow down your search.

Pick an easy to read font face . It's hard to get this right, but these professional-looking Google fonts are a safe bet. Unless you're a designer, stick to a single font face and limit yourself to playing with safe colors and font sizes.

If you're unsure about fonts, refer to "The 10 Commandments of Typography" shown below for orientation.

Carefully select font sizes for headers and text. While you don't want to create a wall of text and lose your audience's attention, you do want them to be able to read what you've highlighted. So make your fonts large enough.

PowerPoint Tip: PowerPoint offers several different slide layouts. When you add a new slide, choose the right layout under Home > New Slide . To switch the layout of an existing slide, use Home > Layout . By using the default layouts, you can make coherent design changes across your presentation anytime you want.

Leave room for highlights, such as images or take home messages. Some elements should stand out. So try not to bury them in background noise but give them the space they need. This could be a single quote or a single image per page with nothing but a simple header and a plain background.

Decorate scarcely but well. If you have good content, you won't need decoration. Your template will be decoratively enough.

Note: Restrict the room your design takes up, and don't ever let the design restrict your message.

2. Use Consistency

Consistently use font face and sizes on all slides. This one goes back to using a template. If you chose a professional presentation template, the designer would have taken care of this aspect. Stick to it!

Match colors. This is where so many presentations fail. You might have chosen a funky template and stuck to the designer's color profile, then you ruin it all with ugly Excel charts .

Take the time to match your visuals to your presentation design.

Text and Background Colors

A poor choice of colors can ruin your presentation.

3. Use Contrast

Black text on a white background will always be the best, but also the most boring choice . You're allowed to use colors! But use them responsibly.

Keep it easy on the eyes and always keep good contrast in mind. If you're color-challenged, use one of the many online tools to select a good looking color palette. Or just use a template and stick to its default colors.

PowerPoint Tip: Use PowerPoint's Design menu to quickly change the font and color palette of your entire presentation using preset design layouts.

4. Apply Brilliance

Carefully use color to highlight your message! Colors are your friends. They can make numbers stand out or your Take Home Message pop.

Don't weaken the color effect by using too many colors in too many instances . The special effect only works if used scarcely. Try to limit pop colors to one per slide.

Make a brilliant choice: match colors for design and good contrast to highlight your message . Use a professional color palette, to find which color will work best with your theme. Use The 10 Commandments of Color Theory shown below to learn more about colors:

Text on PowerPoint Slides

K eep I t S traight and S imple. That means...

• Keywords only on your slides.
• Absolutely no full sentences!
• And never read your slides , talk freely.

Remember that your slides are only there to support, not to replace your talk! You want to tell a story, visualize your data, and demonstrate key points. If you read your slides, you risk losing your audience's respect and attention.

PowerPoint Tip: Afraid you'll lose your train of thoughts? Add notes to your slides. Go to View and under Show click Notes to make them show up under your slides while editing. When starting your presentation, use PowerPoint's presentation mode (go to Slide Show and under Monitors , check Use Presenter View ), so you can glance at your notes when needed.

6. Take Home Message

Always summarize your key point in a Take Home Message. Ask yourself, if your audience learned or remembered one single thing from your presentation, what would you like it to be? That's your Take Home Message.

The Take Home Message is your key message, a summary of your data or story. If you're giving an hour-long presentation, you might have several Take Home Messages. That's OK. Just make sure that what you think is key, really matters to your audience.

Make your Take Home Message memorable. It's your responsibility that your audience takes home something valuable. Help them "get it" by making your Take Home Message stand out, either visually or through how you frame it verbally.

Presentation Visuals

Images are key elements of every presentation. Your audience has ears and eyes, they want to see what you're talking about, and a good visual cue will help them understand your message much better.

7. Add Images

Have more images in your slides than text. Visuals are your friends. They can illustrate your points and support your message.

But do not use images to decorate! That's a poor use of visuals because it's just a distraction.

Images can reinforce or complement your message. So use images to visualize or explain your story.

Use a sufficient image resolution. Your visuals might look good on your desktop, but once blown up by a projector, low-resolution images will make your presentation look anything but professional. So choose a resolution that matches the projector's resolution. If in doubt, don't go below a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels (XGA) and aim for 1920 x 1080 pixels (FullHD).

Always maintain your image's aspect ratio. Nothing looks more awkward than a distorted image. Whatever you do, don't stretch images. If you have to resize them, do so with the aspect ratio intact, even if that means dropping slightly above or below your target resolution.

PowerPoint Tip: Need a visual, but don't have one at hand? PowerPoint is connected to Bing's library of online images you can use for your presentations. Go to Insert and under Images select Online Images . You can browse by category or search the library. Be sure to set a checkmark for Creative Commons only , so you don't accidentally violate copyrights.

Note: Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In other words, if you don't have time for a thousand words, use a picture!

PowerPoint Animations and Media

In animations, there is a fine line between a comic and a professional impression. But animations can be powerful tools to visualize and explain complicated matters. A good animation can not only improve understanding, it can also make the message stick with your audience.

8. Don't Be Silly

Sparingly use animations and media. You should only use them in one of two cases:

• To draw attention, for example, to your Take Home Message.
• To clarify a model or emphasize an effect.

Embed the media in your presentation and make sure it works in presentation mode. Testing your presentation at home will save you time and avoid embarrassment.

Target Your Presentation Content

Your target, i.e. your audience, defines the content of your presentation. For example, you cannot teach school kids about the complicated matters of the economy, but you may be able to explain to them what the economy is in the first place and why it is important.

9. Keep Your Audience in Mind

When you compile your PowerPoint presentation, ask yourself these questions:

• What does my audience know?
• What do I need to tell them?
• What do they expect?
• What will be interesting to them?
• What can I teach them?
• What will keep them focused?

Answer these questions and boil your slides down to the very essentials. In your talk, describe the essentials colorfully and use your weapons, i.e. text, images, and animations wisely (see above).

Note: If you fail to hit the target, it won't matter how ingenious your design is or how brilliantly you picked colors and keywords. Nothing matters more than your audience's attention.

10. Practice Your Presentation Like a Professional

A well-practiced and enthusiastic talk will help you convince your audience and keep their attention. Here are some key points that define a good talk:

• Know your slides inside out.
• Speak freely.
• Speak with confidence, loud and clear.
• Speak at a steady pace, better too slow than too fast.
• Keep eye contact with your audience.

Bonus: Implement the 10/20/30 Rule

The 10/20/30 rule is a concept brought forward by Guy Kawasaki:

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

A similar concept is PechaKucha , a storytelling format limited to 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide, i.e. less than seven minutes to conclude the presentation.

Now there's a challenge! Telling your story succinctly, might help you get through to some of the busiest and most distracted people on the planet.

One Final PowerPoint Presentation Tip

I've shown you how to think through your entire presentation, from choosing a design to speaking to your audience. Here's a mind trick: never try to interpret the looks on your listeners' faces. Chances are, you're wrong. Just assume they're focused and taking notes.

You've done your best to create a professional PowerPoint presentation that will help your audience focus on the content and learn new things. The looks on their faces aren't doubt or confusion. It's focus! Well, d'oh! Obviously, you're the expert, and they're the learners. If you can get into this mindset, you can relax and perform at your best.

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Rate My PowerPoint

This tool will analyse some aspects of your presentation and give an overall score (Red, Amber or Green) for your presentation along with some hints and tips on specific improvements you could make.

It’s also worth checking out our 28 Great PowerPoint Presentation Tips article and some of the other Advice and Tips articles in our blog.

This tool is free to use and your presentation will not be stored on our system.  Just select you PowerPoint PPTX file below and give it a go!

Analysis Results for

There are many hints and tips to help improve your PowerPoint presentation, our popular blog 28 Great PowerPoint Presentation Tips expands on many of these. Below this tool looks at the some of these elements that could make an impact to your presentation.

The 6/6 rule states that you should have no more that 6 bullets per slide and no more than 6 words per bullet in order to keep your audience engaged. There are other forms of this rule the 7/7 and the 8/8 rule depending on how strict you want to be. The overriding principal is to try and keep the number of points on you page to a minimum and try to summarise them in the minum words. Short and sweet! There is a tendancy with presentations to cram lots of points and words on a slide making hard to read and un-engaging. Either try to split these long slides in several shorter ones or consider giving handouts to suplement the slideshow. Remember your audience should be listening not reading!

Presentation Length

Guy Kawasaki wrote that a presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points . He was talking about pitching to investors but this is fairly solid advice for any presentation. You might need to over-run the 20 minute rule in some circumstances (e.g. a university lecture) but could the additional time be better used for questions and answers?

Use of Media / Images

It is much more engaging to use images and or videos to enhance your presentation. A good picture can convey a great deal of meaning and makes the presentation more insteresting and engaging.

Readability

What is the smog readability score.

The SMOG grade is a measure of readability that estimates the years of education needed to understand a piece of writing. SMOG is an acronym for Simple Measure of Gobbledygook. So what does the SMOG score mean. Below is table that explains the different score breakdows

source: NHS

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Self-Assessment • 18 min read

How Good Are Your Presentation Skills?

Understanding your impact.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

How do you feel when you have to make a presentation? Are you well prepared and relaxed, confident that your performance will have the desired impact on your audience? new score

Or is the thought of standing on a podium, holding a microphone, enough to give you stage fright?

Enjoy it or not, presenting – in some form – is usually a part of business. Whether you get up in front of formal audiences on a regular basis, or you simply have to make your voice heard in a meeting, you're using presentation skills.

Many believe that good presenters are born, not made. This is simply not true . Sure, some people are more relaxed and comfortable speaking in front of others – but everyone can learn the skills and techniques they need to increase their level of confidence and performance when presenting.

From sales pitches to training lectures, good presentation and public speaking skills are key to many influential roles in today's business world. The good news about presenting is that you can improve with practice.

So do you have the skills you need to do a good job? And how effective are you when you have to "perform?" Take this short quiz to help you assess your skills.

Instructions

For each statement, click the button in the column that best describes you. Please answer questions as you actually are (rather than how you think you should be), and don't worry if some questions seem to score in the "wrong direction." When you are finished, please click the "Calculate My Total" button at the bottom of the test.

Becoming a Better Presenter

Effective presentations are a mixture of a variety of elements. You have to know what your audience wants. You need to prepare good, interesting, engaging content. You must be confident in presenting the material, you have to know how to manage your environment successfully, and you need to make sure that your message has maximum impact.

Balancing all four elements is no easy task. And, when combined with the natural anxiety often felt before giving presentations, it's no wonder that many people struggle with this skill. In fact, fear of public speaking is extremely common.

However, you don't have to remain fearful and stressed by the thought of giving a presentation. With the right tools and material, along with planning and preparation, you can present with energy and confidence.

Let's now look in detail at those four key elements of effective presentations:

• Understanding your audience.
• Preparing your content.
• Delivering confidently.
• Controlling the environment.

Understanding Your Audience

(Questions 2, 5, 9)

The success of most presentations is generally judged on how the audience responds. You may think you did a great job, but unless your audience agrees with you, that may not be the case. Before you even begin putting your PowerPoint slides together, the first thing you need to do is understand what your audience wants. Try following these three steps:

Determine who the members of the audience are.

Find out what they want and expect from your presentation. What do they need to learn? Do they have entrenched attitudes or interests that you need to respect? And what do they already know that you don't have to repeat?

Create an outline for your presentation, and ask for advance feedback on your proposed content.

When what you say is what your audience wants or needs to hear, then you'll probably receive positive reinforcement throughout your presentation. If you see nods and smiles, or hear murmurs of agreement, for example, then this will motivate you to keep going and do a great job.

When your audience is satisfied, it doesn't matter if your delivery wasn't absolutely perfect. The primary goal of the people listening to your presentation is to get the information they need. When that happens, you've done a good job. Of course, you want to do a great job, not just a good job – and that's where the rest of the tips can help.

Preparing Your Content

(Questions 6, 11, 13, 14)

The only way to satisfy your audience's needs and expectations is to deliver the content they want. That means understanding what to present, and how to present it. Bear in mind that if you give the right information in the wrong sequence, this may leave the audience confused, frustrated, or bored.

If you provide the information in a well-structured format, and you include various techniques to keep the audience engaged and interested, then they'll probably remember what you said – and they'll remember you.

There are a variety of ways to structure your content, depending on the type of presentation you'll give. Here are some principles that you can apply:

Identify a few key points -  To help the audience retain the messages you're giving them, use the chunking principle to organize your information into five to seven key points.

Don't include every detail -  Good presentations inspire the audience to learn more, and ask further statements to maximize their understanding of the issue.

Use an outline -  At the beginning, tell your audience what you intend to cover, and let them know what to expect. This helps build anticipation and interest from the start.

Start and end strongly -  Capture people's interest as soon as you begin, and leave them with a message they won't forget. It's tempting to put all of your effort into the main body of the presentation. However, if you don't get people's attention at the start, they'll probably lose interest, and not really hear the rest anyway.

Use examples -  Where possible, use lots of examples to support your points. A lecture is often the least interesting and engaging form of presentation. Look for ways to liven things up by telling stories, talking about real-life examples, and using metaphors to engage your audience fully.

A special type of presentation is one that seeks to persuade. Monroe's Motivated Sequence , consisting of five steps, gives you a framework for developing content for this kind of presentation:

1. Get the attention of your audience - Use an interesting 'hook' or opening point, like a shocking statistic. Be provocative and stimulating, not boring or calm.

2. Create a need - Convince the audience there's a problem, explain how it affects them – and persuade them that things need to change.

3. Define your solution - Explain what you think needs to be done.

4. Describe a detailed picture of success (or failure) - Give the audience a vision; something they can see, hear, taste, and touch.

5. Ask the audience to do something right away - Get the audience involved right from the start. Then it's usually much easier to keep them engaged and active in your cause.

To brush up on your skills of persuasion, look at The Rhetorical Triangle . This tool asks you to consider your communication from three perspectives: those of the writer, the audience, and the context. It's a method that builds credibility and ensures that your arguments are logical.

Delivering Confidently

(Questions 1, 4, 7, 10)

Even the best content can be ineffective if your presentation style contradicts or detracts from your message. Many people are nervous when they present, so this will probably affect their delivery. But it's the major distractions that you want to avoid. As you build confidence, you can gradually eliminate the small and unconstructive habits you may have. These tips may help you:

Practice to build confidence – Some people think that if you practice too much, your speech will sound rehearsed and less genuine. Don't necessarily memorize your presentation, but be so familiar with the content that you're able to speak fluently and comfortably, and adjust as necessary.

Be flexible – This is easier to do if you're comfortable with the material. Don't attempt to present something you just learned the previous night. You want to know your material well enough to answer statements. And, if you don't know something, just admit it, and commit to finding the answer.

Welcome statements from the audience – This is a sign that a presenter knows what he or she is talking about. It builds audience confidence, and people are much more likely to trust what you say, and respect your message.

Use slides and other visual aids – These can help you deliver a confident presentation. The key point here is to learn how much visual information to give the audience, and yet not distract them from what you're saying.

Keep your visuals simple and brief – Don't use too many pictures, charts, or graphs. Your slides should summarize or draw attention to one or two items each. And don't try to fit your whole presentation onto your slides. If the slides cover every single detail, then you've probably put too much information on them. Slides should give the overall message, and then the audience should know where to look for supporting evidence. Manage your stress – Confidence has a lot to do with managing your stress levels. If you feel particularly nervous and anxious, then those emotions will probably show. They're such strong feelings that you can easily become overwhelmed, which can affect your ability to perform effectively. A little nervousness is useful because it can build energy. But that energy may quickly turn negative if nerves build to the point where you can't control them.

If you have anxiety before a presentation, try some of these stress management tools:

Use physical relaxation techniques , like deep breathing and visualization, to calm your body and ease your tension.

Use imagery to help keep calm, and visualize yourself delivering a successful presentation.

Learn strategies to build your self-confidence in general. The more assured you are about yourself and your abilities, the better you'll feel when you get up in front of people, and say what you want to say.

When you present with confidence and authority, your audience will likely pay attention and react to you as someone who's worth listening to. So "pretend" if you need to, by turning your nervousness into creative and enthusiastic energy.

For other tips on delivering confidently, see Delivering Great Presentations , Speaking to an Audience , Managing Presentation Nerves , and our Skillbook Even Better Presentations .

Controlling the Environment

(Questions 3, 4, 8, 12)

While much of the outside environment is beyond your control, there are still some things you can do to reduce potential risks to your presentation.

Practice in the presentation room – This forces you to become familiar with the room and the equipment. It will not only build your confidence, but also help you identify sources of risk. Do you have trouble accessing your PowerPoint file? Does the microphone reach the places you want to walk? Can you move the podium? Are there stairs that might cause you to trip? These are the sorts of issues you may discover and resolve by doing one or two practice presentations.

Do your own setup – Don't leave this to other people. Even though you probably want to focus on numerous other details, it's a good idea not to delegate too much of the preparation to others. You need the hands-on experience to make sure nothing disastrous happens at the real event. Test your timing – When you practice, you also improve your chances of keeping to time. You get a good idea how long each part of the presentation will actually take, and this helps you plan how much time you'll have for statements and other audience interactions.

Members of the audience want you to respect their time. If you end your presentation on time or early, this can make a huge, positive impression on them. When speakers go over their allowed time, they may disrupt the whole schedule of the event and/or cause the audience unnecessary inconvenience. Be considerate, and stick to your agenda as closely as possible.

Presenting doesn't have to be scary, or something you seek to avoid. Find opportunities to practice the tips and techniques discussed above, and become more confident in your ability to present your ideas to an audience. We all have something important to say, and sometimes it takes more than a memo or report to communicate it. You owe it to yourself, and your organization, to develop the skills you need to present your ideas clearly, purposefully, engagingly, and confidently.

This assessment has not been validated and is intended for illustrative purposes only. It is just one of many that help you evaluate your abilities in a wide range of important career skills.

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Trina Mattingly

Hello, This was really an excellent overview with concise instructions, using clear communication methods. I found the article to be captivating and poignant. Thank You

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Basic tasks for creating a PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint presentations work like slide shows. To convey a message or a story, you break it down into slides. Think of each slide as a blank canvas for the pictures and words that help you tell your story.

Choose a theme

When you open PowerPoint, you’ll see some built-in themes and templates . A theme is a slide design that contains matching colors, fonts, and special effects like shadows, reflections, and more.

On the File tab of the Ribbon, select New , and then choose a theme.

PowerPoint shows you a preview of the theme, with four color variations to choose from on the right side.

Click Create , or pick a color variation and then click Create .

Read more: Use or create themes in PowerPoint

Insert a new slide

On the Home tab, click the bottom half of  New Slide , and pick a slide layout.

Read more: Add, rearrange, and delete slides .

Save your presentation

On the File tab, choose Save .

Pick or browse to a folder.

In the File name box, type a name for your presentation, and then choose Save .

Note:  If you frequently save files to a certain folder, you can ‘pin’ the path so that it is always available (as shown below).

Tip:  Save your work as you go. Press Ctrl+S often or save the file to OneDrive and let AutoSave take care of it for you. 

Read more: Save your presentation file

Select a text placeholder, and begin typing.

Format your text

Select the text.

Under Drawing Tools , choose Format .

Do one of the following:

To change the color of your text, choose Text Fill , and then choose a color.

To change the outline color of your text, choose Text Outline , and then choose a color.

To apply a shadow, reflection, glow, bevel, 3-D rotation, a transform, choose Text Effects , and then choose the effect you want.

Change the fonts

Change the color of text on a slide

Add bullets or numbers to text

Format text as superscript or subscript

Add pictures

On the Insert tab, select Pictures , then do one of the following:

To insert a picture that is saved on your local drive or an internal server, choose This Device , browse for the picture, and then choose Insert .

(For Microsoft 365 subscribers) To insert a picture from our library, choose Stock Images , browse for a picture, select it and choose Insert .

To insert a picture from the web, choose Online Pictures , and use the search box to find a picture. Choose a picture, and then click Insert .

You can add shapes to illustrate your slide. 

On the Insert tab, select Shapes , and then select a shape from the menu that appears.

In the slide area, click and drag to draw the shape.

Select the Format or Shape Format tab on the ribbon. Open the Shape Styles gallery to quickly add a color and style (including shading) to the selected shape.

Add speaker notes

Slides are best when you don’t cram in too much information. You can put helpful facts and notes in the speaker notes, and refer to them as you present.

Click inside the Notes pane below the slide, and begin typing your notes.

Add speaker notes to your slides

Print slides with or without speaker notes

Give your presentation

On the Slide Show tab, do one of the following:

To start the presentation at the first slide, in the Start Slide Show group, click From Beginning .

If you’re not at the first slide and want to start from where you are, click From Current Slide .

If you need to present to people who are not where you are, click Present Online to set up a presentation on the web, and then choose one of the following options:

Broadcast your PowerPoint presentation online to a remote audience

View your speaker notes as you deliver your slide show.

Get out of Slide Show view

To get out of Slide Show view at any time, on the keyboard, press Esc .

You can quickly apply a theme when you're starting a new presentation:

On the File tab, click New .

Select a theme.

Read more:  Apply a design theme to your presentation

In the slide thumbnail pane on the left, select the slide that you want your new slide to follow.

On the Home tab, select the lower half of  New Slide .

From the menu, select the layout that you want for your new slide.

Your new slide is inserted, and you can click inside a placeholder to begin adding content.

Learn more about slide layouts

Read more: Add, rearrange, and delete slides

PowerPoint for the web automatically saves your work to your OneDrive, in the cloud.

To change the name of the automatically saved file:

In the title bar, click the file name.

In the File Name box, enter the name you want to apply to the file.

If you want to change the cloud storage location, at the right end of the Location box, click the arrow symbol, then navigate to the folder you want, then select Move here .

On the Home tab, use the Font options:

Select from other formatting options such as Bold , Italic , Underline , Strikethrough , Subscript , and Superscript .

On the  Insert  tab, select  Pictures .

From the menu, select where you want to insert the picture from:

Browse to the image you want, select it, then select Insert . 

After the image is inserted on the slide, you can select it and drag to reposition it, and you can select and drag a corner handle to resize the image. 

On the slide canvas, click and drag to draw the shape.

Select the Shape tab on the ribbon. Open the Shape Styles gallery to quickly add a color and style (including shading) to the selected shape.

A horizontal Notes pane appears at the bottom of the window, below the slide.

Click in the pane, then enter text. 

On the  Slide Show  tab, select  Play From Beginning .

To navigate through the slides, simply click the mouse or press the spacebar.

Tip:  You can also use the forward and back arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the slide show.

Read more:  Present your slide show

Stop a slide show

To get out of Slide Show view at any time, on the keyboard, press Esc.

The full-screen slide show will close, and you will be returned to the editing view of the file.

Tips for creating an effective presentation

Consider the following tips to keep your audience interested.

Minimize the number of slides

To maintain a clear message and to keep your audience attentive and interested, keep the number of slides in your presentation to a minimum.

Choose an audience-friendly font size

The audience must be able to read your slides from a distance. Generally speaking, a font size smaller than 30 might be too difficult for the audience to see.

Keep your slide text simple

You want your audience to listen to you present your information, instead of reading the screen. Use bullets or short sentences, and try to keep each item to one line.

Some projectors crop slides at the edges, so that long sentences might be cropped.

Use visuals to help express your message

Pictures, charts, graphs, and SmartArt graphics provide visual cues for your audience to remember. Add meaningful art to complement the text and messaging on your slides.

As with text, however, avoid including too many visual aids on your slide.

Make labels for charts and graphs understandable

Use only enough text to make label elements in a chart or graph comprehensible.

Apply subtle, consistent slide backgrounds

Choose an appealing, consistent template or theme that is not too eye-catching. You don't want the background or design to detract from your message.

However, you also want to provide a contrast between the background color and text color. The built-in themes in PowerPoint set the contrast between a light background with dark colored text or dark background with light colored text.

For more information about how to use themes, see Apply a theme to add color and style to your presentation .

Check the spelling and grammar

To earn and maintain the respect of your audience, always check the spelling and grammar in your presentation .

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Communication Compendium

How to assess your own presentation skills

A list of questions from a presentation skills coach.

Watching a recording of yourself giving a presentation is uncomfortable. So much so that most of us never do it. Instead, we assess ourselves based on how we feel coming out of that presentation and how many people give us the canned “That was great!”

The result?

Little to no improvement in your skills.

One reason it can be so uncomfortable to watch a recording of yourself presenting is that you don’t have an objective assessment process. So, instead of assessing your skills, you criticize yourself on a personal level.

Today, I want to share a few of the questions I ask when assessing my clients’ presentation skills.

I hope these questions encourage you to watch your recordings and help you create a clear action plan coming out of those review sessions.

10 Questions you should ask when assessing your presentation skills:

How many seconds/minutes was I into my presentation before I started delivering value to my audience?

Within the first five minutes of my presentation, did I tell my audience exactly what I wanted them to know, be able to do, or feel by the end of my presentation?

Within the first five minutes of my presentation, did I tell my audience when and how they could participate?

What specifically did I do (body language, voice) or say (words) to create and maintain a connection with my audience throughout my presentation?

How much time did I spend engaging directly with the people in my audience vs. my content (referring to my notes, looking at my slides, etc.)?

In what ways did I observe and respond to my audience in real time? Another way to ask this… What adjustments did I make to my delivery style based on what I was noticing or hearing from my audience?

What specific tools or strategies did I use to facilitate understanding? (message structure, stories, analogies, various media types, asking audience questions, etc.)

How often did I deliberately pause in silence with the intention of giving my audience space to connect with and digest the point I was making?

If I moved as I was presenting, (1) was I aware I was moving, and (2) did I have a legitimate reason for doing so?

At the end of my presentation, did I clearly summarize my most important points and recommend to my audience what they can/should do with this information?

Did you know…

I’m now offering complimentary assessments to new clients. If you’re interested, click here to learn more .

If you enjoyed this article, please hit the ❤️ button and share it with someone you know who gives presentations.

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

If you want to get notified each time I publish an article, enter your email below to subscribe to the Communication Compendium 👇

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How to Present to an Audience That Knows More Than You

• Deborah Grayson Riegel

Lean into being a facilitator — not an expert.

What happens when you have to give a presentation to an audience that might have some professionals who have more expertise on the topic than you do? While it can be intimidating, it can also be an opportunity to leverage their deep and diverse expertise in service of the group’s learning. And it’s an opportunity to exercise some intellectual humility, which includes having respect for other viewpoints, not being intellectually overconfident, separating your ego from your intellect, and being willing to revise your own viewpoint — especially in the face of new information. This article offers several tips for how you might approach a roomful of experts, including how to invite them into the discussion without allowing them to completely take over, as well as how to pivot on the proposed topic when necessary.

I was five years into my executive coaching practice when I was invited to lead a workshop on “Coaching Skills for Human Resource Leaders” at a global conference. As the room filled up with participants, I identified a few colleagues who had already been coaching professionally for more than a decade. I felt self-doubt start to kick in: Why were they even here? What did they come to learn? Why do they want to hear from me?

• Deborah Grayson Riegel is a professional speaker and facilitator, as well as a communication and presentation skills coach. She teaches leadership communication at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and has taught for Wharton Business School, Columbia Business School’s Women in Leadership Program, and Peking University’s International MBA Program. She is the author of Overcoming Overthinking: 36 Ways to Tame Anxiety for Work, School, and Life and the best-selling Go To Help: 31 Strategies to Offer, Ask for, and Accept Help .

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