The resources below can help you create slides or a research poster to support your technical presentation. Choose the type of visual material that fits your assigned presentation length, topic, and audience.

Presentation Slide Templates

Explore templates and examples for creating presentation slides with Adobe Express. Select a template and customize its text, images, colors, and layout to communicate your technical content clearly and professionally.

Explore Presentation Slide Templates

Research Poster Resources

Explore guidance and examples for creating a research poster with Adobe Express. Use the poster to organize your central message, methods or approach, key findings, and significance in a concise and visually accessible format.

View the Research Poster Resources

Note: You may use another instructor-approved platform that allows you to create presentation slides or visual materials. Choose a tool you can access and use successfully, and focus on creating visuals that support rather than replace your spoken explanation.

Additional Resources: Presentation Strategies

Click each button below to review all five topics. Each section includes a brief focus, recommended readings, and related videos.

Presentation Framing
Verbal and Nonverbal Delivery
Time and Content Management
Visual–Verbal Integration
Audience Engagement and Response

Presentation Framing

Focus: Use clear openings, transitions, conclusions, and audience-specific takeaways to organize a spoken presentation.

A well-framed presentation helps the audience understand where the presentation is going and why the topic matters. Presenters should begin with a purposeful opening, organize the body around a few clear points, use transitions to connect ideas, and conclude with a memorable takeaway or next step.

Verbal and Nonverbal Delivery

Focus: Apply effective pacing, volume, articulation, pausing, eye contact, posture, gestures, and professional presence.

Presentation delivery affects how an audience interprets both the speaker and the message. Presenters should practice speaking clearly, varying their vocal expression, pausing purposefully, maintaining an open posture, using meaningful gestures, and making appropriate eye contact with the audience.

Reading: Verbal and Nonverbal Delivery
Video: Effective Presentations (Delivery: Body Language and Voice)

Time and Content Management

Focus: Select and organize an appropriate amount of information for 60-second, 3-minute, and 10-minute presentations.

Presenters cannot communicate every detail in every presentation. They must identify the central message, prioritize supporting information, and adjust the depth of explanation to fit the available time. A 60-second pitch emphasizes one problem, contribution, outcome, and takeaway. A 3-minute presentation adds essential context and one key result. A 10-minute presentation allows for a more complete narrative supported by evidence, implications, and next steps.

Reading for 60 Seconds: Tips for Giving a Powerful Elevator Pitch
Reading for 3 Minutes: 3MT Rules, Criteria, and Guide
Reading for 10 Minutes: How to Make a Successful Research Presentation
Video: How to Use Presentation Time Effectively
Video: Presentation Content and Detail

Visual–Verbal Integration

Focus: Use slides, figures, and other visual materials to support explanations without reading directly from the screen.

Visual materials should clarify or reinforce the spoken message rather than duplicate it. Presenters should guide the audience through important features of a diagram, figure, image, or result while maintaining their connection with the audience. Slides should function as visual support, not as a complete presentation script.

Audience Engagement and Response

Focus: Maintain audience attention, interpret audience cues, and respond appropriately to questions from professional and public audiences.

Audience engagement may involve using a relevant example, question, short story, scenario, or activity. Presenters should also monitor whether the audience appears to understand the message and adjust their explanations when necessary. During questions and answers, presenters should listen carefully, clarify the question when needed, respond concisely, adapt the technical depth of the answer, and acknowledge uncertainty honestly.

Reading: Connecting with Your Audience
Reading: Handling Question-and-Answer Periods
Video: Audience Interaction