Dissertation defense slides: free templates by discipline

A defense deck for a qualitative education study and a defense deck for a clinical trial do not look alike. They follow the same arc, but the findings slides, the method slides and the questions you must expect all differ. Here are four editable templates, one for each major kind of dissertation, with speaker notes on every slide.

Each template has a title slide, the main slides in the order a committee follows, a closing slide, and three backup slides for the questions you expect. Every slide carries bracketed placeholders that you replace with your own content. Nothing in them is real data, and the charts and tables are labeled "sample data".

Download the templates

Education and social sciences

For qualitative and mixed studies in education, sociology, psychology, social work and similar fields. The findings slide is built for themes with participant quotations. It covers design and participants, how codes became themes, and a backup slide for trustworthiness.

Business and quantitative social sciences

For survey and other quantitative studies in business, management, economics, public administration and quantitative education. It includes research questions with hypotheses, instruments and reliability, a sample profile table, a chart slide, and a table for tests of the hypotheses.

Health, nursing and sciences

For clinical, nursing, public health and laboratory or field science studies. It includes aim and outcomes, participant flow, a primary results chart with effect size and confidence interval, secondary results, and backup slides for sample size and ethics.

Humanities and arts

For literature, history, philosophy, religion, music and the arts. It opens with the argument, which humanities committees expect early, then gives the scholarly conversation, your sources, one slide for each chapter's claim and evidence, and counterarguments.

Download all four (zip)

The files open in PowerPoint. Google Slides and Keynote can import them, so check the layout after you import.

How to use a template

1. Choose the template closest to your design, not your department. A quantitative study in a school of education fits the business template better than the education one.
2. Save a copy with your own file name before you change anything.
3. Replace every bracketed placeholder with content from your dissertation, using the exact wording of your research questions, purpose statement and themes or hypotheses.
4. Read the speaker notes on each slide, which tell you what the committee wants from that slide. Then replace them with your own notes.
5. Delete what does not apply. Remove the humanities chapter slides you do not need, or the third theme card, and add slides if your study has more.
6. Cut to your time. Ask your chair how long the presentation lasts. Plan your slides around that time and remove anything that does not serve a research question. Our guide to preparing defense slides shows how.
7. Keep the backup slides after the closing slide. Show them only when a committee member asks. Fill them with your sample size justification, your extra analyses, and your limitations.
8. Replace the sample data in the charts and tables, and keep every number identical to your dissertation.
9. Change the colors and fonts in one place if your university requires its own style. The templates use a theme, so you can edit the theme colors and fonts and the whole deck updates.
10. Rehearse aloud with a timer, then export a PDF as a backup in case the presentation computer fails.

What differs by discipline

Education and social sciences. The committee wants to see how your themes make claims and how your participants' words support them. Expect questions on your sample size, your own position as the researcher, and how you protected quality. See presenting themes clearly and codes vs themes.

Business and quantitative social sciences. The committee wants exact numbers: sample size and its justification, reliability, assumptions, test statistics, effect sizes. Expect questions on why you chose each test. See analyzing questionnaire data and reporting quantitative results.

Health, nursing and sciences. The committee wants the design, the ethics and the effect with its confidence interval, and it wants you to separate statistical significance from practical importance. Expect questions on consent, risk, and what your design cannot show.

Humanities and arts. The committee wants the argument stated early and tested. Expect questions on your sources, your theoretical approach, and the strongest counterargument. Raise that counterargument yourself.

Before you present

Check your graduate school's requirements for the defense, because some programs set the length, the format, or a template for slides. Your chair's advice about your committee comes first. Use the 12 most common defense questions and our defense preparation checklist to rehearse.

These templates give structure and prompts. They do not write your presentation, and they do not guarantee how a committee responds. The content, the numbers and the claims must be your own.

Want a second reader before you defend?

The Two Dissertation Moms offers a Dissertation Manuscript Review that tests whether your problem, questions, method, findings and conclusions support each other, and shows you where a committee will press.