I've been invited to do a 20 minute presentation of my work to undergraduates as part of a lunchtime seminar series. I was thinking of just doing an overview of my research to date as well as a little section on how I decided to do a PhD in the first place, as I think that they will be interested in this at the stage that they are at. Has anyone else had to do this before? It will be at a different site of the university that I am at now, where I will be teaching next semester, so I see this as a good opportunity for the students to get to know me a bit first. If they decide to turn up of course!

Any advice appreciated,

Natassia

My pet hate is when people focus too much on their methodology, because generally that's not the interesting bit of the research.

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oops, opposite for me! Undergraduates not likely to be enthralled with heavy theory. I think they would most likely want to hear about literally what you're doing and what you hope to get out of it - not preempting any results of coure;-)

I always just wanted to know what they'd found out - loath theory (still do lmao), find methodology brain numbing (ditto) but always like to hear about the findings. I also think that it would be nice to give a very brief over-view of how you got to where you are now - that kind of thing used to fascinate me :-)

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I guess it probably depends on the field - I certainly find listening to legal academics/postgrads with no results talk about their design and methodology incredibly boring, I have no idea why they have law conferences on that sort of thing.

Lol-these responses made me laugh but also are relieving...i find wading through endless methodology boring but tedious theory likewise. I find that the most interesting presenters-tell me what they are doing and why quite clearly-give me just a little bit of theory so I'm likely to take it seriously. Present methods (cos you have to) but again do this quite quickly and then spend a reasonable amount of time on current findings or -if too early for findings- on what has come up in the research so far and how and why this makes a difference.
The most recent phd seminars I have attended have really highlighted the 'so what?!' factor when presenting. Good luck Natassia but I am sure you will be great!:-)

Pjlu - you've hit the nail on the head. I was listening to some talks at the SLSA conference at the SLSA and, sorry to say, but some of the talks I was left with exactly that feeling - so what?

Thank you for the replies and advice, I suppose the main thing is making it appealing enough so that it facilitates discussion afterwards. I don't have any results as yet but will not be going into my methodology much - although it is interesting (if I say so myself), I think they will be more interested in why I am doing the project and what I have done before. It is on quite a 'friendly' topic that most people will have an opinion on anyway so hopefully that will work in my favour. More about context and applicability I suppose, and less about theory.