How to Give an Effective

Seminar Presentation?
[Type the document subtitle]

Don't think of the presentation as a test. The person who will learn
most from this exercise is you. The act of investigating sources,
digesting information, and summarizing other people's work will help
to clarify these matters in your mind.

Lecturer: Alaa Nawzad

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What is a Seminar?
A seminar is defined as a gathering of people for the purpose of discussing a stated
topic. Such gatherings are usually interactive sessions where the participants engage in
discussions about the delineated topic. The sessions are usually headed or led by one or two
presenters or even more who serve to steer the discussion along the desired path.
Classification of a Seminar:
1. Mini seminar
2. Main seminar
3. National seminar
4. International seminar

Purpose of a Seminar
A seminar may have several purposes or just one purpose. For instance, a seminar
may be for the purpose of education, such as a lecture, where the participants engage in the
discussion of an academic subject for the aim of gaining a better insight into the subject.
Other forms of educational seminars might be held to impart some skills or knowledge to the
participants. Examples of such seminars include personal finance, web marketing, real estate,
investing or other types of seminars where the participants gain knowledge or tips about the
topic of discussion.
Of course, a seminar can be motivational, in which case the purpose is usually to
inspire the attendees to become better people, or to work towards implementing the skills
they might have learned from the seminar. For instance, a business seminar with a financial
theme could be for the purpose of teaching small business owners how to pitch to investors or
to write a solid business plan, and to motivate them to get started right away.
A trade seminar brings a wide cross-section of the community together, such as
government officials, businessmen and women and the general public. Such seminars often
consist of workshops and the presentation of white papers. They are usually held for the
purpose of networking with various vendors and making new connections.

What is the difference between a conference, a seminar, a workshop and a symposium?

There are lots of different types of academic event that you might want to attend, such
as conferences, seminars, workshops and symposiums. Each has its own benefits and
drawbacks, and generally they have a different slant. Size, for instance, is usually a big factor
in whether something is regarded as a conference or a symposium. Usually the difference
between a conference and a symposium is that a conference will be a larger event and a
symposium a smaller one. Moreover, the difference between a conference and a seminar may
be that a conference has a more general theme with a focus on presentations and lectures,
whereas a workshop is usually more specific and hands-on, so to speak.

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Seminars VS. Workshops

The main difference between seminars and workshops is that seminars are usually
more academic and less hands-on than workshops. Seminars are events that are mostly geared
towards educational topics and usually feature one or more experts on the subject matter. On
the other hand, workshops are generally less formal and require more attendee participation
than seminars. The main thrust of workshops is for the participants to gain new skills during
the event under the guidance of the instructor.

Workshop VS. Conference

The difference between a workshop and a conference is that workshops are generally
smaller than conferences, and are usually only a day or two long and are dedicated to
discussing a specific topic. Although these events are held as part of a department, you will
often find outside visitors who attend them too.

Conference VS. Symposium

The main difference between a symposium and a conference is that a symposium

Planning a Seminar- What are its steps!

The first step towards planning an effective seminar is to determine what the purpose
of the seminar will be. Think about the target audience who will participate and what they
stand to gain from attending the seminar. Every seminar must have an agenda, so determine
what the agenda will be.

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Step 1: Select a topic
If possible select a topic that is of interest to the audience and to you. It will be much
easier to deliver a presentation that the audience finds relevant, and more enjoyable to
research a topic that is of interest to you.

Step 2: Define the objective of the presentation

Once you have selected a topic, write the objective of the presentation in a single
concise statement. The objective needs to specify exactly what you want your audience to
learn from your presentation. Base the objective and the level of the content on the amount of
time you have for the presentation and the background knowledge of the audience. Use this
statement to help keep you focused as you research and develop the presentation.

Preparing the Content of Your Presentation

Step 3: Prepare the body of the presentation

After defining the objective of your presentation, determine how much information
you can present in the amount of time allowed. Also, use your knowledge about the audience
to prepare a presentation with the right level of detail. You don’t want to plan a presentation
that is too basic or too advanced. The body of the presentation is where you present your
ideas. To present your ideas convincingly, you will need to illustrate and support them.
Strategies to help you do this include the following:

 Present data and facts

And remember, as you plan the body of your presentation it’s important to provide variety.
Listeners may quickly become bored by lots of facts or they may tire of hearing story after
story.

Step 4: Prepare the introduction and conclusion

Once you’ve prepared the body of the presentation, decide how you will begin and
end the talk. Make sure the introduction captures the attention of your audience and the
conclusion summarizes your important points. In other words, “Tell them what you’re going
to tell them. Tell them. Then, tell them what you told them.”

During the opening of your presentation, it’s important to attract the audience’s
attention and build their interest. If you don’t, listeners will turn their attention elsewhere and
you’ll have a difficult time getting it back. Strategies that you can use include the following:

 Make the introduction relevant to the listeners’ goals, values, and needs

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  Ask questions to stimulate thinking
 Share a personal experience
 Begin with a joke or humorous story
 Project a cartoon or colorful visual
 Make a stimulating or inspirational statement
 Give a unique demonstration

During the opening you want to clearly present your topic and the purpose of your
presentation. Clearly articulating the topic and purpose will help the listeners focus on and
easily follow your main ideas. During the conclusion of your presentation, reinforce the main
ideas you communicated. Remember that listeners won’t remember your entire presentation,
only the main ideas. By reinforcing and reviewing the main ideas, you help the audience
remember them.

Practicing and Delivering

Step 5: Practice delivering the presentation

Most people spend hours preparing a presentation but very little time practicing it.
When you practice your presentation, you can reduce the number of times you utter words
and phrases like, "um," "well," and "you know." These habits can easily diminish a speaker’s
credibility. In addition to planning the content of your presentation, you need to give
advanced thought to how you want to deliver it. Do you want to commit your presentation to
memory, use cards to guide you, or read from a script? Or, you might want to use a
combination of methods. The best way is to understand your content and say it in your own
words by trying to remember it.

Speaking from Memory

A distinct advantage of speaking from memory is your ability to speak to the audience
without relying on notes or a script. This allows you the flexibility to move away from the
podium and to maintain eye contact with the audience. However, speaking from memory has
disadvantages, too. Presentations from memory often sound rehearsed and the possibility
exists that you’ll forget an important point, present information that’s inaccurate, or
completely lose your train of thought. If you decide to deliver your presentation from
memory, have notes handy to move your memory just in case!

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 Tips for Effective Presentations
Whether you are an experienced presenter, or just starting out, there should be ideas to
help you to improve:

1. Preparation and knowledge (of subject and the presentation itself) are the pre-requisites
for a successful presentation, which importantly produce confidence and control, in turn
important for relaxing the presenter, and the audience.
2. Start strongly. The beginning of your presentation is crucial. You need to grab your
audience’s attention and hold it. You can do this by telling a very short story or showing
an image in your first slide.
3. Remember to follow the rules for slideshows. When you put your content on the slides,
there are rules you have to follow as a presenter. Try to Prepare the illustrations (text,
pictures, graphs, curves, pie charts, photos, videos, quotes etc.) that you want to use for
your presentation, so use visual aids. Make sure you do not include too much information
in each illustration, and that the text font, curves etc. are large enough to be read at a
distance. Try to include keywords, points, phrases and short statements on the slides,
because in seminar presentation, you have to explain all the content yourself. In a
seminar, if you include a lot of information on the slides, the audience would probably get
bored and do not have time to read the text on the slides. Slides must be concise and to
the point. (If you plan to use a board, it is a good idea.)
4. Show your passion and connect with your audience. The best way to be relaxed and
avoid from nervousness is to show the audience that your passion for the subject shines
through.
5. Keep it simple by concentrating on your core message.
6. Smile and make eye contact with your audience. If you smile and make eye contact,
you help the audience to connect with you and your subject. It also helps you to feel less
nervous.
7. Focus on one idea at a time on each slide. The biggest mistake that most speakers make
is putting too much data on a slide. No one wants to hear, ‘This slide is busy, but let me
walk you through it’. Use animations to build ideas: introduce a single point on a slide,
then gradually bring in the rest of the elements one at a time or on separate slides.
8. Do not write paragraphs on the slides. A presentation is not the right forum for the
written word. Don’t introduce a paragraph in a slide and read it out loud: people can read
faster in their heads than you can on stage. Also, if you put up a paragraph, but talk about
something else entirely, everyone will be too busy reading to pay attention to what you’re
saying. Use bullet points with a minimal amount of text.
9. Make the audience an important part of your presentation. To make your audience
get involved in your seminar, try to ask them questions and answer all their questions.
10. Take care of your appearance and clothes.
11. Use body language. By moving your hands when you try to convey an idea, the audience
can understand your point better.
12. Practise, practise, practise. The key to a good performance is practice. Practise your
pitch, your pacing, your body language, how you walk around, how you use your hands.
Although practising can be time consuming, it will boost your self-confidence.

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