When giving a presentation about your project in a computer science class, you have an opportunity to showcase all your hard work to your peers and instructors. These are valuable skills to have, especially when it comes to presenting your work at a company, conducting interviews, and general communication.
This post will explain different tips I learned to help deliver the best possible presentation.
1. Know Your Audience Link to heading
Understand your audience’s familiarity with the subject matter at hand. Your fellow peers in a computer science course likely share similar technical knowledge as you. However, when it comes to giving a presentation for a job at a company, your audience may not have as much of a grasp on the technical details.
Ensure you tailor your language to allow your audience to best understand and follow you.
2. Describe Your Goals and Motivations Using Stories Link to heading
Part of the presentation is getting the audience to understand the motivations and goals behind your project. A great way to engage with your audience in this way is to contextualize the discussion with a story. This can allow the audience to put themselves in your place to further understand where you’re coming from.
3. Speak With Confidence! Link to heading
Speaking confidently allows the audience to trust the information you’re giving even more. If you seem unsure of yourself, why would they trust that what you’re saying is correct? This is important for both the presentation itself, and a potential Q&A session afterwards.
Adjust Your Physical Posture Link to heading
Stand up straight and project your voice. People sitting in the back of the room should be able to hear you clearly.
Adjust Your Language Link to heading
When speaking, make sure the language you use doesn’t include “maybe”, “I’m not sure”, “I think”, “, like, …”, etc.
Let’s say in the Q&A section of your presentation, you’re asked about which frameworks you’ve considered using.
A non-confident answer would be:
I think, like, I thought, maybe Python? I’m not sure though. I’ll have to think about that.
After hearing this, the audience would not believe that you actually looked into this, rather you got stumped by the question.
A better, more confident answer would be:
I have not decided on one language or framework yet. I was initially considering Python, but I’m still questioning how scalable it will be in the future, and if I should consider another language such as C++ or Golang. I’ll have to do more research on this matter.
By adjusting your language, you can do a better job at showing your knowledge on the subject!
The best way to improve your confidence is to be knowledgeable of the subject at hand, which leads me to my next point….
4. Understand the Material! Link to heading
If you have an intuitive understanding of what you’re presenting, you could talk for hours without getting bored or tired. Public speaking only gets exhausting when you’re spouting nonsense! Understanding your material is key to speaking more confidently. It will also calm your nerves before giving the presentation.
5. Practice, Practice, Practice! Link to heading
As the title says, make sure you practice your presentation if you have the opportunity. This will further boost your confidence and will diminish the likelihood of accidentally leaving an important detail out.
6. Understand Your Role in the Group (For Group Presentations) Link to heading
If you’re giving a presentation with a group, understand what special knowledge and experience you bring to the table, based on the role you played in the group. Also, understand the roles of all your fellow group members and the work they conducted. This can improve the group’s harmony, further allowing your audience to trust you.
If you’re in a group, and you’re presenting a full-stack application you produced, let’s say your specialty is backend development. You should still be able to answer some quick questions about frontend development.
If someone from the audience asks you specifically about the frontend, you can give a short answer and then direct them to the member of your group who’s role is frontend development. This illustrates how closely you work together as a team.
Conclusion Link to heading
The best way to convince the audience of what you’re saying is to show confidence and expertise in the subject, and give them the ability to relate to your motivations and aspirations of the project. Following these simple tips will allow you to deliver a compelling presentation to convince any target audience!