Most Effective Dissertation Proposal Presentation Tips
Only a few select university students have the willpower and talent to stay in the program long enough to present a dissertation proposal, so the panel will likely expect high quality work and evidence of advanced preparation from you and your team. It can be stressful at first, but remember that the panel likely already thinks highly of you for being where you are. With that in mind and these fifteen tips, your dissertation proposal will be clean, painless, and effective.
- Meet up with your team ahead of time to make sure your presentation is smooth and free of awkward transitions. This is not something that can be done over the chat box in Google Slides.
- Use bullet points in your presentation. Having walls of text on a slide will make the panel assume you’re using complexity to obscure an insecurity you have over your thesis.
- Master the section you’re presenting on. Know the ins and outs of your section of the presentation, including the inferred parts that won’t be on the screen.
- Before you present, have either a friend or yourself come up with questions that you’d be responsible to ask. Either change the presentation to answer these questions beforehand, or make sure that you can answer these questions with confidence.
- The night before you present, put everything you need in a case by the door, including appendices and references, either in paper form or digitally. Paper form, of course, has less variability though it may be harder to organize.
- Dress for the occasion. By standing tall and dressing slim, the panel will get an impression of confidence from you before you even open your mouth.
- Make sure you wear a nametag, for when the panel asks you questions on your section of the presentation.
- Be on time. This one is self explanatory, but you don’t want to be the one that forces your team to keep the panel waiting.
- Be animated and display confidence. Standing in one place and talking quietly implies insecurity, which is correlative to a weak thesis.
- Don’t say the words “like” or “um” as filler, for the same reason as number 9.
- Don’t go beyond a thirty minute presentation. You don’t want the panel to lose interest in your topic.
- Accept that there may be some faults with your presentation.
- As a follow up to number 12, don’t take anything the panel says personally. Being confident implies a strong thesis, but getting angry or defensive may be interpreted as a display of insecurity.
- Revise accordingly, don’t be stubborn.
- Have a classmate record the presentation to catch details you might have missed while on the spot.