My EPQ Slides
Hi all! As a part of sharing my own experience and journey submitting the AQA Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), I thought it’d be nice to share my presentation slides too! Overall, I suggest that it would be a good idea to document your entire EPQ thought process within your presentation slides, whilst making sure to keep them concise and engaging.
Is the presentation even important?
In my opinion, I think the presentation part is crucial. Not only is it essentially the only opportunity for you to present your research and interests to your supervisor and your target audience (most likely going to be your peers), but during the presentation you get to mention small caveats/fun facts/any sort of supplemental information that gives you extra marks. I was able to receive 37/40 (A* band) for my EPQ, and I think my presentation was certainly one of my strongest elements. 15+ of my classmates across 3 year groups, my head of EPQ teacher and my EPQ supervisor attended, which could have potentially added to my credibility for the skills I’ve developed like being able to speak about my project confidently. My head teachers had a few good laughs from the presentation and even commented that the crowd was probably the biggest she’s ever seen!
What to include in the EPQ slides & presentation:
Slideshow: I separated my slides into 4 sections, essentially mimicking my EPQ journey from start to finish. Starting from my brainstorming process, I then shared my organization system, my project findings/suggestions and lastly my reflections. Indeed, I couldn’t fit everything within the time frame of 20 minutes of presentation time, but I think I did a decent job in sharing the key snapshots of my EPQ, so my audience grasped a general idea.
I’m sure everyone has heard about this many times, but keep your slides interesting and understanding your target audience. For me, my slides and project in general was dedicated for young adults like myself, so incorporating humour, engaging pictures and animations within my slides was non-negotiable for me during the preparation process.
Presentation: All the golden rules for a good presentation applies: Keeping consistent eye contact with the audience, minimizing excessive body gestures or filler words, and keeping the presentation slides engaging. Please don’t cram loads of wordings into your slides because you won’t be able to explain every minor detail to your audience within 15–20 minutes. Realistically, your audience won’t even have much time to read much content on your slides, so it’s actually better to speak engaging, so the focus is ON YOU. Not your slides.
Enough yapping, feel free to check out my slides via this public Canva link. I hope any part of this helps, and please feel free to leave any comments if you’d like more details about the presentation/slides-making process (or just the EPQ in general), I’m eager to help :)
