How To Be Well-Prepared For A Dissertation Defense

When studying at university or any other institutions related to higher education, you may be required to write a dissertation. As part of your dissertation you may be required to take part in a dissertation defence. Essentially, this will involve preparing and giving a presentation related to the topic or subject that you’re studying.

Assuming that your essay will be written by you as an individual - as opposed to being a group effort - then your presentation will be performed on your own, usually in front of a commission - who will be reviewing the work - as well as potentially some of your fellow students, and possibly even other members of the public.

Creating your dissertation defence and maximising audience concentration

In order to produce a presentation will most likely need to use some form of computer software, such as PowerPoint. When creating the presentation you will have to include a number of different slides, each of which will provide relevant information related to what you are talking about. Rather than trying to cram too much information on to each slide, it is a good idea to write no more than a few sentences per slide. This will help the audience to be to see and read each slide with greater clarity.

As well as avoiding the temptation to cram too much information on each slide, it is a good idea to ensure that any information on the slide is directly relevant to what you’re talking about time. In order to do this, you can include sentences or paragraphs which you can display individually on each slide. For example, supposing you had three paragraphs of information, you may display the first one whilst talking about it, without displaying the other two paragraphs until you are ready to talk about them. You can then introduce them individually when you need to.

Another good tip is to use blank slides where necessary, so as to ensure that the audience is concentrating on what you’re saying. If you have a slide for the information on a projector screen behind you whilst you are trying to carry out your presentation, then it is easy for audience members to be distracted by the words on the screen, as opposed to listening to what you are actually saying.

Essentially, you want to maximise the concentration that you receive from your audience, by minimising any distractions that your presentation could otherwise cause.