Communication Academy

Decide on your key points in advance. These should help illustrate the project without over-complicating things. 

1. Ask yourself: 

2. What is being done in the research? 

3. Why is it important? 

4. Who might it help? 

The key points you lift from your research often create a story. Answering the above questions will form a story around your project. This will form the skeletal framework for your talk. You can then add any new facts to this framework, clearly highlighting their connection to the main points. This will allow the audience to follow you easily. 

Try to limit the number of new ideas being presented to an audience, so that their attention is not pulled in many different directions. 

Use a key topic of interest in the news, such as the pandemic. Linking the research to the topic of interest or a major social or community issue can help grab your audience’s attention more quickly and help them put the research in a context they understand. 

One of the best methods to communicate research findings can be found on social media. Most platforms now encourage content to be short and concise (e.g., Twitter/ TikTok). https://influencers.feedspot.com/science_instagram_influencers/  

When presenting, consider how you will build excitement. Tools like varying the pitch and tone of your voice can help engage your audience’s attention and highlight any key bits of information.  

Try to communicate your research to people from a different academic background and notice at which points of your talk they appear lost. Ask them what they found difficult to follow. These are often the points to simplify or remove.