Information for presenters

Thank you for agreeing to present your research in our Research-based Digitalization seminar series! We have collected some resources in this page to help you adapt your presentation for this forum and its audience.

Please let us know if you have any comments or questions regarding this page. This is work in progress and your feedback is welcome!

The process ahead

Here are roughly the steps we will go through for you to deliver your talk:

  • You go through this document to get to know the audience and see what has been presented before.
  • You agree to give a talk, and find a slot for your talk (take a look at our calendar and talk to us).
  • You agree with us about the details of the talk, e.g. if you don’t want the talk to be recorded and made available online.
  • You send us a title and an abstract.
  • We make a web page for your talk and we disseminate and invite people.
  • You give the talk.
  • We update the web page with links to online videos, material such as your slides and other background sources.

Audience

The audience for the webinars is here to learn something that they can apply to their problems and their research.

We invite academics from NTNU and other universities, and practitioners from NAV and HMN, municipalities, and industry. These can be both IT and non-IT people. They are in general interested in digitalization and related methods. It is therefore important to explain technical/theoretical terms pedagogically in the beginning of your presentation.

Take a look at our earlier talks to see what types of topics have been presented.

Tips and tricks for good presentations

Here are some tips that we have found useful to apply in order to make a connection with the audience.

Please keep your presentation to maximum 20 minutes, to allow for ten minutes of questions and answers.

Introduce yourself, and only yourself!

  • Keep it short. You don’t need to state everything about your background or research project/collaborators/supervisors etc.
  • Briefly state your position and relevant background (education and/or previous working experience).

Set the agenda for the presentation, and reveal important things up front.

  • Avoid IMRAD structuring (introduction, methods, results and discussion). Begin by stating your main message, i.e. what is the problem and how did you address it, up front.
  • Describe the problem your research tries to solve, preferably through an example from real world.
  • Up front, state the objective of your research, and your research questions (your research methods can be mentioned, but don’t spend too much time here).
  • Present an overview of your talk.

Research background/state-of-the-art

  • Providing concrete examples from “the real world” can contextualize research and illustrate the importance of your research.
  • Listing long list of researchers and references to literature will normally not be interesting. Instead, focus on concepts and research results and present them in a pedagogical manner.
  • When mentioning other research, focus on their findings within the specific context and not on theoretical framework or vague assertions.

Slides

  • Limit unnecessary pictures. They can often be distracting.
  • Illustrations and figures can be more helpful for visual learners than a lot of text.
  • If presentations are recorded, use less text per slide and use bullet points as reminders while focusing more on the oral presentation of your research.
  • If presentations are not recorded, add enough text for slides to be understandable when shared.

End the presentation with a concrete call to action!

This can include:

  • Asking for contact information.
  • Asking for feedback on your research project.
  • Telling the audience about another future workshop/presentation/event.