A good speaker has the manuscript in his head and not his head in the manuscript (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Above all in your professional life, you must be able to persuade colleagues, superiors, employees or customers. Even if you are not directly involved in sales and do not speak to the customer directly, you may still have to introduce your project to your colleagues. In such cases, you must be able to present and persuade. But even in school and university, a well structured and interesting lecture is important to retain the attention of pupils and students throughout the entire lecture. To make your lecture recording a success, not only are the technical issues important, but also, most importantly, the lecture itself must not be neglected. Below, you will find some tips on how to present a lecture.

Considerations

What should I think about before beginning to create my slides?

Structure of the presentation

What is the best way to structure a presentation? What points should I think about?

Slide design

What should I take into consideration when designing my slides?

Lecture structure

How do I structure the lecture myself? What is the best way to present it? What can I do to make my lecture more interesting?

Considerations

Before you begin preparing your lecture, you should ask yourself the following questions:

What is my subject?
Usually arises as a result of a question, literature or a seminar plan. But also: 

What do I want to know? What do I find important?

What is my objective?

Write it down: What is my presentation objective? What are the points that the listeners should take away?

Who is my audience?
Guiding the audience to the presentation objective.
What does the audience want to know?
What previous knowledge does the audience have?
This should all match your own presentation objective.

What is the most important thing?

Short summary: What is the most important thing? What should the audience take away from the lecture?

Presentation structure

Before you create your slides, you must already be clear about the look and feel of your presentation. When structuring your presentation, you should be aware of the generally used structure:

Introduction

• Welcome
• Introduction (person, organisation)
• Brief explanation of subject and objective of the lecture
• Present the development, agenda, structure and planned duration of the lecture
• Are questions permitted, or can questions be asked after the presentation? (possibly clarify this before starting a recording)

Main part

• Present the argumentation
• Central theme
• The structure should appear again with each new bullet point
• Alternatively, the structure could be permanently visible with a marker at the current position.

Conclusion

• Summary
• Links and literature references
• Any subsequent discussion

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Slide design

General

• Slides in landscape format.
• Title slide with name and subject of the presentation.
• Maximum number of slides
• Heading for each slide
• Less information per slide is better (max. 7 points). Do not overload slides
• Be careful when selecting the colour - less is sometimes more! Choose your colours carefully in order to illustrate contexts
• Limit the number of colours used (around 3 colours)

Text

• Use an easily legible font and adequate font size (at least 16 point)
• Use as few fonts and colours as possible
• Use upper case and lower case text
• Limit the amount of text and content
• Arrows and lines must be thick enough, at least 1.5 point.

Visualisations, graphics, images

• Should be used for clarification and visualisation of the spoken word
• Are usually easier to remember
• Can (sparingly) be used to lighten the content
• The following are especially suitable: statistics, relations, overviews

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Lecture structure

• Put yourself in the position of the audience. Consider what they want to see, do not bore the audience with articles that belong to the subject but that no-one wants to hear.
• Always speak to your audience. Make eye contact with one or two people or stare at a point on the back wall, but allow your gaze to wander every now and then.
• Only formulate your sentences fully when you are actually speaking to avoid making your lecture too quick and monotonous. Your outline sketch or central theme can help.
• You can show your own interest and commitment through examples, images and comparisons. You should also address personal experiences or difficulties with the material. The audience will be able to understand what you are saying quicker and better and will find the subject more accessible.
• Speak slowly and clearly. Pauses will give the audience time to process what you have just said. You can create these pauses by writing key terms, important sentences or the name of an author you have mentioned.
• If the audience is bored, vary your tone of voice, do not deviate from your central theme, but try to re-establish direct contact by asking questions, for example.

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