Often, the general structure of your presentation follows that of a scientific article. A useful tip in preparing a structure for your presentation, before making any slides, is to write a rough draft of your research in a similar way to writing a report or a thesis. Depending on the length of your presentation, this rough brainstorm should be between one or two pages.

Organise your thoughts and structure the content into sections (see below). Depending on your chosen core message and target audience, some sections will require more emphasis, while others will need much less detail than an article.

Be critical of how much detail you should go into. One of the most important yet challenging aspects of preparation is being selective. Ask yourself what your audience really should know. Less is more. For example, if a certain project involved a method applied to more than one case, select one case to present. Do not try to convey all the stages you went through while doing the actual research.