Research talk –
what’s the point?
How to design your
research talk
Part of a 6-credit Directed
Studies project should always be a research talk or seminar. A talk is also
quite acceptable for 3-credit projects, but usually is not a requirement. The
purpose of a talk is to give the student a chance to demonstrate not only
“talk-making” skills (visuals, a planned speech), but also the capacity for on-the-spot
thinking: how well can the student respond to unanticipated questions? can the
student suggest appropriate future directions for research in the topic area?
can the student incorporate new information or ideas into her/his existing
understanding? In science, you must develop a facility for communicating the
knowledge-base in your field, and only with practice can you become a
convincing communicator of ideas.
Students frequently balk at the
idea of giving a talk for one or more of several reasons: (1) because they feel
inadequately knowledgeable in general, or are afraid that members of the
audience will be more knowledgeable; (2) because they are unaccustomed to
public speaking, and feel too nervous to give a clear presentation; or (3) because
they lack confidence in the basis of the project itself, or of the methods used
therein. It is difficult to counter these reasons to the personal satisfaction
of the typical student! If you feel they are true, then you feel they are true,
irrespective of the opinions of others. I would point out the following, in the
same numeric order as above: (1) apart from the supervisor (and perhaps even
including the supervisor!), who is more likely to be knowledgeable than the
student who has been studying the topic for months?; (2) practice and a
well-constructed script or outline usually defeats nervousness, and in any
event nervousness cannot be conquered unless faced squarely; and (3), provided
that the student and supervisor have been collaborating effectively during the
project, why should the nature of the project be weak? It is the business of
the supervisor to ensure that the student is doing good and worthwhile work. So
do a talk – every talk you do will make the (inevitable) next talk that
much easier.
A useful length for a
talk would be 20-30 minutes, followed by probably 10-20 minutes of questions
and discussion. A talk using hand-drawn or photocopied overhead transparencies
is perfectly acceptable (easy and flexible when looking for a talk venue), but
PowerPoint projection can be arranged with adequate lead-time. No amount of
presentation technology can compensate for a poorly-structured talk, so rather
than expending effort on making a presentation “look pretty”, the student is
much better advised to make it “make sense”.
An audience of 5-20
people is a must. The student may of course invite friends or fellow students,
and the convenor(s) of the talk will endeavour to make up numbers by inviting
upper-level undergraduate students with an interest in biology. Usually the
talk is also advertised informally ahead of time for general attendees. The
makeup of the audience is not too critical, since the talk should be presented
in such a way that expert knowledge, and detailed understanding of the
specifics of the project’s design, are not necessary. An audience with some
level of scientific expertise and experience will, however, be able to provide
somewhat more wide-ranging constructive criticism.
Start at the end. Decide
first what the most interesting conclusions were in your research, and use
those as the starting-point for planning the talk. This way you will know where
you’re going as you plan what to say.
Don’t worry about presenting
“everything”. Your audience may not need to know every tiny detail you
learned while working on your project. In fact, if you try to present that much
detail, you will undoubtedly lose your audience. Work backward from the
conclusions you wish to highlight, and decide how much background information
you need to provide in order to give those conclusions a context.
Tell a story. If the
parts of your talk hang together and make sense as a unit, it will be easier
for the audience to understand it… and one main purpose of a talk is to elicit
interesting questions from the listeners, so you can use their ideas to enhance
your understanding. If the research was carried out in an interesting field
location, make the talk in part a travelogue, perhaps even making fun of
mishaps you experienced along the way. If the project claims to resolve some
controversial theoretical issues, play up the social-conflict side and the
history.
Don’t overwhelm the audience.
You may be able to make a lot of sense of a page of small-font text you’ve
written, or an array of half a dozen graphs on a single slide… but others
will not! One clearly-labelled graph at a time on a page, or perhaps
two closely-related graphs… or a series of short phrases in a list, written in
a large clear font… these are much more digestible. Diagrams and maps are often
useful, as long as labeling and purpose are plain.
A talk based on a critical
review of literature must not become a group-reading-aloud exercise.
Avoid posting long quotes, and instead distill the ideas to meaningful summary
phrases, so a useful set of information can be given readably. For instance,
consider a topic with an introductory slide something like this:
Grouping
in white-sided dolphins Delphinapterus leucas: Why?
Idea 1
– avoiding predation
(Known
to use group defence, and
to
“tell” each other about danger.)
Idea 2
– finding food
(Some
evidence for better efficiency
of
exploiting large schools of fish.)
Idea 3
– finding mates
(Obviously
easier in a group, but even
non-breeders
are tolerated.)
You could perhaps
append for each idea the main claimant(s), then you could easily discuss many
aspects, problems, drawbacks, and interactions of the ideas while using the one
slide as a backdrop to keep the audience oriented.
An obvious next step after this
slide would be a slide headed up with “Idea 1…”, then an outline of how
to test it, and a slide of results… followed by a slide of “Idea 2…” and
how to test it, and a slide of results, and so forth. At the end, a summary
slide might show the three ideas in a table, with a “box-score” of how well
they stack up in the face of the evidence, allowing you to evaluate their
relative strengths.
Be prepared to answer both
“missing-context-” and “further-thoughts-”types of questions. Take once
more the example mentioned above. Some audience members will ask questions
primarily about things they missed (what time of day you made observations, how
many animals were in a group, etc.), but others will ask more searching
things (how do white-sided dolphins compare to bottlenosed, do the animals
behave similarly in captivity and in the field). Don’t fear difficult
questions, but at the same time don’t pretend to have a ready answer for
everything. Difficult questions may profitably be thrown open for general
discussion, a step which won’t make you look ignorant but rather shows that
you’re interested in gathering alternative views, while a glib “answer”
(BS-ing, if you’ll allow the vulgarity) will most often be seen for what it is,
even by a relatively unsophisticated audience.
Use the talk and
questions/discussion as an opportunity. No one knows everything, and if you
are serious about a career in research you will quickly realize that learning
comes from many sources. Be ready to note questions, and keep a record of
interesting points raised, and it may be useful information to follow up later.
Most well-written research articles end with either explicit, or implied,
suggestions for further research, and there’s every reason to think that
feedback in a talk can help you to assemble such suggestions, even if you
hadn’t formulated any in detail before the talk.