4th in a 5-part series

Have you been in the audience of a speech that went too long? I have. Twice this week. Once last week. And the week before. And quite a few last fall. You get the idea.

Why does this happen? It's what we know how to do. We create an outline and fill it with everything we know about the topic. If we leave anything out it will show that we are not thorough, that we don't know our stuff. Right? Of course, not.

Look at it this way--the retention rates for straight lectures is 5%. How much do you want your audience to forget? There are better ways to demonstrate your genius.

Here are some ideas to help you avoid trying to cover too much in one presentation

• Plan more than one presentation--Don't try to give everything you know on a topic all at once. Your first presentation may be best used as an opportunity to get your audience interested and in-tune with what you have to say.
• Follow-up with recorded online presentation(s) on ancillary topics not core to your main speech.
• Hold multiple webinars. With Adobe Connect, they are free for ANR academics and staff and they can be recorded and posted.
• Present specific "How-to" steps. Humans really like step by step instructions. Design your presentation around the essential steps to accomplish the task, experiment, creation of the document/policy paper, etc., whatever is the topic. No matter what your topic, you have a process to present.
• Use good examples. Anecdotes illustrating what did (or didn't) work for you will stick with your audience and serve to reinforce and remind them of your presentation. Humor helps, too.
• Use good visual illustrations. They have the same power as anecdotes. They stick with your listeners.

There are many more ways to make your point without drowning your audience. The key is to pick out what is essential for your audience, present that, then point them to other stuff elsewhere. Use websites. They are just big storage places, after all. Elaborate there--but not on the homepage where you'll just scare off people browsing. Actually your presentation should be like a good website. The home page is the overview, the basics are offered, with links to more in-depth information elsewhere on the site. People who want to learn more can keep digging.

Humans have limited short-term memory. Pick the essential points of your presentation and do the basics of speech writing:

• Tell them what you are going to tell them.
• Tell them.
• Tell them what you've told them.

Each of your main points should be mentioned times: in the introduction, the body, and conclusion of your presentation.

What about handouts? Use them, but not in paper form. Don't let your audience have them while you are speaking. That will only encourage them to ignore you as they peruse the handout during your speech. Use the handout as a follow-up, or in the parlance of advocacy, a leave-behind. We'll be talking about PowerPoint in the next posting, but keep this in mind now: if you have a great PowerPoint presentation, it will make a lousy handout. Why? Because ideally your PPT will have very little text on it. Your handout should have all the text that you will not be putting on your slides. Terrible, high-text-volume PPT slides make good handouts. So you should produce your handout first then pull out the jibber jabber and leave just the keywords to put on your slides.

More about PowerPoint use will be in the next posting.

In this series:

Presentation Success

• How did you screw up your last presentation?
• Accurately introduce the topic
• Plan your presentation learner-centrically
• Avoid covering too much (this post)
• Don't rely on PowerPoint.

3rd in a 5-part series

"Build it and they will come" does not work in real life. You need a carrot or a stick. Administrators use sticks. We're talking carrots here.

In this post we'll discuss creating your presentation learner-centrically.

Misunderstanding what is important for the audience is a sure way to have your audience not accept the invitation in the first place, or if they do show up, put them to sleep. You need to invest in your own success.

Your first task is to first find out what your audience knows to be relevant and applicable to them. Remember, the audience will always be asking themselves, "What's in it for me?" You need to address that. Tell them how the information you are presenting directly contributes to their job success. You need to do this in the invitation and in the first minute of your presentation. The rest of your presentation should support that fact.

People learn differently and various types of instruction can be effective for each individual. Fifteen years of neuroscience, biology and cognitive psychology research findings on how humans learn offers this powerful and singular conclusion: “It is the one who does the work who does the learning” (Doyle, 2008). Traditionally, the teacher does all the work and the student just sits there expecting it to soak in. At first that may be satisfying but a week later up to 95% of the knowledge transfer has evaporated. Now what?

You can't expect your audience to sit there and absorb your pearls of wisdom and expertise. The learner must be involved in your presentation. Ask them questions. Have them hypothesize.Take polls. Make them calculate. Give them something to do besides sitting there. This is especially important in online or webinar situations. They can be easily distracted by email, their to-do list, etc. Let's face it, they will find any excuse to multi-task if they are not fully engaged in your presentation.

Learner Centric Teaching (LCT) is a major topic is today's field of education. Search for it by name. You'll find plenty of information and ideas on how to engage your audiences regardless of your teaching technology medium.

Up next, how not to bombard your learners.

In this series:

Presentation Success

• How did you screw up your last presentation?
• Accurately introduce the topic
• Plan your presentation learner-centrically (this post)
• Avoid covering too much
• Don't rely on PowerPoint.

2nd in a 5-part series

The number one complaint of presentation audiences is the feeling that the presentation wasn't really for them. How can this happen? They invited you, or you invited them. How did that add up to a miss? Let's look at the possibilities.

• You were not fully informed what the audience wanted to learn from you. I was recently invited by a conference committee member to speak on a topic which I diligently prepared for and was psyched-up to deliver. In my opening I asked the audience a few questions and quickly realized they were there to hear something different. I paused and quickly changed my expectations to match theirs. I dumped my PowerPoint and instead had a terrific presentation with a lot of interaction and was free to be more responsive to their questions and could pull up websites that would serve as resources for illustrations and additional information.
• You are putting on a presentation and inviting the wrong audience. This could be a problem if you don't correctly title the event and describe it in your invitation. Be specific in the invitation and make sure your presentation's content matches it. You can exceed the description, but not my very much.
• The medium of communication affects how messages are delivered and perceived.

• Is this live and in-person? Well, at least you can see when your audience squirms, falls asleep, or walks out. In-person, the audience expects a great deal of interaction. Ask them questions, make them calculate, laugh, cheer--something more than just sit there listening. Think of the best presenters you've ever heard, especially great keynote speakers. They keep your attention with great verbal illustrations and get you motivated--all without PowerPoint!
  
  
• Is your presentation online in a webinar or pre-recorded? It makes a HUGE difference from in-person events. For one thing, how will you know your audience is still there? That's a clue that your presentation does not meet expectations. You could use the chat or polling features of online delivery programs like Adobe Connect to help you judge how your talk is being received. Are you flexible enough to make adjustments if the feedback during the event is not what you expect? How prepared are you? In many ways, online presentations require a greater investment by you in your own success.

Throughout this post, I've indicated the importance of feedback. Nodding off is a form of feedback. Ask questions when you start, in the middle, and when you're done always provide a feedback mechanism like the ANR Survey Tool for online or pre-recorded presentations. It will give you information you need to find out if you've hit the mark with this audience. You'll use that to make your next presentation even better.

Next, I'll discuss learner motivations.

In this series:

Presentation Success

• How did you screw up your last presentation?
• Accurately introduce the topic (this post)
• Plan your presentation learner-centrically
• Avoid covering too much
• Don't rely on PowerPoint.

1st in a 5-part series

Did I get your attention with that title? Good. That's one lesson. When you send out an email announcement of an upcoming presentation avoid putting in the subject line "Discussion of ANR travel policy." Instead try, "Cut UCCE travel costs in 5 ways." People prefer specifics. Our brains process them more easily than abstract info.

For the past couple of months I've been watching webinars, presentations and reading articles about good presentation techniques. They all say essentially the same thing. Some say it better than others. Below is my overview of how people screw up their presentations. I'll dive in on each in future posts.

Step 1. Fail to accurately introduce the topic.
The number one complaint of presentation audiences is the feeling that the presentation wasn't really for them. Was it false advertising? A misleading title? Did the presenter say they would talk about one thing and spend more time on another? Yes, that's what the audience says happens more often than not.

Step 2. Fail to create the presentation learner-centrically. Not clearly understanding what is important for the audience is a sure way to put them to sleep. This is different from Step 1 because even if your presentation matches its announced topic, you failed to really understand what your audience feels about it. "Build it and they will come" sounds great in movie storytelling, but it does not work in real life. Remember, the audience will always be asking themselves, "What's in it for me?" You need to address that.

Step 3. Try to cover too much.
Being human, your audience has limited short-term memory. Don't try to fill a 5 lb sack with 20 lbs of potatoes. Do present specifics like "how-to" steps, good examples, and good visual illustrations. Follow-up with email or online resource lists.

Step 4. Rely on PowerPoint. Your audience can silently read 4-7 times faster than you can read the slides aloud. So don't read to them what they have already read! Your slides should have low text volume. Also, keep in mind that retention rates are about 5% for lectures and 75% for experiential learning. Give your audience something to do besides just sitting there listening to you.

There are actually many more reasons you've screwed up a presentation but if you fix just these, you'll move up into the ranks of Master Presenters! I just made that up, but the idea is, you'll really improve and convey your information much better.

Stay tuned.

In this series:

Presentation Success

• How did you screw up your last presentation? (this post)
• Accurately introduce the topic
• Plan your presentation learner-centrically
• Avoid covering too much
• Don't rely on PowerPoint.