rubric for research proposal presentation

Responding, Evaluating, Grading

Rubric for a Research Proposal

Matthew Pearson - Writing Across the Curriculum

UW-Madison WAC Sourcebook 2020 Copyright © by Matthew Pearson - Writing Across the Curriculum. All Rights Reserved.

Share This Book

Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

How to Make a Successful Research Presentation

Turning a research paper into a visual presentation is difficult; there are pitfalls, and navigating the path to a brief, informative presentation takes time and practice. As a TA for  GEO/WRI 201: Methods in Data Analysis & Scientific Writing this past fall, I saw how this process works from an instructor’s standpoint. I’ve presented my own research before, but helping others present theirs taught me a bit more about the process. Here are some tips I learned that may help you with your next research presentation:

More is more

In general, your presentation will always benefit from more practice, more feedback, and more revision. By practicing in front of friends, you can get comfortable with presenting your work while receiving feedback. It is hard to know how to revise your presentation if you never practice. If you are presenting to a general audience, getting feedback from someone outside of your discipline is crucial. Terms and ideas that seem intuitive to you may be completely foreign to someone else, and your well-crafted presentation could fall flat.

Less is more

Limit the scope of your presentation, the number of slides, and the text on each slide. In my experience, text works well for organizing slides, orienting the audience to key terms, and annotating important figures–not for explaining complex ideas. Having fewer slides is usually better as well. In general, about one slide per minute of presentation is an appropriate budget. Too many slides is usually a sign that your topic is too broad.

Limit the scope of your presentation

Don’t present your paper. Presentations are usually around 10 min long. You will not have time to explain all of the research you did in a semester (or a year!) in such a short span of time. Instead, focus on the highlight(s). Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

You will not have time to explain all of the research you did. Instead, focus on the highlights. Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

Craft a compelling research narrative

After identifying the focused research question, walk your audience through your research as if it were a story. Presentations with strong narrative arcs are clear, captivating, and compelling.

• Introduction (exposition — rising action)

Orient the audience and draw them in by demonstrating the relevance and importance of your research story with strong global motive. Provide them with the necessary vocabulary and background knowledge to understand the plot of your story. Introduce the key studies (characters) relevant in your story and build tension and conflict with scholarly and data motive. By the end of your introduction, your audience should clearly understand your research question and be dying to know how you resolve the tension built through motive.

• Methods (rising action)

The methods section should transition smoothly and logically from the introduction. Beware of presenting your methods in a boring, arc-killing, ‘this is what I did.’ Focus on the details that set your story apart from the stories other people have already told. Keep the audience interested by clearly motivating your decisions based on your original research question or the tension built in your introduction.

• Results (climax)

Less is usually more here. Only present results which are clearly related to the focused research question you are presenting. Make sure you explain the results clearly so that your audience understands what your research found. This is the peak of tension in your narrative arc, so don’t undercut it by quickly clicking through to your discussion.

• Discussion (falling action)

By now your audience should be dying for a satisfying resolution. Here is where you contextualize your results and begin resolving the tension between past research. Be thorough. If you have too many conflicts left unresolved, or you don’t have enough time to present all of the resolutions, you probably need to further narrow the scope of your presentation.

• Conclusion (denouement)

Return back to your initial research question and motive, resolving any final conflicts and tying up loose ends. Leave the audience with a clear resolution of your focus research question, and use unresolved tension to set up potential sequels (i.e. further research).

Use your medium to enhance the narrative

Visual presentations should be dominated by clear, intentional graphics. Subtle animation in key moments (usually during the results or discussion) can add drama to the narrative arc and make conflict resolutions more satisfying. You are narrating a story written in images, videos, cartoons, and graphs. While your paper is mostly text, with graphics to highlight crucial points, your slides should be the opposite. Adapting to the new medium may require you to create or acquire far more graphics than you included in your paper, but it is necessary to create an engaging presentation.

The most important thing you can do for your presentation is to practice and revise. Bother your friends, your roommates, TAs–anybody who will sit down and listen to your work. Beyond that, think about presentations you have found compelling and try to incorporate some of those elements into your own. Remember you want your work to be comprehensible; you aren’t creating experts in 10 minutes. Above all, try to stay passionate about what you did and why. You put the time in, so show your audience that it’s worth it.

For more insight into research presentations, check out these past PCUR posts written by Emma and Ellie .

— Alec Getraer, Natural Sciences Correspondent

Share this:

• Share on Tumblr

• Utility Menu

de5f0c5840276572324fc6e2ece1a882

• How to Use This Site
• Core Competencies

Research Presentation Rubric

The format of research presentations can vary across and within disciplines. Use this rubric (PDF) to identify and assess elements of research presentations, including delivery strategies and slide design. This resource focuses on research presentations but may be useful beyond. 

• help_outline help

iRubric: Chapter 1: Research Proposal rubric

• research proposal

• A Look at Commencement 2024

In this section

• Homecoming & Family Weekend
• Hotel Accommodations
• On-Campus Housing
• Loggers Keep Learning
• Getting your classmates excited!
• Reunion Planning Timeline
• Logger Link
• Confidentiality Agreement
• Volunteer Interest Survey
• Connect with Classmates
• Online Services FAQ
• Professional Achievement Awards
• Service to Community Award
• Service to Puget Sound
• Young Logger Service Award
• Black Alumni Union
• Hispanic/Latinx Alumni Union
• Women's League
• Maroon Society
• What I Wish I'd Known
• A Look at Commencement 2023
• Access Programs
• Access Scholars Cohort Program
• Diversity Strategic Plan
• Title IX & Equal Opportunity
• Sustainability
• Accreditation
• Places & Spaces
• Seattle & the Pacific Northwest
• Community Partnerships & Initiatives
• Educational Outcomes
• Goal Team One
• Goal Team Two
• Goal Team Three
• Goal Team Four
• Goal Team Five
• Campus Development Plan
• Interactive Historical Timeline
• Articles & Addresses
• Arches Columns
• Susan Resneck Pierce
• Media Coverage
• Undergraduate Programs
• Graduate Programs
• Study Abroad
• Summer Research
• Internship Programs
• Community-Based Learning
• Careers & Employment
• Available Courses
• Graduation Requirement
• Planning Off-Campus Community-Based Learning
• Knowledge, Identity, & Power Requirement
• Language Graduation Requirement
• Experiential Learning Requirement
• Course Descriptions
• Search Classes by Term
• Meet Our Faculty
• After Puget Sound
• Academic Resources & Support
• Campus Houses
• Themed Houses
• Trans & Non-Binary Housing
• International District
• Greek Houses
• Policies, Rates & Refunds
• Transfer Housing
• Residence Hall Association
• Animals in Campus Residences
• What to Bring to Campus
• Orientation
• Intercultural Engagement
• Spirituality & Religious Life
• Accessibility & Accommodations
• Doctoral Psychology Internship
• Application
• Position Description
• Emergency Preparedness
• Security Services
• Sexual Misconduct Prevention
• Student Accountability
• Student Life Resources
• Annual Events
• Art, Ecology, & Community
• Biology + Art
• Eco-Mandala
• Brown & Haley Past Lectures
• Clapp Past Artists
• Dolliver Professors, Guest Lecturers, & Residencies
• Jacobsen Series
• Pierce Past Lectures
• Redford Past Lectures
• Regester Past Lectures
• Swope Past Lectures
• Information for Speakers
• 2022-23 Seminars
• 2021-22 Seminars
• 2020-21 Seminars
• 2019-20 Seminars
• 2018-19 Seminars
• 2017-18 Seminars
• 2016-17 Seminars
• 2015-16 Seminars
• 2014-15 Seminars
• 2013-14 Seminars
• 2012-13 Seminars
• Applying Behavioral Research to Entertainment
• Evidence, Knowledge, & Decision-Making in Occupational Therapy
• Exercise Science/Psychology Poster Session
• Physical Therapy Graduate Student Poster Session
• Reconciling Work & Play
• Returning Children to Play & School After Concussion
• How to Succeed at Losing
• Neural Swatches
• Nourishing the Whole Person
• Academic Calendars
• Security Alerts & Emergency Communications
• Reporting Crime
• Power Outage
• Violent Act or Threat
• Hazardous Spills or Leaks
• Emergency Medical Care
• Inclement Weather
• Personal Safety
• Questions & Answers
• On-Campus Incident Response Plans
• Emergency Operations Center
• Emergency Gathering Areas Map
• Primary Emergency Response Departments & Staff
• City of Tacoma & Pierce County Plan
• Training Video: Shots Fired on Campus
• At the Diner
• In the Residence Halls
• On Our Grounds
• On the Road
• Sustainability Advisory Committee
• What are the Digital Humanities?
• Gallery of Student Work
• Gallery of Faculty Work
• Digital Essays
• Digital Mapping
• Network Visualizations
• Presentations
• Text Analytics
• Timeline Examples of Student Work
• Meet Our Team
• Request a Consultation
• For the Media
• Subcommittee Membership
• MarCom Request
• View Experts List
• Social Media Guide
• Style & Inclusive Language Guide
• About the Website Design
• Approved Content Editor Training
• Basic Report
• More Analytics
• SEO Resources
• Social Media & Linking
• What We Already Do
• What You Can Do
• About Arches
• The Hatchet Weekly
• Social Media
• Marketing & Communications Newsletter
• Parents & Families Newsletter
• Connections Course Proposal Instructions and Rubric
• Artistic Approaches Course Proposal Instructions and Rubric
• Humanistic Approaches Course Proposal Instructions & Rubric
• Seminars in Scholarly Inquiry Course Proposal Instructions and Rubric
• Mathematical Approaches Course Proposal Instructions & Rubric
• Natural Scientific Approaches Course Proposal Instructions & Rubric
• Non-Core (with KNOW) Course Proposal Instructions & Rubric
• Non-Core (without KNOW) Course Proposal Instructions
• Chersonesos Project
• Khirbet Qana Project
• Galilee Survey Project
• Archaeological Technology
• Nabonidus database
• Fieldwork Opportunities
• Related Websites
• Redford Conference In Archaeology
• Share your work
• View Gallery
• Communications
• Caps, Gowns & Announcements
• Ceremony information
• Convocation
• Activities & Events Schedule
• Your Last Semester
• Becoming Alumni
• Accommodations

On May 5, 2024, we celebrated the 132nd Commencement at University of Puget Sound. Congratulations, 2024 grads!

Go to Grad Images and search by last name to find your ceremony photographs.

First Generation Celebration

Indigenous Graduates Celebration

POSSE Graduation 2024

Convocation 2024

Lining up for Commencement

The walk to Baker Stadium for Commencement 2024

Processional for Commencement 2024

Commencement 2024

Faculty at Commencement 2024

Cap decorations are a common sight during Commencement.

A view of the audience at Commencement 2024

A view of the crowd at Commencement 2024

President Crawford presents an honorary degree.

The crowd enjoys Commencement 2024

President Crawford presides over Commencement 2024.

A happy graduate at Commencement 2024

Hooding a graduate at Commencement 2024

Graduates at Commencement 2024

Graduates enjoy Commencement 2024

Friends and family celebrating at Commencement 2024

Happy graduates at Commencement 2024

Artwork on mortar boards is a common sight at Commencement.

Social Posts

Highlights from our Indigenous Graduates Celebration, First Generation Students Celebration, and Academic Convocation 🎓🎉. . .#universityofpugetsound #celebration #convocation #graduation

CONGRATS, CLASS OF ‘24 🥳🎉🎓(Lots more graduation content coming soon). . .#universityofpugetsound #commencement #graduation

We present to you, the class of 2024! 🎓. . .#universityofpugetsound #graduation #commencement #2024

Once a Logger, always a Logger. . .#universityofpugetsound #graduation #college #commencement

Highlights from our 2024 Commencement Ceremony! 🤩. . .#universityofpugetsound #commencement #graduation #college

We miss you already 😭❤️

Streamed Commencement Feed

Commencement Program   

Commencement Program - En Español 

Retiring Faculty

Bernard Bates taught and conducted research work in planetary astronomy, exploration of the solar system, space technology, and any lights in the sky, including, U.F.O.s. He has worked with lunar soils, studying whether the composition of the soils could be revealed through the way they interact with light. He has also explored micrometeorites recovered from the ocean floor. Bates has been quoted widely in the media on space exploration, alien life, and astronomical phenomena, including in The Atlantic, Popular Mechanics, Computer World, Live Science, KPLU Radio, The Loop, and The News Tribune . Bates credits the Apollo program for his interest in pursuing planetary astronomy throughout college and graduate school. He regularly gives public talks on astronomical topics, including one of his most popular presentations—about searching for extraterrestrial life with a home computer. He taught courses on Mars exploration, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and astronomy.

Lynda Livingston taught introductory corporate finance, as well as advanced electives in financial markets, investments, valuation, and portfolio management. She holds the top professional investment credential, the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, which informed her teaching. She is the founder and president of the not-for-profit financial education corporation, Four Horsemen Investments, which offers scholarship and research opportunities to Puget Sound students.

Eric Orlin is a Roman historian whose primary interests center on the religious practices of the ancient world. He has studied how religious practice shapes and reflects cultural identity, and he has looked at what the similarities and differences in religious practice across the ancient Mediterranean reveal about the peoples inhabiting that world. He has also explored how memory is shaped by religious practices and how those memories in turn shape the development of a society. Orlin is general editor for the Routledge Dictionary of Ancient Mediterranean Religions (Routledge, 2015), and is working on the book Republican Rome: A Social and Cultural History . Previously, he wrote Foreign Cults in Rome: Creating a Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2010), which explores how religion contributed to the reshaping of the Roman sense of identity in the wake of their transition from a single city to the dominant power in the Mediterranean basin. Orlin suggests that the methods by which the Romans absorbed cults, priests, and practices allowed them to recreate a clear sense of community that could include the people they had conquered. His earlier book, Temples, Religion and Politics in the Roman Republic , discusses the connections between politices and the construction of new temples in Rome. Orlin has published numerous articles in professional journals and regularly gives public presentations. He taught Greek and Roman history, as well as classical languages.

Bradley Richards holds B.A. degrees in Physics and Computer Science, an MSc in Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his research was on custom memory-system support for distributed shared-memory parallel computers. In addition to his continuing work on parallel and distributed computing, Richards is active in Computer Science education, having authored numerous papers on pedagogy and curricular issues. He has taught at Puget Sound since 2005.

In teaching, advising, research, and service, Amy Ryken is deeply interested in the lifelong journey of the teacher each of us hopes to be, in engaging in teaching and learning as intellectual and humanizing acts, and in confronting biases and inequities in the personal and institutional relations of our daily lives. Ryken studied teacher learning, how to create equitable classroom spaces and partnerships that foster connections between schools and community resources. Throughout Ryken's time at Puget Sound, they actively pursued culturally responsive practice and contributed collaboratively to the ongoing work of equity. Ryken was significantly involved with diversity and inclusion initiatives on campus such as serving as chair of the Committee on Diversity; co-leading the initiative to add the Knowledge, Identity, and Power (KNOW) graduation requirement; serving on the Diversity Advisory Council; co-founding the Transgender Advocacy and Inclusion Committee; supporting the work of the Race & Pedagogy Institute; serving on the Gender & Queer Studies Advisory Board; and leading the Advancing Systemic Equity grant work to center race and community in the MAT curriculum.

Leslie Saucedo's research focus is understanding the mechanisms that allow for unregulated cell growth—a basic hallmark of cancer. Cancer has long been understood to be a genetic disease; there are more than 100 genes implicated in promoting cancer when they are mutated. In particular, Saucedo uses fruit flies as a model for the underlying genetic changes that subvert the normal biology of cell growth and division. Fruit flies share with humans more than two-thirds of the genes known to play a direct role in human disease. Saucedo and her students focus primarily on the protein PRL-1 in regard to human cancer biology. While elevated levels of PRL-1 are used as a clinical marker to stage advanced cancers, Saucedo's work focuses on how misregulated PRL-1 functionally contributes to cancer. Uncovering such specific mechanisms in model organisms such as fruit flies is often the first step for developing targeted therapies to halt cancer progression. Saucedo's genetic research has been funded by the National Institute of Health and the National Cancer Institute. Her published work in journals such as PLOSONE, Mechanics of Development, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, and Nature Cell Biology has been well-cited in the field. Saucedo taught courses in areas including Genetic Determinism, Cell Biology, and Cancer Biology.

Carolyn Weisz is a social psychologist with research interests in racism, homelessness, and social perception. Her recent research on homelessness, conducted in collaboration with other scholars and with the Pierce County Department of Community Connections, has focused on racial disparities in homelessness; links between stigma, psychological distress, and physical health; trauma; smoking; emotional labor among service providers; and organizational diversity climate. Weisz played an integral role in the research, development, and evaluation of Project PEACE—a series of dialogues between community members and the Tacoma Police Department—and was lead author of a report on the event. Her past work on social identity includes published papers on friendship (with Lisa Wood) and on outcomes of substance abuse treatment. She also co-authored the article "Being Teacher-Scholars in a Liberal Arts Setting," in Dialogue: Newsletter of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2010). Weisz served on the leadership team of the university's Race & Pedagogy Institute. She volunteers in the Diversion Program of the Pierce County Juvenile Court and serves on the Board of Directors of the Fair Housing Center of Washington. She taught in the area of statistics and research methods.

Roger Allen taught courses on clinical anatomy, neuroscience, functional neuroanatomy, and psychological aspects of physical therapy practice. In addition to his physical therapy degree, he holds a Ph.D. in psychophysiology, MSEd in health education, and B.S. in both psychology and biology. His physical therapy practice specialized in the treatment of people who experience chronic pain, with emphasis on the treatment of complex (and often surprising) relationships between our bodies, our minds, and mechanisms within the human brain. His primary research work now explores delayed modulation mechanisms of neuropathic pain. He is author of three textbooks, along with chapters in the three most recent editions of the encyclopedic benchmark reference, Bonica's Management of Pain . He has now made over 100 national and international research presentations at venues including the Nobel Institute for Neurophysiology, World Pain Congress, World Congress of Physical Therapy, World Congress of Neurology, American Pain Society, World Institute of Pain, European Congress of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, American Academy of Orthopaedic and Manual Physical Therapists, and regularly at APTA's Combined Sections Meetings and Annual Conferences. His published research has appeared in journals such as the International Journal of Physical Therapy, Psychophysiology, the Journal of Neurological Physical Therapy, European Journal of Pain, Physiotherapy, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North America , the International Journal of Sport Psychology , and includes an anthologized paper in the science parody Journal of Irreproducible Results . Much of his research was conducted with the integral involvement of his graduate physical therapy students and undergraduate neuroscience interns. These important faculty/student collaborations ignited and nurtured the sparks of exciting fresh insights. So far, more than 100 of his students have presented research at national or international conferences or published their work in professional journals, and four have received international research awards.

In 2005 he was granted a John Lantz Senior Research Fellowship to complete research aimed at mapping neurovascular innervation patterns of peripheral nerves and subsequently received the Brown Sequard Medal from the Institut de Physiologie Nervologie for this work. From the University of Puget Sound, he is recipient of the Dirk Andrew Phibbs Memorial Research Award and the Outstanding Teaching Award (now named the Tom Davis Teaching Award). Prof. Allen was selected in 2016 to deliver the 44th Regester Lecture, "Echoes of Pain in the Neuromatrix" and in 2017 was recognized with the President's Excellence in Teaching Award, presented by University of Puget Sound President Isiaah Crawford.

© 2024 University of Puget Sound