Hi. I have to present my research in 2 days time at a seminar but I am still struggling with the slides I have to prepare. My main confusion is, I am at a very messy stage of my research where I will need to take a different direction and change some of my research questions. However I do not know how much of this should be reflected on the presentation. Should I just present it as if I won't do any of these changes, or should I mention them. How would you go about this?

Well, if your change of direction is a result of what you have done so far- i.e. you have hit upon something more interesting, or your initial theory was partially/totally wrong you could mention it. You'll probably get people asking the "obvious" questions that arise from your presentation anyway.

Have you got enough data for your presentation? If you have enough time then do it, if you are already short on time then leave it out because it can become very confusing if you try to squeeze it in in the end.

Thank you for your reply. I have told about the possible changes to my supervisor but we have not come to any conclusions yet. Because this seminar fell on the same time-scale as I plan to do those changes, I am worried (and not really ready) to introduce them. It's not a graduate seminar but there will be one more PhD student presenting with me, so we will be sharing a 40 minute slot introducing our individual research projects.

Thank you for your reply too anonGerman. Your message appeared after I wrote an answer to kassandra's advice. I guess you are right. The changes are all part of the process. I will try an add a commentary slide to the presentation where I can mention the changes without getting too deep as I am not really ready to talk about them.

If it were me, I think I'd present the data as it was so far and would then have a 'future work' section at the end to present what I planned to do next and why.

That sounds like a good idea Ann. Thanks...

You're welcome, good luck with your presentation :o)

I think it depends on what you want to get from the seminar. If you just want to be able to put the seminar on your cv then try not to overcomplicate, however if you are looking for advice from peers and staff in the department then have some questions at the end for them to answer rather than them ask you questions you currently aren;t ready to answer. good luck

Thank you hillyg. I never thought about asking questions to be honest. What is the best way of asking questions to the audience? Do you have any experience of doing this? Can I simply ask them their opinion about certain issues about my research? (Or have I misunderstood you, perhaps you meant throwing my research questions to be discussed?).