How to prepare slides for your dissertation defense

Defense slides serve one purpose: they let you tell the story of the study in the time you have. They do not repeat the dissertation. Committee members have read it, and what they want from the presentation is your command of it.

Plan the talk before the slides. Ask your chair how long the presentation lasts and how much time the committee leaves for questions, then build the slides to fit.

Want a ready structure? Download our free defense slide templates by discipline, with speaker notes on every slide.

What to include

A defense presentation follows the same order as the dissertation, in short form.

1. Title slide. Your name, the title, your chair, and the committee members.
2. The problem. What is wrong or unknown, and for whom. One slide.
3. The gap and the purpose. What the literature leaves open and what your study set out to do. One or two slides.
4. Research questions. Show them exactly as they appear in the dissertation, and keep the wording the same on every later slide.
5. Framework. The theory or concept that shaped the study, and how. One slide, with a diagram if you have one.
6. Method. Design, participants, instruments or interview approach, and analysis steps. Two or three slides.
7. Findings. One slide per research question, with the main result and the evidence for it.
8. Discussion. What the findings mean, how they sit beside the literature, and what is new.
9. Limitations and recommendations. The limits you named and what comes next.
10. Closing slide. A short statement of the contribution, and a final slide inviting questions.

How many slides

Let the time decide. Divide your minutes by what you can say clearly per slide, and cut anything that does not serve a research question. Most students bring too many slides, and the usual result is a rushed ending where the findings and discussion are squeezed into the last two minutes.

How to show findings

Choose the display by the data. A table suits exact figures. A chart suits comparison across groups. For qualitative findings, show the theme name, a short quote, and a sentence on what it means. Our guides to presenting themes clearly and reporting quantitative results show the layouts that read well.

Put one point on each slide. A slide that needs a minute of reading is a slide the committee will read instead of listening to you.

Mistakes that cost time

• Reading the slides aloud. The committee reads faster than you speak. Use the slide as a prompt and say the explanation.
• Spending half the time on the literature review. The committee wants your study, so reduce the background to the gap.
• Crowded text and small fonts. If you cannot read it from the back of the room, cut it.
• Slides that do not match the dissertation. A different wording of the research questions will draw a question you did not need.
• No backup slides. Prepare slides for the questions you expect, such as the sample size justification, an extra analysis, or a limitation, and keep them after the closing slide.

Rehearse with a timer

Rehearse aloud three times, once alone, once for a colleague, and once with the questions. Our list of 12 defense questions and our mock defense questions give you what to practice against. Use the defense preparation checklist for the final week.

Want the whole manuscript read before you defend?

The Two Dissertation Moms offers a Dissertation Manuscript Review that tests whether the problem, questions, method, findings and conclusions support each other, which is where committees ask their hardest questions.