Presentation and the Rigor-Relevance Tension

Research Project 1 (RP1) — U16

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

September 3, 2026

Opening Remarks

Two Audiences

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

You will present the same review, in the same two weeks, to an academic audience and to your practitioner consortium: the findings stay identical, while what counts as proof, what language is available to you, and what the audience actually needs from you all change, applying the rigor-relevance tension from Kick-off in practice.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this unit, you will be able to:

• Present the same finding twice, once for an academic audience and once for a practitioner audience, changing the burden of proof, the language, and the point of reference each time.
• Reframe a boundary condition from an apologetic limitation, for academics, into the actionable core of a recommendation, for practitioners.
• Choose, honestly, which of McGahan’s five routes to actionability your review’s contribution actually takes, rather than the one that sounds most impressive.

Rigor and Relevance, Revisited

The Standing Tension

Rigor: how trustworthy is the finding? Relevance: what does someone do differently tomorrow?

You met these definitions in week one, before rigor and relevance could fully register as two different questions asked by two different audiences rather than properties of good research in themselves, which is why a single presentation script rarely satisfies both.

• Academically, what counts is how robust the finding is: is the review’s method transparent, is the synthesis defensible, are the boundary conditions honestly stated?
• Practically, what counts is what someone does differently tomorrow: is the implication concrete enough to act on, stated in the practitioner’s own vocabulary, not yours?

Neither audience is wrong to ask what it asks. The mistake is answering the academic question in front of practitioners, or the practical question in front of academics.

Boundary Conditions, Reframed

In front of practitioners, a scope limitation is the advisory contribution itself.

What is Theory introduced boundary conditions as the constraints that define where a theory does and does not apply. Academically, you state them almost apologetically, in a “limitations” paragraph. In front of practitioners, invert that instinct: telling a manager precisely where a pattern from the literature stops holding, for organizations of their size, in their sector, under their constraints, is exactly the advice they came for. “This works, except when …” is often more actionable than “this works.”

Worked Example

Academic hedge

“The synthesis suggests that AI-agent autonomy is associated with higher user trust, though this association appears attenuated in safety-critical contexts, across the studies reviewed.”

Practitioner version

“Give your AI agents more autonomy to build user trust, except in safety-critical workflows, where autonomy should stay limited and reviewable.”

Both sentences report the same boundary condition. The academic version hedges because a synthesis across a handful of studies cannot claim more than an association, and needs to signal exactly how much confidence it warrants to another researcher. The practitioner version drops the hedge language, “suggests,” “association,” “appears,” and states the same boundary as a direct instruction with an exception, because a manager needs to know what to do, not how confident the literature is. Model this move live before students write their own pair of sentences.

Actionability

Five Routes to Actionability

Good Topic gave you McGahan’s five routes to actionability as background reading. Today, you will use them as your script for the practice pitch.

• Offering counter-intuitive insights.
• Highlighting the effect of new and important practices.
• Showing inconsistencies in and consequences of practices.
• Suggesting a specific theory to explain an interesting and current situation.
• Identifying an iconic phenomenon that opens new areas of inquiry and practice.

Pick the one that actually describes your review’s contribution, honestly, not the one that sounds most impressive. A synthesis that mainly resolves a contradiction in prior findings is route three, not route one, and pretending otherwise in front of practitioners who know their own domain will cost you credibility fast.

Visualizing Implications

Paper Structure covered how implications get written. In front of a poster, they need to be seen before they are read.

A dense paragraph of implications that works perfectly in a discussion section will not survive a two-minute poster glance. Reduce each implication to a single visual unit, a small diagram, a labeled arrow, a simple before/after, that a reader can grasp before they decide whether to stop and read your text at all.

Two Genres

Key Differences

The findings stay the same. What changes is the burden of proof, the language, and the point of reference.

	Academic poster	Practice pitch
Burden of proof	How was this established? Method, sample, synthesis rigor	Is this credible enough to act on?
Language	Field terminology, precise hedging	Plain language, the practitioner’s own vocabulary
Point of reference	The body of knowledge, prior studies	Their organization, their constraints
What “good” looks like	A reviewer could trace your synthesis back to sources	A manager could repeat your recommendation to their boss correctly

Table 1: Two audiences, one set of findings

Poster Genre

Reduction, visual guidance, and self-sufficiency, a poster must survive without you narrating it.

A poster follows its own constraints, distinct from a slide deck or a shrunk-down paper:

• Reduction: a viewer decides in seconds whether to stop. Your title and one figure do most of the persuading; everything else is for the reader who already stopped.
• Visual guidance: a clear reading path (top to bottom, left to right, numbered steps) matters more on a poster than in any other format, because you are frequently not standing next to it explaining the order.
• Self-sufficiency: unlike a talk, a poster has to work when you are not there to fill gaps. Write it for the reader who arrives after you have stepped away for coffee.

Design and Delivery Tips

• Tell a convincing story.
• Design high-quality slides (or poster panels).
• Anticipate questions and prepare for them.
• Make the take-home message persistent.
• Review a recording of your own rehearsal.
• Have a backup plan.

The six practices below adapt Bourne (2007)’s ten rules for good oral presentations to a review pitch specifically.

Tell a convincing story. You cannot present everything you did, choose a narrative that portrays your review well and deliberately leaves room for questions. Budget no more than one slide per two minutes, less is safer. Prepare properly: practice, know your material cold, and have opening and closing statements ready.

Design high-quality panels. Don’t assume ideal viewing conditions, make sure everyone can see and read the content. Avoid busy backgrounds. Use readable typography. Don’t overload a single view, use the upper two-thirds where a standing viewer’s eyes naturally land.

Anticipate questions. Sit in on other teams’ coaching sessions or pitches to get a feel for what gets asked. Do a dry run in front of a friendly, unfamiliar audience to spot what triggers questions you weren’t expecting. It is fine to answer “I don’t know, but I would think …”, that is a more credible answer than a confident guess.

Make the take-home message persistent. Bourne (2007)’s test: ask a listener about your talk a week later, and they should be able to name three points. Decide in advance which three you want remembered, most likely your central finding, its boundary condition, and your recommendation, and repeat them until those are the three a listener would actually recall, not just any three.

Review a recording of your own rehearsal. Listening back exposes habits you cannot hear while you are talking: rushed pacing, a hedge that survived into the practitioner version, a slide you talked past without looking at. Record at least one rehearsal and watch it before the real session.

Have a backup plan. Technology fails. Have a printed handout, cloud-stored slides, and a plan B if the room’s setup does not cooperate.

20 common thesis defense questions

1. What did you learn from the study you did?
2. Why did you choose this particular topic, or what was your inspiration?
3. What is the significance of your study, or how does it add to the existing body of knowledge?
4. How can your main findings be summarized?
5. What kind of background research did you do?
6. What limitations did you face in writing?
7. Why did you choose this particular method or sample?
8. What would you include if asked to add something extra?
9. What are the recommendations of your study?
10. Who made up your sample, and why that group?
11. What was your hypothesis, and how did you formulate it?
12. If you had the chance, would you do something different?
13. What limitations did you face with your sample?
14. How did you relate your study to existing theories?
15. What is the future scope of this study?
16. What do you plan to do with your work afterward?
17. What variables did you use?
18. Do you have any questions?
19. Have you evaluated your work?
20. How would you improve your work?

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

Exercise

Cold-drill, no preparation time.

Pair up. Your partner reads you one question from the list above, at random. Answer out loud, cold, in under sixty seconds. Then switch roles.

1. Why did you choose this particular topic, or what was your inspiration?
2. What is the significance of your study, or how does it add to the existing body of knowledge?
3. What limitations did you face in writing?
4. If you had the chance, would you do something different?

10:00

Exercise

Ninety Seconds, Three Rounds

The same core result, academic framing then practitioner framing, pitched to a rotating sequence of partner teams.

1. Pair with a partner team. Ninety seconds academic framing: state your research question, your review’s method in one sentence, your central finding, and its boundary condition.
2. Ninety seconds practitioner framing, same finding: state the problem they recognize, what you found, and what they should consider doing differently, in their vocabulary, not yours.
3. Your partner listens to both and names one word or phrase that leaked from the wrong register into the wrong version.
4. Rotate to a new partner team and repeat, tightening the pitch based on the feedback just received. Two to three rotations, depending on class size.

The leaked word is usually the most useful piece of feedback in the whole exercise: a technical hedge (“the synthesis suggests a moderate association”) surviving into the practitioner version, or an unearned confident claim (“this proves”) surviving into the academic one. Both are the same underlying habit, reaching for the register you are more comfortable in instead of the one your audience needs. Rotating partners across rounds also shows whether the leak was a one-off slip or a habit: a word that leaks again in round two, in front of a different partner, is worth fixing before the real session, not explaining away.

Round 1

Pitch both framings to your first partner team. Exchange feedback on the leaked word or phrase.

15:00

Round 2

Rotate to a new partner team. Pitch both framings again, tightened from round 1’s feedback. Exchange feedback.

15:00

Round 3

Rotate to a third partner team, if class size allows. Pitch both framings once more.

15:00

Homework

Practice your poster presentation and your pitch with a dry run.

Rehearse both your poster draft and your practice pitch out loud. Pro tip: record at least one rehearsal and analyse it using the “Design and delivery tips” section above.

Q&A