Explain Your Project. You Have Three Minutes.

 

You’ve probably heard of the elevator speech: a short summary of an idea that you can pitch to someone (a prospective business partner, for example) while waiting for and then sharing an elevator.  You may even have crafted (or thought of crafting) a variation on the elevator speech for your thesis or dissertation project.  But have you worked out just how long this short speech should be?  Length is part of the official name for an increasingly popular speech contest that challenges grad-student participants to craft such a presentation: Three Minute Thesis (3MT®).  Details behind the 3MT speech are well worth exploring.

Hatched in a Shower?

A decade ago, experiencing a severe drought, people in Queensland, Australia adopted several ways to conserve water, including limiting showers to three minutes.  During those parched days, it seems that Alan Lawson, an emeritus professor and graduate school dean, was glancing at a three-minute egg timer attached to his bathroom wall when he suddenly found inspiration for the Three Minute Thesis.  This account of the humble beginnings of 3MT, now an international academic speech competition, doesn’t stray too far from historical information provided by the University of Queensland, the birthplace of 3MT.  Contests are now held in 62 countries outside Australia.  The contest in a nutshell: grad-student contestants must present their projects in three minutes.  If a contestant chooses to use visual support, it must take the form of a single, non-animated PowerPoint slide, displayed when the contestant starts speaking.  (No other visuals or props permitted). Currently 237 universities in the U.S. participate, including the University of Kentucky, which shares several informative videos derived from their past 3MT events.  Currently there are only three institutions participating in Illinois: UIC, ISU, and SUIC.  Last year’s contest at SUIC was the first one ever held there.

Competition Aside...
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Competing is a primary goal in a 3MT event.  Ultimately, however, becoming a 3MT winner is beside the point.  Preparing such a speech is its own reward, valuable now and in the near and distant future.  How so?  Think of all those times over the past few months (or more) when you’ve found yourself explaining the project you’ve been working on to colleagues, friends, and family members.  Wouldn’t it be great to rattle all that off smoothly in three minutes (or less)?  Or picture your upcoming defense, an event that will be open to the public.  At the start, you’re going to need to summarize and rationalize your project to your committee members, your outside reader (if defending a dissertation), and other attendees in a meaningful and concise manner.  You’ll most likely have more than three minutes to do this, but why not practice so that you can capture your project’s essence in such a short amount of time?  Further, when you go on the job search and eventually become a finalist candidate, you’ll need to be ready to give a three-minute, one-minute, or 30-second summary of your project, depending on circumstances during interviews, presentations, and/or informal meetings at your prospective place of employment.  Why not pull together the longest of these short summaries now?  If you can explain your argument cogently and completely in three minutes (or less), you keenly demonstrate expertise in your field, familiarity with your areas of specialty, and a firm grasp of your project’s place in scholarship.  That is, you constructively crystallize the significance of your thesis or dissertation research.

Drafting and Organization
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When you set out to create an effective three-minute thesis speech, consult the guidelines and judging criteria that Queensland provides.  As emphasized in those materials, a successful presentation centers on listeners’ needs: it starts off by creating a bridge to their interests, avoids jargon, summarizes important research outcomes, and ends by inspiring a desire to know more about the topic or to take some kind of action.  To meet these goals, arrange your presentation so that it answers the following questions:

     * Why is your research important to your listeners?
     * What brief examples best illustrate your project’s outcomes?
     * After hearing about your project, what should listeners do next?

An effective visual-support slide supports your message clearly, simply, and concisely.

Stand on Shoulders 

A famous speaker once responded to a request for a formal speech by saying, essentially: “If you want me to talk for three hours, I’m ready today.  If you want me to talk for only three minutes, I’ll need two weeks to prepare.”  Mark Twain is commonly associated with this quotation.  Words to the same effect (with variations) have also been attributed to several other celebrated orators: Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Disraeli, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Will Rogers...and on and on.  In short, plenty of sharp wits are popularly linked to an important communication principle, which the 3MT contest underscores: expressing big ideas compactly requires careful thought and planning.  As you progress toward completing your program, follow the footsteps of accomplished speakers.  Give yourself ample time to prepare a good—and short—presentation of your thesis or dissertation.

Images: CC0 and Public Domain