Creating your Proposal Presentation Atissa Banuazizi Lecturer Writing Across the Curriculum 6 May 2010 Overview Goals and components of the Module 3 Presentation Dividing up the presentation Delivering the presentation with your partner Questions to ask yourselves organization slide design delivery A proposal presentation has a distinct audience and purpose Persuading evaluators to support your research project Assume that your audience comprises experts in your topic intelligent generalists with exposure to your field How can you make your proposal compelling Convince audience that project is worth doing Convince audience that you are capable of carrying it out Components of the presentation brief project overview sufficient background information for everyone to understand your proposal statement of the research problem and goals project details and methods predicted outcomes if everything goes according to plan and if nothing does needed resources to complete the work societal impact if all goes well Dividing up the presentation general principles Each partner should speak roughly the same amount of time Audiences will assume change in speakers corresponds to change in topic don t confuse them Changing speakers can distract audience slow the talk down keep Courtesy of VancityAllie shifts to a minimum http www flickr com photos 30691679 N07 3879281532 on Flickr How you choose to divide the talk depends on the shape of your presentation many different options Dividing up the presentation Option 1 Down the Middle Speaker 1 Speaker 2 brief project overview project details and methods suf cient background information for everyone to understand your proposal statement of the research problem and goals division assumes that Part I is roughly as long as Part II predicted outcomes if everything goes according to plan and if nothing does needed resources to complete the work societal impact if all goes well Dividing up the presentation Option 2 The Sandwich Speaker 1 Speaker 2 brief project overview suf cient background information for everyone to understand your proposal statement of the research problem and goals project details and method context bread predicted outcomes if everything goes needed resources to complete according to plan and if the work nothing does societal impact if all goes well experiment nuts bolts filling Dividing up the presentation Option 3 Back and Forth Speaker 1 Speaker 2 brief project overview each partner speaks long enough to establish flow suf cient background information for everyone to understand proposal project details and methods statement of the research problem and goals predicted outcomes if everything goes according to plan and if nothing does needed resources to complete the work societal impact if all goes well More options for specific kinds of projects Two discrete research questions OR Two discrete methods each partner follows one strand introductory and concluding material each presented by a single partner Other possibilities depending on the particulars of your material Revision is an essential part of the collaborative process Be prepared collaborative presentations will require more revision than individual ones Invest yourself in the success of the presentation as a whole don t get too emotionally attached to your own contributions Rehearse before and after you revise Help focus the audience s attention on the right speaker During overview identify who will speak on what topic Review Preview as you proceed through the talk Articulate transitions explicitly hand off Only one partner onstage at a time If you re not speaking don t hover nearby Do not interrupt each other Rehearse as a team Note timing of each section and of talk as a whole Practice moving into speaking position at transition points Will you advance each other s slides Aim for similar speaking styles don t imitate each other but match your formality levels Familiarize yourself with partner s material Practice Q A Courtesy of Southern Methodist University Used with permission http smu edu bobhope images hope crosby jpg Questions to ask yourselves about organization Does our talk fit together as a coherent whole Are all sections of the talk adequately developed Do we have a focused well defined hypothesis Is it clear what is going to be done and how Have we realistically articulated the scope of the work Have we omitted extraneous material Will our project fire up an audience s interest What might make this proposal more convincing to a funding body Questions to ask yourselves about slide design Is everything on the slide readable Are our slides a good balance of text and figures Have we chosen clear specific titles that express the main point of each slide Is the design format of our slides consistent or were they obviously designed by different people Questions to ask yourselves about delivery Can we get through our whole presentation in 12 minutes Do we know where to position ourselves and how to coordinate our shifts smoothly Do our speaking styles work well together Are we making the transitions between topics and speakers clear to the audience For more information Useful tips on creating funding proposals at http www wwu edu depts rsp insideview pdf Guide for Proposal Writing National Science Foundation 18 Feb 2004 http www nsf gov pubs 2004 nsf04016 nsf04016 pdf Andrew J Friedland and Carol Folt Writing Successful Science Proposals Yale 2000 MIT OpenCourseWare http ocw mit edu 20 109 Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering Spring 2010 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use visit http ocw mit edu terms