Suggested Presentation Structure and Slides Content

The main areas your defense presentation should cover are the following. The suggested
number of slides corresponds to a 15-20 minute presentation and can be scaled up or down
to provide a shorter or longer presentation.
1 – Title Page
This slide should contain the information that is provided on the title page of your hard copy

 The title of your research paper

 Your name
 Where you are studying
 Name and details of your course
 Name of Adviser

2 – Introduction
Your introduction slide should provide the committee an idea of the following:

 What is the topic area that you are investigating?

 What are the specific research questions that you set out to answer?
 Why is this question important to answer?
 What were the objectives of your research?

3 – Literature review
It’s not necessary to cover everything that’s currently understood in the available literature. You
may want to present the following:

 Relevant current research that is close to your topic

 Different theories that may apply to your specific area of research
 Areas of weakness that are currently highlighted

4 – Methodology
Make sure to touch the factors below within your process:

 The type of study you have conducted: qualitative, quantitative, or mixed

 The methods that you chose and why
 Details of the population, sampling methods, and other information
 Provide information regarding how you have analyzed the data that you have collected

5 – Results
This part should give the committee / audience a good understanding of what you’ve discovered
during your research. It should cover the following:
  An overall description of the data that you collected during your research
 The results of the analysis that you have done on that data
 What were the most significant findings from your data

6 – Discussion

Highlight here the meaning of the findings in relation to your discipline program and the
research that you have done:

 What are the major findings and what do they mean with regard to your research
 How do these findings relate to what others have found in the past
 How can you explain any unusual or surprising result

7 – Conclusions

a conclusion summarizing all that you have found within your research. You need to:

 Restate your research questions

 Show how your results answer these questions
 Show what contribution you have made
 State any limitations to the work you have done

8 – Recommendation

Describe how your work extends or builds upon prior art. Describe how your work has the
potential to benefit relevant stakeholders and describe additional questions or areas for further
work that have arisen from your study

 What area of interest would you have liked to explore but which was outside the scope of
your study
 What other perspectives could be explored to illuminate aspects of the subjects which
were only merely uncovered
 What follow-up studies would you like to conduct given your results/findings
 How could your study be extended
 How can the professionals in your field be impacted by the findings of this study
 What recommendations can you make to professionals, policymakers, stakeholders,
government leaders etc