I was searching about how to present your thesis, since it is a critical task to present 3 years work in 15 minutes :) .. wooow isn't it huge?!!
Well, I am going to summarize my findings so it would benefit people who are going through the same struggle.
Presentation Tips:
1. Contribution List: Emphasize on what you have been doing and what your contribution is. For example, if you have worked 20 weeks, have you identified 20 bullets of things that you have done that you can be proud of?
2. Practice: Have a friend practice and scrutinize your presentation/report. This makes the presentation/opposition much more interesting. Hopefully that can bring up a nice discussion during the presentation.
3. Thesis Motivation: Motivate why your work is important in the context.
4. Chairman Interruption: Don’t interrupt the chairman! It is not up to you as respondent to outline the defence. The examiner/chairman will introduce you to the audience and tell them and you what is expected.
5. Thank you/Questions Slide: You should not present a final slide with “Questions” on. It is not up to you to decide that. Even the “Thank you” slide should be omitted in my opinion … wait for the verdict from the examiner first ;)
6. Enjoy Silence: You do not have to talk all the time. Use silence as a way to show and emphasize your results. A 5-second delay is OK. (A 40-second delay is awkward, but try and see…)
7. Results Table: At some point you get to the end when you eagerly want to present the final results of your work. Then all the tables of more or less random data (for the audience) are presented. These probably do not make sense unless you are very careful with the way you present them. Remember that approximately 5 seconds after you presented the table-or-figure slide people will have forgotten it.
Presentation Mistakes:
1. Too much information: You know that you are heading for TMI when you start to feel like you are drowning in facts and figures which don’t seem to relate to each other. A presentation like this is unlikely to make you look like a lightweight, but it can make you look more confused than you are.
2. All theory, no action: It’s a difficult line to walk with theory sometimes. Not enough can make your project look lightweight. The student spent the majority of her presentation explaining the theory behind practice based research in exquisite detail. It must have seemed like a good strategy because her examiners were not from the design research field, unfortunately these people had already read her text, which went through much of the same explanation, and the rest of the audience were designers – who already knew the arguments. lengthy exposition gave the perverse impression that the student was defensive and unsure of herself.
3. Why are we here: Sometimes students race through an explanation of data without enough lead in for me to understand what the problem was in the first place, why the research matters.how it changes anything in that bigger world beyond the thesis.
4. Undigested text: Someone estimated that a good one hour presentation takes about 30 hours to prepare – they are probably right. (less text in presentation)
5. Question time = fail: Being able to give a good performance during question time is a vital skill because it shows people what kind of academic you are when you are when you are off script. Unfortunately a lot of academics are old hands at asking tricky questions of research students – and they know all the brutal ones. The most common one in a confirmation presentations is
“What is your research question?”. I think the key is to stay calm and take your time to answer. It can help to write the question on a piece of paper.
Presentation Preperation:
1. Go to defences: The best way to find out what happens in a defence is to make a point of going to several defences before your own.
2. Timing: For our department, plan your presentation to run about 20-25 minutes, 30 min. max! Remember, the presentation is primarily for the benefit of the Examination Committee, not for additional people who may wander in to listen--it's not a public lecture!--and the Exam Committee will all have read your thesis. They don't need or want an exhaustive description.
3. Contributions: Don't be modest; be clear on your contributions! If someone asks,
"Why should you get a degree?," how will you justify yourself? "I've been here 2 years" won't cut it.
4. Slides:
Turn on slide numbering. This makes it easy for viewers to jot them down and then say, "Please go back to slide 23..." With PowerPoint you can press 2-3-Enter and zap right to the given number.
Avoid using acronyms on the slides without defining them.
Identify slides that you can afford to skip over if you see time is getting tight. Some Exam Chairs will cut you off, so don't assume you can talk forever.
Think of some expected questions and prepare some extra slides to answer them (the dry run really helps for this, see next point).
5. Rehearsal: Do a "dry run" with faculty and grad students from your research group. Pay attention to their suggestions for improvement, but realize that "you can't please everyone" and tastes will differ.
6. Paper copy: Make sure you bring along a copy of your own thesis, since numerous questions will take the form "On page 25, what did you mean by...?" or "Table 3-1 is not clearly labelled," etc. You will need to be able to turn rapidly to those references and give a suitable explanation. Do not make the mistake of bringing a later revision of your thesis than the one handed out to the committee! Such things make the defence ridiculous and annoying for the examiners.
Defence Expectation:
If your Advisory Committee has approved the thesis as "defensible," you will almost certainly pass and get your degree. Don't worry about that! So what is really at stake?
1. Everyone wants to look good: You want to look smart, your supervisor wants to be proud of you, the examiners want to look insightful and thorough, and the department wants to maintain high standards. You should contribute to all of that, and
not undermine it by being poorly prepared, disrespectful, sloppily dressed, late arriving, showing irritation or anger, and so on. Respect the integrity of the process, and take what the examiners dish out without complaining.
2. You want to minimize your "damage": this refers to how much additional work you have to put into corrections and revisions. At worst, examiners will demand more research and/or experiments, and they will insist on rereading the thesis before they sign off. That could take you weeks, even months! At best, there will be some minor wording improvements, checked only by your supervisor. Ordinarily, you'll be asked to insert or clarify some explanations. If you explain your work well and answer questions well, it is less likely that many or major revisions will be demanded.
3. Taking a philosophical view: whether the revisions are little or much trouble, they will make your thesis a better document . Admittedly, it's possible that no one may ever read your thesis again; but it's also likely that you or your supervisor will write one or more articles based on your thesis, in order to disseminate your work. If the thesis is better because of the revisions, those articles may be more publishable and/or easier to write. If you are continuing in an academic or research career, high quality publications in reputable conferences and journals are extremely valuable to you.
4. Occasionally, a defence will transcend a mundane rite of passage. For this to happen, the examiners must really be engaged with the research and the student, and the "chemistry" will be right. At such times, the questions, the speculation, the theorizing, the discussion, the proposals, the unexpected connections that spontaneously flow can open up fruitful avenues of research and even answer open problems. If you attend even one such defence--let alone your own--you will feel that it was an honour and a pleasure, and that this is what academe is supposed to be about.
"Defence" implies "attack."
Expect to be attacked, and take a confident attitude anyway. Probably you know more than anyone in the room on your particular topic, so don't feel frightened!
Answering questions from the examiners:
Examiners get annoyed when (a) students don't understand their questions, (b) students don't answer them directly, forcing them to repeat/reword, (c) students blab too much, using up the limited defence time. Annoyed examiners tend to demand MORE REVISIONS, then you will be sorry.
Pay careful attention to questions and try to answer what is really asked! If you must, frankly ask, "Can you please repeat that?" Don't let your mouth run on beyond the basic answer, or you may say something flaky that invites more probing. Be aware that an outside examiner with insufficient background in your area may really ask a "dumb question," but you should give a polite answer that doesn't appear to put them down.
Don't look pleadingly at your supervisor(s) for help! It's your thesis, not theirs. If they sense you need help, they can ask some leading "softball" questions during their turns, and they always get the last questions by convention.
Don't worry about writing down everything people say needs to be changed in your thesis. Your supervisor(s) will keep careful notes of this for you. Will the general audience ask questions? If there is time and the Exam Chair invites them to, they may. But you should not invite them; it is the Exam Chair who is running the defence.
When the questions are over--typically there will be two rounds, and the Exam Chair may or may not ask some--you will be thanked for your presentation and put out of the room, along with any other audience members. Hopefully, some supporters will keep you company in the hallway, so you don't get too anxious.
The examiners will then decide, first, whether you have passed, and second, what revisions are required. If things go smoothly this phase may take as little as ten minutes. Eventually you will be called back into the room, most likely congratulated on passing, and then the demanded revisions will be outlined. Most likely, it will be left to your supervisor(s) to detail the revisions. If the examiners ask for more revisions than you wanted, this is not the time to argue and pout. Instead, accept their criticisms graciously.
Source:
http://mixedsignal.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/top-ten-tips-for-master-thesis-presentations/
http://thesiswhisperer.com/2010/11/25/5-classic-research-presentation-mistakes/
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~gardnerw/research/defence.htm
