Create and Assess Your Slides

strategies, techniques, and tools for strong slide design, and maximum presentation quality.

Prior to delivering a talk, it is important to prepare and set yourself up for success with a strong slide deck. Depending on the nature of your presentation, the type of speaking engagement, your institution, and other factors and considerations, there are different kinds of approaches and priorities when it comes to slide design. This section includes some tips that will assist you with designing your slides to prepare for your presentation.

Slides drive home the main ideas of your research and play an important role to deliver a strong presentation. After reviewing the Fundamentals of Slide Design, use these resources to create and assess your slides to ensure that you have considered and included important components that make for an effective presentation.

Resources

Qualities of Strong Slide Design

Use this self-assessment checklist to design and review your slides. Check all boxes that incorporate key qualities of strong slide design. In addition to focusing on the style, typography, and layout, consider thinking about your use of visuals and color along with other elements to enhance the design of your slides.

 

Checklist for

Assertion-Evidence Slides

The assertion-evidence slide structure is one effective technique to designing effective slides. In conjunction with the webinar on “Better Than Bullets: Transforming Slide Design” by Melissa Marshall, this checklist was developed as a resource for assertion-evidence slides but can be applied more generally to other types of slide designs. Consider the style, typography, and layout of your slides and what it might look like to incorporate these elements with an assertion-evidence slide structure in mind.

Research Presentation Rubric

The format of research presentations can vary across and within disciplines. Use this rubric to identify and assess elements of research presentations, including delivery strategies and slide design. This resource focuses on research presentations but may be useful beyond. 

 

Templates and Examples for

Assertion-Evidence Slides

Check out tips, templates, layout suggestions, and other examples of assertion-evidence slides on Rethinking Presentations in Science and Engineering by Michael Alley, MS, MFA, from Pennsylvania State University. Download the Assertion Evidence Presention template for Microsoft PowerPoint.

Additional Resources

Create and Deliver Standout Technical Presentations

Melissa Marshall leads a comprehensive course on LinkedIn Learning about creating strong scientific and technical presentations in ways that are not only clear and understandable, but also memorable and compelling.

Present Your Science

Melissa Marshall’s website explores how speakers can transform the way they present their research.

Want to learn more about how to strengthen your presentation skills?

Visit the Delivery Authentically page for more information!