Running Meetings:
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Effective meetings:
o Clear purpose
o Engaged attendees
o Safe space for divergent thinking
o Real, sharable results
Running effective meetings relies on 3 things
o Set agenda
o Starting and ending on time
o Ending with an action plan
Meetings are recorded through documents called minutes
Minutes are important because:
o Offer legal protection
o Provide structure
o Drive action
o Measure progress
o State ownership
Effective meeting minutes
o Names of participants
o Agenda items
o Calendar or due dates
o Actions or tasks
o Main points
o Decisions made by participants
o Record what is most important points
o Future decisions
o Documents: images, attached files
Academic information:
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Sources of academic information
o Google scholar
o Journals
o Databases
Criterions used to evaluate resources:
o Reliability
o Relevance
o Currency
Spelling affects search results
Peer-reviewed articles present more highly regarded and authoritative information
Backwards chaining:
o Can be useful for tracing how a particular idea has developed
Forwards chaining:
o Is a way of tracing the ongoing development of an idea
Referencing:
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Quoting directly, word for word
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Using data such as statistics, images, diagrams, graphs
Summarising or paraphrasing another person’s work
Types of reference managers
o EndNote
o Mendeley
o Refworks
o Bibtex
Literature Searching:
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Define your search question
o Decide topic if your search
o Identify main concepts in your question
o Use PICO (Patient Intervention Comparison Outcome) search model
Decide where to search
o Choose a database
Develop a search strategy
o Search with key terms
o Search for exact phrases
o Use truncated and wildcard searches
o Search with subject headings
o Use Boolean logic
o Search citations
Refine your search strategy
o Restrict and widen your search
o Use search limits
o Use search filters
Save your search for future use
o Save the articles you find
o Save your search strategy
o Stay up-to-date with database alerts
Data Presentation:
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Goals of a communicator:
o Transmit your idea to the reader with the utmost clarity
o Require of the reader an amount of effort commensurate with the complexity of the
idea
Data & graphs
o Pattern:
 Showing how one variable is related to another variable
 Infer the cause of such relationship
o Convince others:
Variables:
o Quantitative:
 Concentration, height
o Categorical:
 Diet preference, gender
o Y-axis:
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Dependent variable:
 Quantitative variable
 Outcome
 Response
X-axis:
 Independent variable:
 Quantitative
 Categorical
Report writing:
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Abstract:
o Purpose of work, what and how the work was done, what was observed and what
the observations imply.
Introduction:
o Background of the topic, relevance/contribution of this work to said topic.
Conclusion:
o Observations that were made, what do each observation imply or what do they
imply as a whole (and if relevant, what is new about your observation as
compared to existing literature).
Tables and graphs:
o Prepare graphs in grey scale
o Use different shapes/patterns/fill
o Captions stay on Top of Tables and Go under Graphs/Figures
Language:
o Introduction:
 What others have done  past
 Future direction of this work  future
o Methods:
 Past
o Results
 Past
o Discussion
 Present
o Conclusion:
 What you did for experiment  past
 What you think results mean  present
 What will you do next  future
Oral presentations:
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Set up the STRUCTURE of your presentation - this forms the framework of your talk.
Draft up the SLIDES - these are the visual aids to illustrate what you are
communicating verbally.
SPEECH - telling your story based on the structure built in step 1.
Step 1: Planning the structure of your presentation
o Resulting flow of presentation will appear more logical
o Time limit (1-2min/slide)
o Amount of information available
o How much detail you can include within the time limit
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o Section information for your presentation
Step 2: Designing your slides:
o Minimum font size: 18
o Clear font styles: Palatino, Times New Roman or Arial
o Spacing: One and a half line
o Check spelling or grammar
o Include key phrases or words only
o Avoid more than 4 points per slide
o Animations – use sparingly to minimise distraction
o Big enough to read (axis labels/titles and data points/trendlines)
o Image quality
o What the axis are
o What are they seeing?
o What do the results mean?
o Use a pointer when applicable
Step 3: Getting speech ready
Bonus:
o In a scientific presentation, it is a good idea to tell your audience “Why?”
 Why is your research important?
 Why is each individual test carried out important?
If you use a figure/graph/picture that is not yours
o Remember to include a reference
o It can be in a smaller font at the bottom of your slide