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Rethinking Presentations in Engineering and Science

  Assertion-Evidence Approach for Presentations in Engineering and Science

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Rethinking Technical Presentations: Assertion-Evidence Approach

In engineering and science, most presentations are not nearly as successful as they could be. The biggest problem is that most presenters follow PowerPoint's defaults of a phrase headline supported by a bulleted list. A much more effective strategy for technical presentations is the assertion-evidence approach. In this approach, you build your presentations on succinct messages (assertions), rather than phrase topics. Moreover, to support those messages, you provide visual evidence rather than bulleted lists. Finally, to explain that evidence, you practice such that you can fashion sentences on the spot. Because this approach is built on research for how people learn, assertion-evidence presentations are better understood and remembered. Because you are explaining visual evidence rather than reading bullets, you project more confidence. ​