Creating your Proposal Presentation Atissa Banuazizi Lecturer, Writing Across the Curriculum 6 May 2010Overview • 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, deliveryA 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 outComponents 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 wellDividing 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 shifts to a minimum • How you choose to divide the talk depends on the shape of your presentation -- many different options! Courtesy of VancityAllie http://www.flickr.com/photos/30691679@N07/3879281532/ on Flickr.Dividing up the presentation: Option 1 (Down the Middle) Speaker 1: Speaker 2: • brief project overview • project details and • sufficient background methods information for everyone • predicted outcomes ifto understand your everything goes accordingproposal to plan and if nothingdoes• statement of the research problem and goals • needed resources to complete the work • societal impact if all goesdivision assumes that Part I well is roughly as long as Part IIDividing up the presentation: Option 2 (The Sandwich) Speaker 1: • brief project overview • sufficient backgroundinformation for everyoneto understand yourproposal Speaker 2: • statement of the research problem and goals • project details andmethod • predicted outcomes ifeverything goesaccording to plan and ifnothing does •needed resources to completethe work •societal impact if all goes well context=bread experiment nuts & bolts = fillingDividing up the presentation: Option 3 (Back and Forth) Speaker 1: Speaker 2: • brief project overview • sufficient backgroundeach partner speaks long information for everyone toenough to establish flow understand proposal • project details and • statement of the research methods problem and goals • predicted outcomes ifeverything goes according• needed resources to to plan and if nothing complete the work does • societal impact if all goeswellMore 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 materialRevision is an essential part of the collaborative process • Be prepared: collaborative presentations will requiremore revision than individual ones • Invest yourself in the success of the presentation asa whole • don’t get too emotionally attached to your owncontributions • Rehearse before and after you reviseHelp 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 otherRehearse 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 http://smu.edu/bobhope/images/ hope-crosby.jpg Courtesy of Southern Methodist University. Used with permission.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 OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu 20.109 Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering Spring 2010 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: