How Long Should Your Presentation Be?

How long your presentation should be is determined by a number of things such as the topic, available time, you audiences interest.


In the case of a seminar or workshop that is going to take up  several hours or more you need to break it up into shorter segments to give your audience a rest as well as make it easier for them to learn and remember what you are talking  about.


Tony Buzan and other leading educators  make it a point to break their classes up into segments of not more than 30 to 45  minutes. To make learning and remember much easier.


The trick is  stop after this time for  10 to 15 minutes.  Then before  continuing on with additional material conduct a brief review, using a Mind Map or oral review of the material covered before the break.


Do this repeatedly through your class or presentation if it runs over 30 minutes.  Buzan has found out that we remember most from the beginning and ends of learning sessions  so if you design your class or presentatin with more stops and starts you are naturally going to help  listeners or students to remember the material.


You make it much harder for them to remember if you continue on  much beyond that 30 to 45minutes. The learning and remembering curve drops drastically in presentations  that do not have breaks.


So remember to break up those long presentations into shorter segments and you'll  help your students to understand, remember, sand be motivated by your presentations.