Giles, Ella, Matt and Russell have pulled together various opinions about presentations in one place: doingpresentations.com. It’s ace. Follow their links and their advice. Your presentations will be better for it.
In fact, stop reading here if you only ever do presentations in situations that look like this…
But, but, but…
Often I find myself making slides for a different kind of setting – one where people want active learning, not a passive “talked at” experience. As Giles says, “presenting is performing“. Facilitating, on the other hand, is creating a platform for learners to perform…
No matter how polished the materials, learning is always an exchange. The facilitator responds and adapts to participants’ emerging needs during the delivery of a session…
Over recent months I’ve set myself the challenge of applying all the good stuff from doingpresentations.com, overlaid with the things I’ve learned about learning. I think it’s working.
Let’s begin with the obvious…
… and…
You know those things already, right? Start with an outline of what you hope learners will achieve and experience in the session – an outline you’ve co-created with potential participants. Then plan the activities to support them. Have some slack in the plan so you can change direction, sequence and pace according to the unique needs of each group.
Still, it’s easy to lapse. Like a visual Newspeak, the doingpresentations.com guidance makes slidecrime less thinkable.
Constraints preserve your focus and flexibility…
- no visual metaphors
- no wordart or clipart
- no bullets
- no slide transitions
- few words per slide
- a single font
When the template isn’t working, you’ll usually find that the thing you’re making shouldn’t be a slide at all. Double down on the other tools in the learning armoury instead…
Leave the instructions for an activity on the screen so everyone knows clearly what they’re meant to do, and how long they’ve got to do it.
Slides disappear, stuff on walls builds as the session goes on.
Instead of writing the wise person’s words on a slide, get a clip of them speaking for themselves.
Slides can support a conversation, but only if they’re designed and used a certain way…
If it’s a digital thing, link to it from the slides. Even better, invite participants to try the thing on their own devices. Keep a few nice screenshots as backup in case of live demo failure.
Put the detail in handouts and takeaways. If those bullet points are important, people will want to refer back to them.
If a 2 by 2 matrix is important enough to explain box by box, people will need to follow the story. 4 text slides can tell the story step by important step – or lose the slides and draw it on a whiteboard.
Above all…
Great presenters always tell the story their own way (which is why nobody should be forced to use someone else’s slides.) The better you prepare, the more you can perform in the moment, and respond to what happens in the room.
Cease transmission.
Matt Edgar writes here 