Results of the survey about Presentations

I hope you can view the results here.  Here are some excerpts:

What to do about nervousness?
I go over my material and become more and more familiar with it and practice presenting and displaying my information.  I prepare! If I know my stuff, I can't address any problem or question that arises.

I try and focus on what needs to get done and not how nervous I am about it. I like to think about things in terms of the long-run. If I mess up and stutter a little or something small like that, it's really not the end of the world, and I like to keep reminding myself of that to deal with nervousness.

Try to de-stress by listening to music. Think about how the people I'm presenting to. (Students are just as nervous as i am, Teacher/Professor is used to nervous students.)

I try to psych myself up thinking they are all here to listen to me and try to make myself feel as confident as possible.

What do you like to see in an individual presentation?

In individual presentations I like to see the presenter really know their information and be personal with it. It is extremely easy to lose interest when someone is simply reading slides word for word.

I like to see confidence (shown through both posture and voice) and a smooth flow of information that suggests knowledge. It all comes down to ethos!

Confidence, eye contact good talking speed but not too fast

spunk, pep in their step

keep the attention of the audience by any means necessary [hmm...]

I  like to be kept awake. If you can keep it interesting, no matter the topic, I'll be good to go. If it happens to have some comic relief, that always helps...

Interesting facts

I like to see some personality, a relatively loud voice, confidence, eye contact and an interesting speech.

The presenter's personality and hear their voice coming through the powerpoint.

Knowledge of the subject. Confidence. Enthusiasm about the subject. (Even if it was a depressing topic, that will keep the audience active, lively, and awake)

What made your best presentation successful?

I was extremely educated on my topic and was able to display my information thoroughly and smoothly.

My interview for a Congressional Nomination for the Naval Academy. I had to essentially present myself and convince retired senior officers why they should give me a nomination over all the other candidates. I went in and was very confident and was able to be myself, I think this was partially because I was sitting eye to eye with them and not standing before them. Also their questions helped lead me through the conversation because I then knew what they wanted to hear.

I gave a presentation on middle english and dressed up in middle english clothes which helped the reader connect with the times better.

6th grade English project(Sumo Wrestlers)= we asked a few people from the 10th grade to help us demonstrate the moves that sumo wrestlers were famous for.

A few of my high school teammates and I gave a presentation to our middle school trying to help the kids prepare now for college and some things we went through and how athletics helped us greatly. It was successful because we were passionate about the topic and very informative and felt like we helped some kids.

The best presentation I ever gave was a speech in Japanese that I gave to my Japanese class. It was successful because I practiced.

...It was successful mainly because it was funny. For the most part, that's how I captivate my audience.

I didn't fumble for words, I knew exactly what I was talking about, and the audience was very engaged with my presentation.