The presentation of a thesis or terminal project is a formal oral examination open to the public. As scary as that sentence might seem, you have been working with your topic for a year before you defend, so have confidence in your knowledge of your subject. You should know it better than the professors in the audience. Present the substance you have developed and add professional polish with a well-designed presentation and personal appearance. What to Expect With shuffling between the different stages, the whole event takes about an hour. You get to wait in the hall during the faculty deliberation until your the chair of your committee emerges to talk to you about the outcome of the examination and the refinements you will need to make to finish your project. What Your Presentation Should Contain Students frequently declare there is no way they can present everything about their projects in a 20-minute presentation. You are correct, but you still face the challenge of both presenting the most important points and connecting them to relate the story of your findings. Dissertation defenses are often confined to the same amount of time, and they represent the presentation of multiple years of full-time research effort. Pare down and identify the most important points. Do not waste time by telling us you do not have enough time to get into something. Just be efficient and allocate wisely.
Allocation of space in a defense presentation heavily depends on the type of project tackled. The following allocation recommendations are meant for guidance only. You know better what is most important in your presentation.
Your defense presentation will focus on what you have done as original work, which means the entirety of your fall presentation needs to condense down to somewhere around eight minutes. Because you are going so quickly through your literature review, there has been a tendency in the past to leave off references. Your audience still needs to know the sources of your citations and their biases (advocacy, research, government, and so forth).
Giving Yourself the Edge CONCLUDE!!! You must have a conclusion section to your presentation; if you do not, you will see the faculty jump on you like piranha. Even among the majority of people, who create conclusion sections, few people actually create conlcusions. Many slides simply summarize findings without reaching as far as a conclusion. Yes, your conclusion should highlight the most important findings, but it also needs to conclude.
How do you make conclusions? Get a piece of paper and write your key findings at the top. Below them, write “And therefore…” and “So what?” Keep your pen moving. The key findings and whatever you write below those phrases belong in your conclusion.
For example, I might conduct research on emissions. I can summarize from the literature that nitrous oxides are linked to ground-level ozone. I can point to my primary research finding that vehicles emit nitrous oxides. Therefore? Measures that reduce auto emissions can reduce contributions to ground-level ozone. So what? The public realm should further develop short-range emissions controls for vehicles and long-range initiatives such as transit-oriented development to affect mode split.
How You Should Prepare Your target audience is an educated person who is not part of your specialization and did not attend the presentation of your literature review. You need to define terms; avoid acronyms and jargon. You should not assume your audience knows the importance of legislation and planning movements. Shun phrases like “As I told you last fall” and “Everyone here knows about this act, so I won’t get into it.” You will do well to have a friend from outside your field look at your presentation and ask questions because you are now so close to your topic that you probably do not know when you are speaking in code.
PRACTICE!!! You should make it through your presentation at least three times at home and know the duration of your presentation down to the minute.
SLEEP!!! The presentation is the part that holds your focus before you walk in the room, but the faculty and other audience members will be asking you questions meant to get you to think on your feet and outside your presentation. Frequently, these questions relate to the applicability of your findings in other situations or the influence of other factors. In other words, the questions are intended to take the focus away from what you have done and learned, moving you to ideas beyond the project that could not have been reached without first doing your project. You need to have your brain with you in the defense, so get a full night of sleep and treat yourself healthily.
You need no luck because you have the knowledge and the skill, so best wishes!!!
The basic components of the oral defense are:
You have the floor during your presentation. Only clarification questions should come from the audience, so if you are perfectly clear, you can theoretically control the moment entirely.
Here is a deep secret that can put you to the head of the class if you conquer it: the biggest gaping flaw in most defense presentations comes in the final slides. Many people work so hard on the process of analysis or design that they never take time to step back and ask themselves what it all means.
Elements: