During your time at university, you may be expected to deliver a presentation as part of your course assessment. This might be a pre-recorded presentation or a face-to-face presentation to your tutors and/or peers. For many students, delivering a presentation can be a challenging experience (and this is completely normal!), but by giving yourself plenty of time for preparation and practise, you can learn how to present with confidence.
Presentation skills
Explore the following sections to learn more about how you can prepare, deliver and reflect on your presentation and public speaking skills.
Tools for presenting
PowerPoint is the most commonly used tool for creating and delivering presentations. Check out our LinkedIn Learning Presentations playlist to get started with PowerPoint, or to learn more about the functionality of the program.
PowerPoint also has a really useful rehearse with Speaker Coach function built in that evaluates your pace, pitch, use of filler words, informal speech, euphemisms and culturally sensitive terms. It can also detects when you’re being overly wordy or simply reading the text on a slide. After each rehearsal you get a full report which summarises your delivery and provides recommendations for improvements.
Access your module guidelines and check with your tutor if anything is unclear.
Make sure to check your learning outcomes and ensure you plan to cover them all.
Plan your presentation as you would any other assignment.
Ensure you give yourself enough time to carry out academic reading / research to produce your content.
Check whether you need to provide a handout.
Check your time limit and be sure to stick to this.
Keep the design simple if using a PowerPoint! Carefully consider whether using animations or images is necessary and whether your layout, font size and style is clear for your audience.
If possible, visit the room you will be delivering in to familiarise yourself with the space. You may even be able to practice in the room itself, or why not book a room in Catalyst to practise in.
Prepare well, physically and mentally, the day and night before – try and get a good night’s sleep.
Watch TED talks for inspiration, Amy Cuddy has a particularly good talk on power posing.