Design and Deliver Grad Studio: Designing Slides

Design & Deliver Grad Studio is a workshop series that takes you through the process of planning and designing a spoken academic presentation. If you’re working on a specific presentation, we encourage you to attend all three: start by organizing your ideas in “Planning for and preparing presentations,” learn how to create engaging slides in “Slide Design,” and practice strategies for confidently answering questions in “Defending and Answering Questions.”  

Each workshop will take 2.5 hours (with breaks) to build on one another and cover different elements of an effective academic presentation: planning your messages, supporting them with engaging visuals, and answering questions about your work clearly and concisely. You are welcome to attend any workshop you find most relevant, but we encourage you to attend all three so you can learn about and plan for all three elements.  

In all three workshops, you’ll be expected to brainstorm, plan, and discuss your own presentation, so it’s best to bring a specific presentation you're working on. If you don’t have a presentation coming up, come prepared to work on an academic presentation (such as a conference presentation or thesis defence) you’re likely to deliver.  

• Thursday, April 23, 2026: Planning for and preparing presentations 

• Thursday, May 7, 2026: Designing Slides

• Thursday, May 21, 2026: Defending and Answering Questions 

May 7: Designing Slides

In this workshop, we’ll cover the basics of designing slides for academic presentations, introduce you to the Assertion-Evidence model, and provide concrete strategies to make your slides engaging and useful for your audience. This workshop works best if you have slides you want to make or revise for a specific presentation, and if you attended the first workshop, Plan Your Presentation. Throughout this workshop, we’ll ask you to assess different slide design choices, sketch out some drafts of your own slides, and revise an existing slide to make it more engaging. 
 
Take this workshop if you’d like to improve your slide design skills, so that you can create a slide deck that supports your presentation & keeps your audience engaged.