Free 1-Hour Workshop for Summer REU Students: Making a Research Presentation (13 July 2023)

The assertion-evidence approach is effective

The What. The assertion-evidence approach calls on you to build your talks on messages, not topics. In this approach, you support those messages with visual evidence, not bulleted lists. Moreover, to explain that evidence, you fashion sentences on the spot. Although requiring more effort, this assertion-evidence approach leads to higher understanding by the audience, as evidenced by our ​tests of audience comprehension. In addition, our students claim that using the assertion-evidence approach helps them project more confidence because they show ownership of the content through explaining visual evidence. ​
PowerPoint's defaults are weak

PowerPoint's defaults lead presenters to create slides that are ineffective for presentations in engineering and science. For one thing, the bullet-list default in the body leads users to write too much text. In addition, that default leads to cluttered slides because the bullet list crowds the graphics. Moreover, the space taken by the bullet lists reduces the size of graphics, leading to call-outs that are too small to read. The assertion-evidence approach helps you overcome the weak defaults of PowerPoint.

Build talks on messages,
not topics

Building your talks on messages, rather than
phrase ​topics (as most people do), will make your presentations more focused.

Support messages with
​visuals, not bullets

Most speakers project too many words, which overloads the audience. However, audiences can process visual evidence while listening. 

Explain visuals by forming sentences on the spot

​The best speakers fashion sentences on the spot, but do so after planning and practice. Delivering in this way projects much more confidence.

Use slides only when they serve
​a presentation

Audiences have specific expectations for the structure of a scientific presentation  

Christine Haas, a professional presentations instructor, discusses how to incorporate your own presentation into an assertion-evidence template.

Marie Roald, a PhD student in computer science from Simula Research Laboratory, applies the assertion-evidence approach to a mathematical subject. Her first main point provides an excellent example to define a tensor.

Kirby Perosa, a graduating senior in mechanical engineering from Penn State, discusses how to overcome resistance to the assertion-evidence approach that occurs for students giving internship presentations at companies. As an example, Kirby uses slides from her successful internship presentation at John Deere.

Model REU Presentation: Gabrielle Conard at NASA Langley. This talk is an excellent example not only of a REU project but also of a clear, assertion-evidence presentation about a complex topic.