Defense

How to present your work?

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

August 20, 2024

Opening remarks

Motivation

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Unknown, often attributed to Mark Twain

Introduction

Basics

If your paper is accepted to be presented at an conference, you need to deliver an oral presentation of your work.

If you want to obtain a university degree, you have to defend your thesis, usually in front of two or more examiners and possibly the interested public.

Both run very similarly:

You give your presentation (usually with slides)
The committee and/or the public will ask questions about your research after you finished your presentation

Tipps to prepare

Here are a few tips on how to prepare for your thesis defense.

Tell a convincing story
Design high-quality slides
Anticipate questions and prepare for them
Have a backup plan

Tell a convincing story

You can’t present all you have done—tell a convincing story that portraits your research well and leave room for questions
Do not plan for more then 1 slide per 2 minutes, rather less
It’s a scientific presentation, so don’t forget good practices (e.g., references)
Prepare properly, practice your talk and make sure it fits the time limitations, you know your slides and you have opening and closing statements prepared

Design high-quality slides (Hyton, n.d.)

Do not plan for ideal conditions, make sure that everyone can see and read the contents
Avoid fancy backgrounds on your slides
Use readable typography (sans-serif, appropriate weight)
Don’t overload your slides (e.g., use only the upper two thirds of the slides, try to use not text at all)
Put page numbers on your slides

Anticipate questions and prepare for them

Sit at other defenses of your supervisors to get a feeling for how and what they ask
Do a dry-run in front of a friendly audience to spot topics that trigger questions
Create a list of possible questions and prepare answers
Prepare for questions you don’t know the answer (“I don’t know, but I would think […]”)

20 common thesis defense questions

What did you learn from the study you did? *You will need to summarise your entire study in a few sentences and remember the concepts/technical terms you mentioned in your research.
Why did you choose this particular topic or what was your inspiration behind the study?
This is one of the trickiest questions as you need to convince the panel of teachers that what you have done is valuable to society and worth their time.
What is the significance of your study or how will it contribute or add to the existing body of knowledge?
How can your main findings be summarized?
What kind of background research have you done for the study?
What limitations did you face in writing?
Why did you choose this particular method or sample for the study?
What will you include if you are asked to add something extra to the study?
What are the recommendations of your study?
Who made up your sample and why did you choose this particular age group?
What was your hypothesis and how did you formulate it?
If you had the chance, would you like to do something different with your work?
What were the limitations you faced in dealing with your samples?
How did you relate your study to existing theories?
What is the future scope of this study?
What do you plan to do with your work after graduation?
What variables did you use in your research?
Do you have any questions?
Have you evaluated your work?
How would you improve your work?

The questions have been compiled by Jason Thatcher and published on LinkedIn.

Have a backup plan

Technology is unpredictable. Life is too.

Ask a trusted person to be ready to help you out
Put your slides on a cloud storage
Prepare handouts if technology fails
If its a public presentation, I would bring an extra shirt ;-)

Q&A

Literature

Hyton, James. n.d. “How to Design Outstanding PowerPoint Slides.” https://phd.academy/blog/how-to-design-outstanding-powerpoint-slides.