Career Growth & Leadership
Communicating to Make a Point: Centering Learning Outcomes to Optimize the Abstract and Enhance Your Delivery in Presentations
Research administration, like any other profession, is a field that relies on clear and efficient communication—including the transfer of knowledge through conference sessions and presentations. With a strong foundation, dynamic design, and effective summarization skills, you can maximize the impact of your next presentation to communicate what matters the most.
- Have you ever attended a conference session and the content did not reflect what it said on the schedule?
- Were you unsuccessful in your abstract submission, only to see the conference program and wonder where you went wrong?
- Did the presentation you attended not meet the stated objectives or have learning outcomes?
It is critical to have learning outcomes for any presentation. Simply put: what do you want those attending to come away with at the end of your presentation? This will help you be successfully selected and, should you be selected, to ensure that those attending are satisfied with the presentation at the end.
Developing a Compelling Abstract: The Foundational Overview
The abstract serves as the initial description for any training session, functioning as a concise summary and an invitation to potential participants.
Effective abstract development addresses the fundamental questions:
- What is the principal objective of this session?
- Who is your target audience, and what is their expected level of knowledge about your presentation subject matter?
- Crucially, what tangible benefits will attendees have by attending your session?
An easy way to address all these points is to frame your abstract like an elevator pitch: you’ve got about 250 words to clearly set the scene, explain the problem, and showcase your solution. By doing this, your presentation shows a clear learning trajectory for attendees.
Before you can entice people to attend your session on the program schedule, first you must convince the expert panel assessing your abstract that it is aligned to the conference themes and goals and will add value for the audience.
The primary objective of your abstract is to articulate the core value proposition of the session. Use plain language and clearly explain what participants will gain from your session.
Formulating Precise Learning Outcomes: The Pedagogical Blueprint
A well-structured abstract will help you at the next stage to be engaging, with a high-quality presentation design.
It's likely you’ve experienced a presentation when the presenter gets stuck in unnecessary detail, or there are too many slides, or the slides are poorly designed and packed with words. Or perhaps you thought you’d be learning about one thing, but the presentation is going in a completely different direction.
How can you avoid these common pitfalls? By structuring your presentation around learning outcomes. This is the most pivotal stage in the design of any presentation, and arguably the most overlooked. This shifts the focus from instructional delivery to measurable learner attainment, and this pedagogy is key in centering the attendee’s learning.
In the beginning of your presentation, insert one slide outlining to the audience what it can expect. Use active, observable verbs (e.g., ‘analyze,’ ‘apply,’ ‘consider,’ ‘evaluate,’ ‘explain’) to provide a definitive roadmap for both content development and audience participation. This clearly provides guidance for the audience so it knows how to engage with your presentation and what to expect, and it should duplicate your abstract in terms of what learners are planning to attend. It also helps focus what content you include as you have clear learning objectives for the participants.
Enhancing Visual Communication with Slide Design
Slides function as visual complements to the verbal presentation, rather than exhaustive textual repositories. Simply put, don’t write out the presentation on the slides! Their purpose is to augment comprehension, illustrate complex concepts, and provide a structured framework for the presentation.
The learning outcomes serve as a guide to the presentation structure. Consideration should be given to the logical progression of information, ensuring a coherent narrative flow between slides.
Once you’ve designed the content, edit it liberally. A minimalist approach to slide content often proves most effective, allowing your narration when presenting to provide the requisite depth. Less content on the screen is usually more impactful and can lead to better content comprehension. Well-paced and designed slides will likely pique people’s interest, lead to more questions, and hopefully spark conversations after your presentation.
Incorporation of diverse visual elements, such as images, infographics, and brief video segments, can accommodate varied learning preferences. Opportunities for active engagement or reflection can be strategically embedded within the visual design (e.g., polls, word clouds, even a “show of hands” to indicate agreement).
Each slide must possess a discernible purpose and directly correlate with the stated learning outcomes. Ask yourself:
- Would someone that knows nothing about this content understand this?
- Why am I sharing this information with the audience, and what is the point?
- What is the most important detail on this slide?
- And critically, how does this support the learning outcomes, and are my attendees leaving having achieved those?
And remember, no one knows your content as well as you, so keep your learning outcomes and audience knowledge level in mind when designing the amount of detail and progression of content.
Tip: There are dozens, if not hundreds, of free and paid digital platforms and AI-enhanced services that can take your content and create impactful visuals, concise bullet points, and modern layouts. Use them!
Ending with a Bang: Articulate Key Takeaways
A simple way to reinforce your key messages for the audience is to provide a single slide at the end of your presentation that condenses the takeaway messages as a summary, considerations, or future actions.
The amount of key messages will change depending on the session time and your content but, generally, a minimum of three and maximum of five are memorable for most audiences. These should be directly linked to the established learning outcomes.
For example, salient takeaways could be:
- Learning outcomes are foundational to compelling abstracts and engaging presentations.
- Keep your audience’s knowledge level in mind when designing the content detail and progression .
- Visual aids should complement, not replace, primary content.
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