Reflecting on my performance in the final presentation, I am glad that my presentation skills have improved from the previous attempt. Prior to the presentation, I went through the content repeatedly to familiarize myself with it so that I would not rely too much on the script. Indeed, during the presentation, I could present most of the content without the script and thus was able to maintain eye contact with the audience. However, there were still several instances when I forgot my points and had to frantically search through my script to recall them.
As advised by Ms Happy, my strength lies in having a clear and loud voice. Hence, I built on this plus point by varying my intonation to stress on the important points. I have also made an effort to highlight key words on the screen with the laser pointer. As compared to the previous attempt, my usage of the pointer has improved, although I did not control it well at the beginning due to my nervousness.
As a team, I felt that we have performed reasonably well even though it was not up to our expectations. I believe we have structured the content in a clear and coherent way to bring our message across, and there was also cohesiveness between each of our content. However, we seemed to have elaborated too much on our points such that the time limit was exceeded slightly. We did not perform well during the Q&A session too as we lacked coordination in answering the questions.
All in all, this presentation has taught me the importance of team work and valuable presentation skills which can be put to good use in my FYP presentation. Through more practices, I hope to further improve on my presentation skills so that I can deliver a presentation more confidently and effectively in the future.
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Hi Chai Yee,
ReplyDeleteComparing your OP presentation and peer teaching presentation, i felt that you've improved significantly. You were able to project your voice very well and you were very well-versed with your slides content. However, i personally thought that it would have been better if you have more connection with the audience/judges by introducing elements of interactivity before or in between your presentation. For example, before you officially start your part, you may wanna pause and ask the audience a related question. This would capture their attention and from then on, you can link back the response to your presentation and sell to them your ideas. This could also help to break the monotony and formality of presentation and make the audience feel more "connected". Here's a simple example. Imagine you're presenting on the sales of an apple. You could ask how many people in the audience likes to eat apple. From there, you could try to get hold of their interest and direct them to your product.
As for overall team presentation, the powerpoint slides could have been more professional and creative-looking. I understand the logic of the merlion and white/red gradient background as a patriotic theme to go along with your proposal but i felt that it needed abit more artistic element in it. The addition of visual graphics could have added more "omph" factor into your overall slides and the flow of the slides was a little off. It could have been better if your team could crystallize the main keypoints in each slide and elaborate further from there. I was a little lost in transition along the way because i find it hard to see the bigger picture. Nevertheless, the team did wrapped up the presentation nicely! Cheers to that!
Regards,
Ariff
Hi Chai Yee,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ariff that your presentation skills have improved. It is evident that you have taken the peer feedback from previous presentation seriously and tried to improve on areas like the use of laser pointer and reliance on script this time round.
I believe in recognising your own merits (good voice projection and comfortable tone), it has given you greater confidence during the presentation.
However, I also agree with Ariff that there is a lack of interaction with the audience. Perhaps, the next time round you should try to engage the audience with some thought provoking questions, video (if time permits) etc...
Overall, your group's presentation is clear and your team members are very familiar with the content. However, there is unequal distribution for the Q&A session. Perhaps, you all could have discussed how to allocate the Q&A session more equally prior to the presentation.
With regards to the presentation slides, the pie charts are rather hard to see so perhaps you all should take note of the colour contrast. Other than that, I think your group's presentation is good.
Cheers,
Xin Wei
Dear Chai Yee,
ReplyDeleteThumbs up for your presentation! You are calm and confident. Your speed is just right and i can catch up with you comfortably. In my humble opinion,if i remember correctly, your slides are quite wordy and if you can reduce the amount of words, it would be good to the audience like me who can easily doze off by reading (that's why a lot of people listen to music while studying?).
I can understand that if the presenter is talking too fast, the audience cannot follow; if the presenter is talking too slow, some of the audience may doze off. And worst will be talking slow with wordy slides. That's why eye contact is very important. When you saw someone is yawning, you have to increase your speed. But how about your slides? If your slides are still wordy, someone like me will still doze off even though you have increase your speed. Therefore, i suggest to have less wordy slides.
Hope it helps.
Cheers,
Ryan
Hi Chai Yee
ReplyDeleteWell, it has been a long road for our team. Countless emails, smses and finally the OP is over.
Personally, I thought you did a good job. You relied less on the script and you were clear, which is very important. I, on the other hand, do not beleive your slides were words, but perhaps the speed in which you had spoken could have increased and more eye-contact with the audience would have been good.
As for the Q&A session, there was certainly tension between who should answer and how much they should answer. And given how much we were scrutinized by Mr.Arvey, I can understand it was not easy answering the questions. But I was gald you added on for me when I had finished replying to Prof. Arvey's second question. I missed out a few details, and you helped me fill them up. Thanks!
But I feel, on a whole, you are very clear and calm speaker. The next time you undertake a presentation, I am sure you'll go in even stronger as a presenter.
Thanks for the effort and support all the way through. I also feel that you spoke up more towards the latter stages of the proposal assignment. That was great to see. Good luck to your future endeavours.
Best,
Prashant
Dear Chai Yee,
ReplyDeleteYour group had done a great job for this whole presentation! The content presented was clear, relevant and well-analysed. I am not sure about the rest, but I felt that the slides could be more professional and less wordy. I believe these slight improvements to the visual aids would enhance your group’s presentation as a whole.
As for your individual performance, I agree with the rest that you have definitely made tremendous improvements as compared to your performance during the peer teaching. You sounded more confident this time round, with excellent use of emphasis during your delivery of speech. Your volume and speed of speech was also appropriate and it was evident you tried to engage with your audience by making eye contact with them. However, I felt that the presentation could potentially be improved if you were less nervous. I guess it was due to your nervousness that caused you to panic slightly when you forgot your speech halfway through the presentation. I also feel that body language and posture is important and you should stand in front of your group members during the presentation instead of behind them. This is so that the audience can see you clearly and to catch their attention. Nonetheless, this was a good presentation so keep up this good work!
Regards,
Huiyi
Dear Chai Yee,
ReplyDeleteAfter hearing your group’s presentation and Q&A, it was a convincing and persuasive proposal. The team was well prepared and handled the Q&A questions adequately too, thought it went a bit coercive at times.
However there are just some minor comments that you could consider. Firstly, you stood quite far behind the screen so it makes you looked distant to the audiences. Your audibility could be compromised but your loudness and clarity made up for this. However you could still consider standing closing to your professors to let them know that you are friendly and approachable like the other teammates. Next, like what you mentioned in your post, you did improve upon your previous presentation. You were less reliant on your cue cards and spoke with greater confidence while delivery of content. Yet you might wish to consider speaker with different tone while emphasizing on various points to further garner the audiences’ attention and interest. Your pace of delivery was appropriate and mannerism was professional too. On a side note, maybe you could discuss the issue of tone with Gail, the first speaker, as the contrast between both of your styles was different.
To sum it all up, you were a steady and courteous speaker. You handled the Q&A calmly, thought you could have spoken up tad more to bring across your views and stand, enforcing your confidence as part of the team.
Therefore I hope that these comments could provide some help to you in the future.
Regards,
Wei Xiong
Hi Chai Yee,
ReplyDeleteI was really impressed by your presentation. You seemed really quiet in class but when you presented, you presented with authority and clarity. I was able to follow your points and felt that you did really well.
As I was the camera man for your group, I noticed that you were the only one from your group to stand on the left of the screen while the rest chose to stand on the right. I felt that it might have been better if you had chosen to stand on the right as you would be standing alone and not with your team-mates. I feel that this will be advantageous as the audience’s attention will be on you and your team-mates will not become distractions and cause your presentation to become less effective. Although it may be nerve-wrecking to stand on your own without your team-mates, it shows that you are confident of what you are saying and it will increase the credibility of your presentation.
I feel that you are already a good presenter and with more practice, you will certainly become a more confident and effective speaker.
Warmest regards,
Zhengyang.
Hi Ariff, Xin Wei, Ryan, Prashant, Huiyi, Wei Xiong and Zhengyang,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the compliments and honest feedbacks on the areas I can improve on!
Firstly, I apologize to all of you for the not-very-professional-looking slides. My team had realized this when we saw the slides of other teams, but did not have time to come up with a better design. Our main focus was on the content and hence we had neglected the design of our slides. We should have bore in mind that design of the slides, as well as visual graphics as suggested by Ariff, are almost as important as the content because they serve to engage the audience.
As for the slides being too wordy, we did not realize that there was this problem. Maybe we could have cut down on the elaborations and substitute some words for diagrams which would make it easier to read and understand. I also agree with Ariff and Xin Wei regarding the point on connecting with the audience with thought-provoking questions. But I guess I was too nervous and pre-occupied with the content to consider that at the instance.
Again, I have to apologize for my bad positioning. I stood behind because I did not want to obstruct the audience's view of the screen but the idea backfired. In addition, my team did not synchronize our positions. All these could have been prevented if we had practised more and if I was more aware of myself during the presentation.
For the Q&A session, we had planned for a team mate to moderate the questions but it failed to work. My team definitely needs to learn how to handle the session more effectively.
Thank you all for your encouragements and my team and I will continue to work hard to improve on our weak areas! All the best!
Cheers,
Chai Yee