Tutorial on Creating an Assertion-Evidence Presentation
Increased Audience Understanding, Improved Speaker Confidence

Step 1. Understand why following PowerPoint's defaults pulls down scientific presentations.
From an audience’s perspective, many scientific presentations suffer because the talks are unfocused. This lack of focus leads to much noise, which reduces the understanding by the audience. Much of the problem arises from speakers following PowerPoint’s defaults and building their talks on phrase headlines supported by bulleted lists. The film to the right presents psychology research that explains why PowerPoint's defaults are so weak. 

​Step 2. Learn key principles of assertion-evidence approach. 

1. Build your talk on messages (not topics). 
2. Support these messages with visual evidence (not bullet lists).
3. Explain this evidence by fashioning words on the spot. 

A talk built on key messages is more focused than a talk built on topics. Moreover, audiences understand visual evidence more readily than they do bullet lists. Third, a speaker who fashions sentences on the spot (after planning and practice) is much more engaging and appears much more confident than a speaker who reads bullet lists. Using these principles, the assertion-evidence structure makes your presentation more focused and better understood. In addition, you will project more confidence. For evidence of these claims, please see our research page.

Step 3. Download an assertion-evidence template to create slides
​for your next talk.
Before opening our PowerPoint template on your computer, you should first write down the main messages on your next talk (please note that a message is a complete sentence). These messages should tell a coherent and compelling story about your work. Then using one of our templates, have each message serve as a sentence headline for the slides. Support those headlines with visual evidence and place secondary details into the notes pages of the slides. For instructions on how to use one of the templates, please see Christine Haas's tutorial on the lower right.