Final presentation was finally over, it was a huge relief and I felt much lighter on the shoulders already. During the preparation of our PowerPoint slide, we were able to meet to discuss on editing and professionalizing the slides. One of my team greatest strength was being able to raise our honest opinions and accepts criticism. Through the experience, my team became more efficient and critical.
The only weakness I found was that the PowerPoint template was not complementary with its color theme. It appeared well on the computer but when I presented I realized that the color was not coming out nicely with the background. The video was another unforeseen problem where its color turned blue when played.
During my presentation, I realized I was not keeping enough eye contact. The eye contact was always kept at the front row and I was easily distracted when the audience was talking. It made me very conscious of my surrounding and worried that I had said something wrong.
Overall, I think my team had did an excellent job as there was very little data dumping and we were well prepared for the questions. However, I felt that I could formulate a better answer for one of the questions regarding on how to convince the employers to hire more interns or open up opportunity. We had a similar interview question for Professor Hor, but I could not relate well on the spot. One of my weakness is that I tend to panic first and stutter my way through before thinking calmly about the situation.
I think our presentation were very successful as we had clearly presented our main key point even though it was a bumpy ride. Ultimately, I think I am very lucky to work with wonderful teammates, Peiling and Ruth, who complement the team very well.
6 comments:
Hi Yuan Hua,
First of all, thank you for your presentation. It was an interesting one and I've learnt much about your proposal.
During your presentation, I felt that you looked confident and was able to speak in an approriate level, which I thought was important. Since the aim of the presentation was to convince parties from NUSSEU to accept and implement your proposal, it is essential that you look well-prepared. Next, there was good interaction with the audience as you managed to keep eye contact with us. However there were some points in time that you weren't as natural during your presentation. This may be due to the fact that you were easily distracted by the audience's reactions, as what you had mentioned in your blog. Don't worry, I think acting natural is one of the biggest challenge to giving good presentations. As Jing Ping had mentioned during class, 'its all in the mind". I thought it was already commendable of you to have maintained some eye contact with us. In my presentation, I was so nervous that I ended up looking blank at one point. Hope I wasn't too obvious!
Finally, the pie charts that were used in the slides were not very clear. The colours of the "pies" were not distinct and the figures did not show up well as well. One suggestion to this would be to find a chance to test your slides on screen before your presentation. This would allow you to make the appropriate changes before your actual presentation and prevent you from feeling panic when the slides did not turn up as how it should be on your computer screen.
Thank you for your effort.
Hazel =).
Hi Huahua,
I think you did a great job!
Firstly, you look very confident the moment you took over the presentation. Secondly, you maintained good eye contact with the audiences. I didn’t realise that your eye contact was only kept at the first row, maybe because I was sitting on the first row. Thirdly, your tone and speed was appropriate.
However, you look rather stern. I suggest that you smile more! Smiling will also help to ease any tensed feelings.
Also, your speech wasn’t very smooth. It looked as though you had your speech scripted and you forgot what you memorised. As discussed in class, it is not easy to stand in front of a crowd and give a speech without having to memorise a script, especially for students like us who hardly have much chance for presentations. Hence, I wasn’t very concerned about it. Maybe you can work on it if there is any other presentation in future.
I find your presentation very interesting as you shared a little about your own internship experience. This adds a little spice to the presentation.
As a group, I think the use of visual aid was a good way to illustrate many important points and it kept the slides very neat. Being a visual person, the tables and charts help me better understand your proposed project. Also, there wasn’t any data dumping. In addition, the presentation was interesting due to other interesting facts and examples(e.g. NUS world ranking) and personal experience mentioned. I like the topic of your project because as a chemistry student, I have thought about why we didn’t have compulsory internship. Hence, it is likely a topic that is closely related to students like me.
However, the colours of the pie charts used were rather dull and many of the results did not stand out from the background. Hence, it’s quite hard for us to read. Like what Hazel commented, maybe your team could have tested the slides on the projector screen before presenting. What my team did was to have a white background. Or maybe your team could have used a black background with white words (Ji Wei’s group did that).
Generally, it was an interesting presentation. Thanks for the effort!
Love,
Shiny
Thanks, Yuanhua, for this reflection. I thought your group did a very admirable job. I'll be giving you comments soon. Sorry it took me so long to read this post!
Hey Huahua,
Considering how nervous you were during rehearsals, i feel your ability to maintain your composure during the presentation is extremely commendable! i felt your speech was more fluent too.
Thank you for your contribution of ideas and teaching us some computer tricks. We are indeed impressed with your talent.Without you, i think peiling and i would have struggled with slide layouts and computer language.=)
So proud of you!
Ruth
Thank you all for the sincere criticism.
Hazel: I will take note of the colours and background theme the next time. Thank you!! :D
Shiny: OHHHHH, I will remember to smile. I keep forgetting the need to smile when I am busy presenting. Thanks for the reminder! :D
Ruth: No problem!! I'm always the IT geek here~ :D I am proud of our team too~ XD~
Our group had the same problem whereby the colours in the charts appeared more washed out on the screen. Lucky it was just a test run a few days before the actual presentation and we were able to make the relevant changes. As for the video, I felt that the colour does not really matter as we were mostly listening to the professor only.
I agree with ShinYe that you look considerably stern during the presentation. Ruth mentioned in her comment for my post that I was quite stern too. We might be too focused on the script in our head and forgot to smile. Practising in front of the mirror might be effective in helping us notice our facial expressions and correct it.
The pace of your presentation was great, I can catch most of the points you mentioned. However, there were some parts with awkward pauses. Did you forget what you want to say or is it because of other reasons?
For the slides, I realized that the formatting for pie charts is not standardized. Some are in 2D while the others are in 3D. In addition, some of points in the charts are in short form eg. den for dentistry. I understand that it might be due to space constrains but I spent some time deciphering them and we should not give audiences the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps, you can type them out in full. Besides that, you guys can improve on the standardization by running through the slides and making changes on it together. In that way, all of the parts will have the same format and audiences will not be confused.
Nevertheless, I like the usage of tables in your part of the presentation whereby you compare the different internships side by side and evaluate them point by point. I felt that much clearer after that slide. :)
All in all, I felt that you guys did a great job. Jia you for the finals!! :)
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