When you introduce your friends to your mom, you do it
naturally. When you introduce your research at the group meeting, your
introduction is too detailed or too vague. I know your best friend is your
research (if you are in academia, this must be true), so do it naturally.
One of the typical mistakes in the introduction part of the research presentation is that a presenter tries to show off his/her hard work or knowledge. Your presentation is to communicate with your audience,
and the introduction is the starting point of the communication.
In the group meeting, 97% of introductions are categorized into (Case 1: 16%) introducing a new research project, or (Case 2: 81%) sharing what you care about in the current research.
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| an introduction in the presentation is like screaming where you are in the world |
Case 1. When you start a new research project, your audience wants to know what your research project is. For your benefit, you want to know your understanding of your research project (Don't be afraid to be wrong, and try to test your understanding. No pain no gain yo!). In that case, your introduction presents the (1) purpose of the proposed plan (aka intellectual merit),
(2) the mechanism (aka rational), and (3) what you wanted to do (aka objectives).
Case 2. Unless everything goes well, you need to tackle some troubles in your research project or daily experiment. In that case, your introduction is going to be (1) to show the big
picture of your research and the progress so far (aka recap), (2) zoom in what you are doing and concerning (aka objective). Then, (3) list all parameters or methods to possibly solve the problem (aka hypothesis). Finally, you explain what you did in your experiments.
Ultimately important things to remember is there is a huge knowledge gap between you and your audience. Usually, it is a better call that you assume that your audience forgot everything you said in the last group meeting. Ergo, you should walk through your project from the beginning to the current point step-by-step by recapping a lot, and sharing your thought process a lot.
In both cases, you can make sure you are on the right track
by receiving feedback from your audience.
Good luck on your introduction!
