Presentation skills are some of the most difficult skills a speaker and a student can master throughout their career. Like any area that involves convincing and compelling an audience, it demands composure, eloquence, and expensive research-focused groundwork (Jordan et al., 2021). The ability to focus on said research, prioritize the step-by-step analysis, and attention to detail is my major strength as a researcher. It ensures my projects are well-informed and excellently cited, with the sources provided being properly formatted and structured. They satisfy the quality demands for the presence of peer reviews and overall credibility. This positive, however, correlates both with a neutral factor of the projects’ tendency of maintaining an extensive length, and a negative side effect of the likelihood to wander off-topic.
The presentations in question, regardless of the research topic and the quality of research provided, are almost universally expected to be brief in the academic context. Since the presentation is a form of an assignment, it is frequently used to grade students in a classroom setting. With this approach, nobody’s opinions, thoughts, or observations are given the spotlight due to the natural time constraints. A presentation that fails to ensure it can be described as clear and concise is likely to be discarded as unprofessional regardless of its overall contents (Carstens, 2019). My tendency to get distracted by overlapping or contextually relevant themes can be addressed in multiple ways. However, some of the most effective propositions actively involve working together with the rest of the project team by including them in the research and the presentation script development. This solution allows the researchers to design a project environment where every team member’s efforts are heard and respected.
References
Carstens, A. (2019). Advice on the use of gestures in presentation skills manuals: alignment between theory, research and instruction. Image & Text, (33), 1-34. Web.
Jordan, J., Yarris, L. M., Dorfsman, M. L., Wolf, S. J., & Wagner, M. J. (2021). Coaching educators: Impact of a novel national faculty development program for didactic presentation skills. AEM Education and Training, 5(3), e10637, Web.