Although not a formal part of your assessment for this Unit, you will be expected to present your dissertation to other people at the end of the year. This will be a presentation in BSL. Most of the previous lectures have been about presenting your work in written form for someone to read. Now we turn to live presentation. The skills required to present information to others should serve you well in whichever career path you choose to follow.
[The following notes were written by Andy Wilson, Staff Development,
Loughborough University.]
Consider the following when thinking about your presentation:
4. Professionalism.
One of your main purposes is likely to be to present yourself as a thoroughly
competent and professional person. Think about how you can do this, and don't
restrict yourself to the presentation itself. Perhaps you could put a decent
sign on the door. Maybe you could make an OHP out of your audience's crest or
logo. You might customise your handouts. There are all sorts of things you can
do, but do think about it.
5.
Patterns. Try to find patterns or shapes
to your presentation that will help your audience to remember what you say.
People understand things more easily if they fit in some way with what they
already know, and the way in which information is structured is a key factor in
how easily people can absorb it.
This section highlights some of the possible pitfalls in delivering a presentation, and offers some strategies to help you avoid them.
Nerves |
|
Dry throat. |
Have a glass of water. |
Shakes. |
Stand firm. |
Tremulous voice. |
Breathe deeply and talk slowly. |
Feeling under pressure |
Know what you are going to do. |
Feeling intimidated |
Don’t think of it as me vs. them. |
Forgetting what you want to say. |
Have prompts, e.g. cards or OHPs. |
Not being able to operate the equipment. |
Arrive early, practise beforehand. |
Content |
|
Trying to cover too much. |
Cut the amount substantially. |
Being too technical. |
Avoid unnecessary jargon. |
Giving too much detail. |
Provide structures rather than detail. |
Not explaining the basics. |
Ask the key questions like "What is...?" |
Not finishing. |
Have stuff that you can leave out. |
Not giving the audience what they want. |
Put yourself in the audience’s position. |
Room and Equipment |
|
Room wrong size. |
Check beforehand. |
Seating not properly set up. |
Get there early and set it up. |
No signs to the room. |
Take some and put them up. |
Equipment not there. |
Have contingency plan. |
Equipment not working. |
Have contingency plan. |
Bulb blows. |
Keep calm - and have contingency plan. |
Wrong type of slide projector/video. |
Check beforehand. |
Screen/video wrongly positioned. |
Get there early and set it up. |
OHP too small for your acetates. |
Limit your OHPs to 9" x 9". |
Audience |
|
Too many/too few of them. |
Check beforehand - change your style. |
Mixed ability. |
Assume ignorance, but not stupidity. |
They know more than you do. |
Offer your experience and perspective. |
Difficult customers. |
Clarify their reasons. Take it seriously. |
Bad feeling because of earlier speakers. |
Acknowledge it? Start afresh. |
Giving offence. |
Think about equal opportunities. |
Stress
Remember that stress can help improve your performance. Most
experienced presenters feel some measure of stress before an important
presentation. There’s some evidence - from performers - that they actually
perform better under levels of stress that they feel are making them perform
worse.
Here’s a quick checklist of things to do at the start of a presentation...
w Who?
w
What?
w Why?
w When?
w
Where?
Clarity. It's hard be interested something in that is confusing.
Interest. Your own interest must show. If you're not interested, why should they be?
Logical Organisation. This is an important contributor to clarity. The structure should become clear.
Relevance to Audience. The audience will be asking, "So what?" about everything you say.
Emphasis on Important Points. There is a tendency for presentations to pay too much attention to details. The audience needs a context in which to set the information, and some guidance on its implication. And do tell them which points are important.
Apt Examples. Concrete and relevant examples help a lot.
Appropriate Audio Visual. Few things make presenters look sillier than bad AV.
Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm can promote interest in the strangest things.
Short Sentences. Long sentences, however carefully they may be structured (and often they are not structured very well), tend - by and large - to be much harder to follow than shorter sentences which, by their very nature, are more likely to be conducive to the effective transmission of ideas.
Direct
Speech & Active Mood.
These help.
Appropriate Vocabulary. This is a chronic problem.
Links Between Sections. These are important in helping the audience to know where they are.
w Where is it?
w When is it?
w How long will I have?
w Who are the participants?
w How many will there be?
w How does it fit in with the rest of their programme?
w Are there any areas of sensitivity?
w How much setting up time will I have?
w Why do the organisers want me to do it?
w Why do I want to do it?
w What image do I want to present?
w Do I need to produce any publicity beforehand?
w What room requirements do I have?
w What audio visual requirements do I have?
w What consumables will I need?
w What handouts will I need?
w What OHPs etc will I need?
w Is there a handout/OHP housestyle?
w Should I use a data projector?
w Is there an Internet connection?
w Who will produce the handouts/OHPs, and how?
w Do the handouts need hole-punching?
w What shall I wear?
w How shall I present myself?
w Do the participants need to do any advance preparation?
w What are my deadlines for any of the above?
Hand Drawn. No longer acceptable for pre-prepared OHPs for all but the most casual of presentations, though they may be used live within a presentation.
Photocopier or Thermal Copier. Photocopiers or thermal copiers can be used to make OHPs from hard copy originals. Single colours can be produced on thermal copiers, more than one will have to be done by separations and overlays, or by full colour process. Thermal OHPs shade after a few months, especially purple and red.
Colour Printers. They typically need OHPs that feel rough. Can be slow.
Word Processing or PowerPoint. These now define the minimum standard. PowerPoint is pretty automatic, but some of the design are very odd. You can often do just as well using Word. Keep it simple is the key message.
Using Illustrations, Objects, etc. Anything that can be photocopied can be made into an OHP. Some photographs can reproduce well. Line drawings and objects are fine. Scanners can be useful, and remember that you can often copy images from the Web. But make sure you have copyright clearance.
Full Colour OHPs. Fairly expensive - around £2.00 for A4 -and not always as bold as you’d like.
Copyright Free Artwork. Word - especially on CD-ROM - has quite a good collection of images, although some of them are becoming a bit over-familiar. There are lots of other CD-ROMS too. They can be sexist.
Quantity. Try to limit yourself to 6-8 lines of 6-8 words.
Margins. If you're using a word processor then set the margins for the narrow side of the paper to the smallest possible figure, 0.5" or less.
Lettering. Lower case is easier to read than upper. Try not to go below 24 point lettering. Serif (like this, Times) and sans serif (like this, Arial) have quite different feels to them. Match them to your audience. Avoid fancy fonts or fancy effects (such as shadow or emboss) they just look fussy on-screen, or disappear altogether.
Justification. Usually best to avoid right-justification in OHPs. The large font sizes can produce large gaps between words.
Boxes and Frames. Best avoided. Unless your screen is perfectly set up - and this almost never happens - then the boxes will just look odd.
Position of the OHP. Make sure everyone can see the screen. Think about how you are going to move around the OHP and screen - to pick up the transparencies for instance.
Working with Other Projectors. If you’re using a slide projector as well, or a data projector, then work out how you’re going to manage the transitions.
Your Position. These three options have very different impacts:
Keystone Effect. Tilt the screen so that the sides of the image are parallel to the sides of the screen.
Movement. Don't move the OHP when the bulb is on or just switched off. This can damage the bulb.
Breakdown. Some OHPs contain two bulbs and you can quickly switch from one to the other. Many don't, so either have a spare OHP or have a contingency plan.
On and Off. It is probably better to put an acetate onto the OHP with the OHP switched off. But switching on and off can be irritating.
Revelation and Highlighting. A piece of paper across the acetate will conceal the image from the viewers, but you will still be able to see what's there. Some people find this style very irritating, you could try highlighting. This uses a strip of yellow acetate to highlight lines of text.
Overlays. Several acetates - or a sheet that has been cut - can be folded over to build up an image. Four thicknesses is about the limit. This can be too complicated for comfort.
Frames. You can write a fair amount of information on the cardboard or plastic frames. This can be used to impress with your grasp of detail.
Numbering OHPs. You need to number them in case they get shuffled. You may not want to number them where the audience can see the number - you may want to skip a few and you might not want it to show. If you’re using Word you can use a header with automatic page numbering to handle this.
Pointers. You can point to things on the OHP, or on the screen. These have different dynamics.
Objects. You can use objects on the OHP to illustrate ideas. For instance a worked piece of metal can be used to demonstrate projections.
Collecting Ideas. You can get groups to put ideas onto sheets. These can then be presented to the full group, but you retain control.
There are several software packages available - a very common one is Microsoft’s PowerPoint.
PowerPoint can produce:
w OHPs (black and white or colour)
w Presentations for data projectors
w Handouts (2, 3 or 6 slides per page)
w Speaker’s notes
Its greatest advantages are that:
w It’s easy to use - anyone familiar with Word can adapt very quickly
w It encourages good design - by offering lots of ready-prepared templates
w It stops you putting too much material on - by having biggish default fonts
w It integrates well with other Microsoft applications - so you can import Excel charts, etc
w It lets you produce a wide range of effects
w It lets you drive data-projected presentations easily
w
You can produce handouts easily, or drop copies of
slides into Word documents
Its greatest disadvantages are that:
w You need to learn a new piece of software - there’s always an entry fee
w It's easy to produce over-elaborate presentations
w
Your OHPs will look just like everyone else’s
More and more presentations are delivered with the aid of a data projector. This allows you to project a copy of your computer screen - usually a laptop - onto an OHP screen. (Sometimes you can't see the image on the projector screen and the computer screen at the same time. On many laptops you can use function F5 to toggle through the options.)
It enables you to make use of some of the fancier effects available within PowerPoint. Colour shows up well, and you can add bullet points one at a time and build up diagrams stage by stage. You can also amend your presentation right up to the last minute.
Current versions of PowerPoint offer hyperlink capabilities, so you can move around your material in a very flexible way. This is probably too much for all but the most confident and capable of presenters to cope with.
The big danger is that the effects take over and your audience is left wondering what the next one will be rather than paying attention to the content.
Make sure that you design any presentations to fit the resolution of the data projector. Some of them only work at 640 x 480, well below what most computers now use. They solve this by losing lines of pixels, so with some fonts a t can look like an l because the cross-bar is lost.
Don't assume that your laptop will drive another data projector. I had to abandon plans to use one at a major conference centre, in spite of having discussed the specification beforehand. So take OHP copies - which rather defeats the point.
You need to decide whether to give people a handout.
Advantages
w Makes it easier for people to follow
w Gives them a record
w
Indicates preparation and hence concern
Disadvantages
w
More work
w
Uses paper
w
Can remove the element of surprise
Advice
w
Keep handouts very short
w
Give them out before the presentation
w
Think about what people will put them into - if ring
binders then punch holes.
w
Consider copies of overheads straight out of
PowerPoint.
From
PowerPoint
w You can print your slides directly from PowerPoint (2, 3 or 6 to a page).
w You can also drop them into Word documents.
w In Slide Sorter View select the slide, copy it, and paste it into your Word document. Then process it like a graphic.
w To make a dynamic link between your PowerPoint presentation and your Word document then use Paste Special to paste it as a link. Changes in PowerPoint are then automatically updated in Word.
Questions often present problems. The presentation can be planned and delivered; the questions are less easily controlled.
There are three key areas in managing questions:
w Managing expectations
w Controlling interruptions
w Responding to questions
The difficult questions are often those that are tangential to your topic. You can’t stop these coming, but you can give yourself a way out.
At the start of the presentation, be sure to indicate the limits to your coverage. This will help generally, but it has the particular virtue - with questions - of allowing you to say that that’s interesting, but really beyond the scope of today’s talk.
It’s often easier to manage questions of you know when they’re coming. A question in the middle of your talk may seem more like a heckle than a question.
So - again at the start of the presentation - tell them when you’re willing to take questions. If they interrupt at other times then you’re perfectly entitled to say that you’ll deal with questions at the end - as you said you would.
Many of the problems with questions come from a rush to respond. You’re under stress, you want to show how competent you are. So you tend to rush to provide an answer. And because you’re rushing you can all too easily misinterpret the question. So you may see a perfectly gentle question as a very vicious one, or you may get the wrong end of the stick altogether.
If you’re at all uncertain about what the question is asking, seek elaboration. Say something like, "That’s really interesting, could you expand on that a little?" This flatters the questioner - we all like to think we ask interesting questions - and it gives you time to make a more careful judgment of the question and to prepare your answer.
Finally - don’t try to pretend you know the answer if you don’t.
A useful concept in presentations - and especially when answering questions - is the idea of text and sub-text.
Text is what you say; sub-text is what you mean.
Text is what you say; sub-text is how you say it.
Everything you say in your presentation will be subject to interpretation. You need to develop a sensitive ear and to listen carefully to what you are saying. It is entirely possible to say "...I'm very glad to be here today" and for people to realise that what you actually mean is, "...anywhere, ANYWHERE, would be better than here."
You need to be careful. Consider this exchange between a member of the audience (A.) and the presenter (P.).
A. One thing I find very difficult is ........... I wonder if you have any suggestions.
P. Yes, well of course it's really very simple. What you should do is...
The presenter may think that this remark is encouraging. The member of the audience may interpret it as saying: "You must really be dumb if you can't cope with something this simple." An alternative response might be:
P. Yes, it can be rather tricky. What I find helpful is...
This acknowledges that there may be valid grounds for the difficulty. There is also quite a difference between "What you should do is..." and "What I find helpful is..."
1. Cut down the amount of your material by 50 per cent.
Preparing a preparation can be frustrating and time-consuming. The following steps will help you to be more efficient.