Still planning (Day 5)

A look at presentations today. We've all seen one or even done one, good ones, bad ones and then just totally ridiculous ones. But what actually makes a presentation good or bad? Well it totally depends on who you ask I suppose, but here are a few of my thoughts.

Good presentations:

Good colour scheme

• Blue background, yellow writing, that headache from straining my eyes is going to last all day long

A bit of humour

• A funny picture or two throughout the lecture to just give you a break and prepare for the next stage, generally these are well placed after a specific topic

Summary slides

• Not a slide at the end of a 100 slide lecture trying to summarise everything, but rather numerous slides summarising each of the key concepts within the lecture. 
• These are handy for revision when you understand the majority of the topic and just need a quick recap of concepts

An appropriate list of learning objectives

• Not just those that the lecture covers, but those that are actually relevant to the course
• A number of lectures actually list everything they talk about in the LOs and then when it comes to the lecture tell you, ''Actually this is never something I would expect you to know in an exam'', if that is the case it a) shouldn't be in the LOs and b) possibly shouldn't even be in the lecture
• The learning objectives should be something people can go back to and ensure they understand everything they need to for the exam and future but should not just be essentially a contents page for the lecture

'Good' Diagrams

• Not too small, not pixelated and everything is labelled correctly
• Also they can't be too 'busy', these diagrams are complicated enough without tonnes and tonnes of information being included on them  

Trying to decipher a terrible diagram

All these good points I have mentioned refer more to the actual presentation being given and not the actual presenter, who can have a massive impact either positive or negative on the effectiveness of a presentation. If they do not care about what they're talking about or do not know a lot about the subject that shows, and is generally reflected in the presentation you see...

Lack of knowledge...

• Entire script on the slides

Lack of interest

• Gives a talk that includes everything but doesn't engage students and PowerPoint is lackluster and thrown together last minute

So a bad presentation is usually made when somebody ignores the five good points I have already mentioned, but also having presenters who literally do not care is never good.

Some extra things to think about when giving a presentation

• Can everybody see?
• Too small?
• Too full?
• Too dark?
• Too bright?
• Can everybody hear?
• Microphone?
• Hard of hearing?
• Deaf?
• Can everybody understand, not just the concept, but the language?
• Are people paying attention?
• Do they have the powerpoint available?
• Does the environment promote learning?
• Too hot/cold?

'DON'T USE BULLET POINTS'

I can see where this statement comes from, numerous lectures and presentations I have seen have a slide with far too many bullet points, each with a sliding in animation making what should be something very short very very very long.

However I disagree that you should do away with bullet points altogether, yes there are lots of other more creative and aesthetically appealing ways to get your points across, but sometimes bullet points are warranted when you want to make a simple and clear message, especially in teaching. Individual words on slides are meaningless to somebody who takes away that PowerPoint to revise however bullet points with a clearly titled slide could be just what that person needs to remember all the key points explained by the lecturer even if it was last year.

Reviewing presentations

Presentation 1:

• How easy is it to read?
• Too much information on each slide
• Abbreviations, and shortened words that may not make sense to students
• Teaching session?
• This presentation would probably be quite informative in a teaching session, if the presenter was enthusiastic, it would also be a reasonably good presentation to take away with you as it seems to have most of the necessary information on it
• Length?
• I think this presentation is a good length however, think if it was made more concise it would be a much better presentation to give, a lot of the information was very repetitive or could have been better demonstrated in a diagram of some sort
• Images?
• Some images are good, however some just seem to be there for the sake of it.
• The ECG image is useless as nobody can interpret anything from that picture and therefore doesn't really have any need, and the diagram of the heart has far too many labels for its size making it quite cluttered
• I wouldn't say more images would help but maybe more appropriate images would be useful
• Key message
• An introduction to the various cardiac investigations

Presentation 2:

• How easy is it to read?
• Plain simple language, sometimes too simple in that the English is not entirely correct
• Teaching session?
• Unless the presenter gave a lot more information then this presentation would be pretty much useless in a teaching session, students would be much better off being given one word to google and would probably get a number of different pages that would give a lot more useful information
• Length?
• The presentation wasn't too long in terms of content, but the content was spread over too many slides, the beginning was very dragged out as well with all the different things that resembled kidneys, I feel you would lose the audiences attention fairly quickly
• Images?
• Probably too many images were used in this presentation making it quite distracting and you didn't really know what exactly you were supposed to be focusing on.
• More images would not be helpful and if anything there could be less used.
• Key message
• You need to look after your kidney...or else

My Storyline

PowerPoint Accessibility

A number of different linked resources relating to PowerPoint accessibility, developing online resources for people with colour blindness, a guide to creating teaching resources and an article about why we need infographics.

Although I knew that to me, a user with no issues generally with accessibility (as long as I wear my glasses that is), certain clashing colour schemes were a nightmare to look at, I had never considered people actually being unable to discern certain colours due to colour blindness. 

One of the things that struck me most in the resource on colour blindness was the map of the London Underground, something I had seen a couple of times from various trips to London.

by  Annie Mole 

This is an example of a section of that map, now being able to identify colours means you can identify which train/line you need to be on, however if you couldn't actually identify these colours...

You will then have quite a bit of trouble identifying which train to get on. 

I think I personally would then add accessibility as an important point when designing a presentation, but would not sacrifice any of my other points in order to make way for it, I think you cannot sacrifice anything to make a good PowerPoint and as you find new things to improve upon your presentation you should strive to include these and not just feel they are unnecessary because you've already done quite a bit.

Unknown

Author & Editor

Third Year Medical Student