Current Students

Student Resources

If you have suggestions for resources that should be added to these pages, please send them to us at mmc@temple.edu.

  • Temple University Graduate Student Association (TUGSA)
    TUGSA is the union representing Temple's graduate students who are hired to teach or conduct research. It's the first recognized graduate employee union in the state of Pennsylvania. See the TUGSA web site for information about the TUGSA-Temple U. contract, health insurance, workload, the grievance process, and more.
  • Guidelines for presenting research
    A Powerpoint presentation Professor Mendelson uses to teach students how to make effective conference and job presentations, along with other useful resources.
  • Recommended resources for writing
    A collection of web resources to help all of us write - and thus, think - better.
  • Networking and support
    You're not alone - web resources for connecting with other doctoral students.

 

Guidelines for Presenting Your Research

Jump to: Standard Presentations | Poster Presentations

Standard Presentations

Professor Mendelson presented a seminar before the 2002 and 2003 Graduate Research Forums that provided valuable guidelines for students and faculty about how to effectively present research (e.g., at conferences or in job talks). The MS Powerpoint slides from the seminar, in Acrobat (.pdf) format, are available here. (If you need the free Acrobat Reader program to open the file, click here.)

An excerpt from a short pamphlet titled "Really Bad Powerpoint [and How to Avoid It]" by Seth Godin is below; the pamphlet is available for $1.99 from Amazon.com.

Four Components To A Great Presentation

First, make yourself cue cards. This feature should be built in to PowerPoint, but its not. You should be able to see your cue cards on your laptops screen while your audience sees your slides on the wall. Alas. In the meantime, you'll just have to resort to writing them down the old-fashioned way. Now, you can use the cue cards you made to make sure you're saying what you came to say.

Second, make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you're saying is true not just accurate.

Talking about pollution in Houston? Instead of giving me four bullet points of EPA data, why not show me a photo of a bunch of dead birds, some smog and even a diseased lung? Amazingly, it's more fun than doing it the old way. But it's effective communication.

Third, create a written document. A leave-behind. Put in as many footnotes or details as you like. Then, when you start your presentation, tell the audience that you're going to give them all the details of your presentation after its over, and they don't have to write down everything you say.

IMPORTANT: Don't hand out the written stuff at the beginning. Don't! If you do, people will read the whole thing while you're talking and ignore you. Instead, your goal is to get them to sit back, trust you and take in the emotional and intellectual points of your presentation.

Fourth, create a feedback cycle. If your presentation is for a project approval, hand people a project approval form and get them to approve it, so there's no ambiguity at all about what you've just agreed to.

So What's On Your Slides?

Here are the five rules you need to remember to create amazing PowerPoint presentations:

  1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER.
  2. No cheesy images. Use professional images from corbis.com instead. They cost $3 each, or a little more if they're for professional use.
  3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions. None.
  4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never (ever) use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have.
  5. Don't hand out print-outs of your slides. They're emotional, and they wont work without you there. If someone wants your slides to show the boss, tell them that the slides go if you go.

The home run is easy to describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you're going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they'll see the image (and vice versa).

Poster Presentations

 

Recommended Resources for Writing

  • The Writing Center at Colorado State University has a web site called Writing@CSU that contains an amazingly comprehensive set of resources for writers and teachers, including interactive tutorials and demonstrations, writing guides, and extensive links to writing and teaching resources on the Internet. The writing guides related to conducting research seem particularly useful.

  • The Guide to Grammar & Writing page hosted by Capital Community College of Hartford, Connecticut features provides answers to common writing questions and issues.

  • Good advice about writing topics including grammar, style, diction, word formation, gender, social groups and scientific forms, and even e-mail conventions can be found in the American Heritage Book of English Usage: A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English.

  • The Purdue Online Writing Lab's Writing a Research Paper site contains a variety of resources, including a large links page.

  • Although it hasn't been updated for the recent 5th Edition of the APA Style Manual, an online Guide for Writing Research Papers based on the Styles Recommended by the American Psychological Association is worth a look. Other APA guidance can be found here.

  • It's often difficult to evaluate the credibility of material on the web; some helpful guidelines from the web site of Cornell University's library are here.

  • Don't plagiarize - MM&C is committed to strict adherence to and enforcement of Temple University's Student Code of Conduct and in particular its policy on academic honesty. Every MM&C student is expected to understand and strictly adhere to commonly recognized academic standards regarding the proper citation of and reference to other scholars' work. Definitions and detailed advice about how to avoid committing plagiarism can be found on this page of the Purdue Online Writing Lab's site.

  • Tara Gray provides twelve useful steps to getting your writing done and published in her 2005 book Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar. A good short summary is available on this page.

 

Networking and Support

  • The Ph.D. Resources section of the "Re-envisioning the Ph.D." web site contains many potentially useful resources for doctoral students in two categories: "Obtaining a Ph.D." and "Obtaining Employment." 

  • The Graduate School Survival Guide provides concise suggestions for everything from how to select and work with your research adviser to avoiding the research blues; it also includes links to other resources.

  • In addition to discussion forums, a very extensive set of useful links specifically for graduate students working on dissertations and theses is available at phinished.org.
  • The National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS) is the umbrella group for over two million graduate and professional students currently studying in the United States.

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