Recently during the college inspection for autonomous university, we all realized the importance of giving a powerful and effective PowerPoint presentation. Here are some of the observations and suggestions to make our presentation effective.
1. Plan carefully :- Plan the number of slides and content of the slides carefully. Wrong grammar and bad spellings create poor impression. Do your research, know your audience, time your presentation well, Practice your presentation and speak comfortably and clearly. Make sure your script follows good storytelling conventions: give it a beginning, middle, and end; have a clear arc that builds towards some sort of climax; make your audience appreciate each slide but be anxious to find out what’s next.
At any given moment, what should be on the screen is the thing you’re talking about. Our audience will almost instantly read every slide as soon as it’s displayed; if you have the next four points you plan to make up there, they’ll be three steps ahead of you, waiting for you to catch up rather than listening with interest to the point you’re making.
Plan your presentation so just one new point is displayed at any given moment. Bullet points can be revealed one at a time as you reach them. Charts can be put on the next slide to be referenced when you get to the data the chart displays. Your job as presenter is to control the flow of information so that you and your audience stay in sync.
2. Use design templates, Standardize position, colors and styles , Include only necessary information ,Limit the information to essentials, Content should be self-evident, Use colors that contrast ,Be consistent with effects, transitions and animation and remember that too many slides can lose your audience.
3. Text guidelines- Generally no more than 6 words a line, also no more than 6 lines a slide. Avoid long sentences. Your slides are the illustrations for your presentation, not the presentation itself. Larger font indicates more important information, Font size generally ranges from 18 to 48 point, Be sure text contrasts with background, Fancy fonts can be hard to read, Words in all capital letters also are hard to read, Avoid abbreviations and acronyms and limit punctuation marks.
4. Put dark text on a light background. Again, this is easiest to read. If you must use a dark background ,Align text left or right. Centered text is harder to read and looks amateurish. Line up all your text to a right-hand or left-hand baseline – it will look better and be easier to follow.
Avoid clutter. A headline, a few bullet points, maybe an image – anything more than that and you risk losing your audience as they sort it all out.
5. Think outside the screen. Remember, the slides on the screen are only part of the presentation and not the main part. Even though you’re liable to be presenting in a darkened room, give some thought to your own presentation manner – how you hold yourself, what you wear, how you move around the room. You are the focus when you’re presenting, no matter how interesting your slides are. Finally save your presentation in your pen drive. Power Point presentations can also saved in HTML format and inserted in a Web page.