Presentation for Master’s Thesis Defense

A Master’s thesis is the result of the student’s painstaking work throughout the entire period of study in the master’s program, the quintessence of their knowledge of the chosen subject. In the dissertation, the student reflects the results of his/her research in a rigorous and logical form.

However, the future graduate always faces the difficult task of convincing the members of the committee that his or her work is relevant, up-to-date, and useful. That is why some of the students hire the paper writing service on WritingAPaper to get a proper and professional view of their thesis in advance.

Also, various additional tools are a great help during the defense of the master’s thesis, and one of them is the presentation. That is what we will talk about in this article.

Why do you need a presentation?

Presentation at the defense of the master’s thesis is, first of all, a visualization tool, with the help of which the student can reflect on the data, which are hard to perceive by ear: summary tables, diagrams with a large amount of data, graphs, and so on.

Agree, there is no point in reading out statistics if they can be presented in an easy-to-understand form and as visual material. Moreover, the information in the presentation will allow the audience to dive deeper into the topic and understand how good your analytical skills are.

In addition, the presentation is also an aid to the student. The point is that a presentation on a master’s thesis requires following a certain structure. Usually, the structure of the presentation is the same as the structure of the introduction to the research paper, which allows the student not to memorize the sequence of points to be told but to speak more loosely with the support of the presentation.

Structure of the presentation

Title page

The title slide of the presentation should reflect everything the same as the title page of the master’s thesis itself.

The mandatory components of the title slide are:

• The name of the educational organization
• Faculty and department affiliation
• The theme of the master’s thesis
• Full name of the student who prepared the master’s thesis
• Full name of the student’s supervisor
• The city in which the defense of the master’s thesis is held, and the current year

Justification for the topic

Usually, this part is written before you start working on the text of the master’s thesis, but after the agreement and approval of the topic. The purpose of this section is to convince the members of the commission that the results of your research can find a practical application, rather than being a useless conclusion of useless work. Subsequently, the rationale for the choice of the topic of the master’s thesis becomes an integral part of the introduction.

The presentation slides should cover the following points:

• Relevance of the topic. Your research must address some pressing scientific or practical-production problem.
• The degree of scientific development. Briefly describe what advances have been made by other researchers on the same topic.
• Object and Subject of Research. Remember that the object and subject must strictly correspond to the chosen topic.
• Purpose and Objectives. Tell what new things you plan to bring to science and practice, as well as what steps you will take to do so.
• Research Methodology. Choose methods that are appropriate to your chosen field of knowledge and your research goal and objectives.
• Hypothesis. State your assumption about the results of the study, and confirm or refute it.

The practical relevance of the study

This section is for you to demonstrate where and how your research findings might be of practical use. For example, if you were able to develop a radically new scheme of enterprise development and scientifically prove its effectiveness, then start-ups or companies whose structure allows for dynamic change may well benefit from your results.

Theoretical statements

In the introduction to the master’s thesis, the student must necessarily demonstrate knowledge of the theoretical basis of the chosen problem, which consists, by and large, of a brief statement of the main theses of the most famous and recognized works. The same should be done in the presentation approximately according to the following scheme: name of the work – author – main theses.

Description of the research progress

This part of your presentation should describe how and in what order you accomplished your objectives: what you read, what you compared it to, what experiments you did, who you interviewed, and so forth. The sequence of activities should be logical and lead the listener step by step to the results of the entire work.

Demonstrating the results of the study

As the name implies, this section should provide information about the results of your research activities. Whether or not the hypothesis is confirmed, whether or not you achieved the goal you set for yourself, whether all the tasks were completed – all this should be presented to you in the form of a thesis statement.

Conclusions

Conclusions are one of the most significant parts of the entire paper. Here you have the chance to evaluate the results of the work done, describe what was done and what remains to be done, tell what problems you encountered during the study and how you could or could not solve them, etc. In addition, in this section, the student is required to briefly repeat the concluding statements of each chapter, without citing evidence.

Information about the approbation

The approbation of the results of scientific research is the confirmation of these results not only from a theoretical point of view but also from a practical point of view.

The results can be approbated in the following ways:

• presentations at scientific conferences and other events
• participation in discussions
• publication of articles on any aspect of the thesis
• reviewing articles

Thus, your presentation should include data on your participation in various scientific events, published articles, discussions held, and so on.

Always keep in mind that the presentation is, after all, supporting material, so try to describe each of the points as succinctly as possible.

How to make a presentation yourself

As with the master’s thesis itself, there are certain requirements for the presentation for its defense (in addition to the structured nature of the presentation).

First, it is most convenient (but not obligatory) to create a presentation in a specialized program Microsoft PowerPoint or its analogs (Google Slides or LibreOffice Impress). We also recommend paying attention to Prezi, the service that offers an alternative approach to the creation of presentations, more flexible settings, and advanced functionality.

Second, don’t try to fit your speech into a presentation. The purpose of the presentation is to complement your presentation, not replace it.

Recommendations for presentation design:

• Don’t use bright and patterned templates

Opt for something simple and concise, use a white background and black text. Also do not use a combination of more than 2-3 colors along the way.

• Don’t experiment with fonts

Traditional TimesNewRoman or Arial would be the best choice. At the same time do not use a font size less than 24 – do not hope that all members of the committee have perfect eyesight.

• One element – one slide

Don’t turn an image, chart, or graph that makes sense into a background for the text. Each of these elements (ideally) should be on a separate slide if the logic of the presentation allows it.

• Do away with animation

Any animation distracts the listener’s attention from the content.

• Focus your attention competently

Highlight the headings in accordance with the color scheme of the presentation, and put a bold type. If any phrase within the text needs to be highlighted, set it underlined or italicized. Don’t turn your presentation into an impressionist masterpiece.

• Be guided by the volume of data

If the table you want to place in the presentation has about a hundred lines, drop it – no one will even think of trying to make sense of so much small text. The solution – make all the particularly informative elements (tables, graphs, charts) in the handout, which will be in front of the committee members.

• Make hyperlinks

It is quite possible that in the course of answering the committee’s questions, you will be asked to return to this or that slide. It is quite possible to assume in advance what sections of the presentation will attract the special attention of listeners. Make hyperlinks to them, so you don’t waste precious seconds scrolling through numerous slides.

• Make proper editing of your presentation speech

You can ask your family or friend to listen to it and make some comments about how easy it is to get your point. If you want to get a professional review on your speech or the whole thesis itself, then turn to paper writing service reddit reviews where you will find the proper help.

• Do not forget about psychology

During any presentation, eye contact with the audience is important, so during your master’s thesis defense, try not to look at your presentation. Spend a couple of evenings before the defense to prepare for the speech, so you can understand exactly what is happening on the screen at any given moment of your speech.

• Follow the sequence

First, you switch the slide, then give the committee a few seconds to read the content, and only then do you voice your comment.

• Check literacy

It’s a matter of half an hour to rid your presentation of spelling, punctuation, and other errors. Take this time to fix all the mistakes, so you will not lose face in the responsible moment.

• A presentation is not a film

Remember that the time of your presentation is limited, so do not create a presentation of 20-30 slides. In this case, the saying “brevity is the sister of talent” is more true than ever. Your efforts will be more rewarded if you can talk about the results of your work briefly.