Tip 42: Outline your agenda at the beginning
The ancient communication principle still holds - "Tell them what you’re going to say, say it, then remind them what you said."
Use the beginning of your presentation to mentally prepare your audience for learning about your topic. Give them a clear statement of the learning objectives. It sometimes helps to show a slide with an explicit list of objectives for that session.
The effect of a good talk outline is to make your audience want to hear the details and psychologically it puts them in the right mindset. At the same time, it helps them understand the structure of your thinking.
A word of warning - make sure that they outline or agenda or learning objectives that you present does actually agree with the planned structure of your talk. It is no good telling your audience that you will proceed in a particular direction, but then divert along the way and end up in a completely different destination!
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