{"id":745,"date":"2011-12-12T20:19:55","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T20:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/?p=745"},"modified":"2023-09-13T15:41:15","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T15:41:15","slug":"presently-presenting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/?p=745","title":{"rendered":"Presently Presenting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Present<\/a>In preparing to make a presentation at Swarthmore’s Staff Development Week next month, I thought it would be a good time to review some rules of thumb for making presentations that I’ve learned and discovered over the years.\u00a0 Because institutional researchers generally have such a range of people in our audiences, it can be tricky!<\/p>\n

Power Point<\/strong><\/em> – This package is both a curse and a blessing.\u00a0 As a presenter I like having a visual reminder of key points, and to help frame for the audience where I’m going.\u00a0 As an audience member I know too well that slides full of text are deadly boring.\u00a0 Because I am a tactile learner, I have found that I like to organize my presentation by making a text-rich Power Point slide show, but then not actually showing much of it!\u00a0 The advantage is that I can share the full document later as the version that “includes speaker notes.”\u00a0 For the actual presentation, I try to use slides primarily for simple charts, illustrations, examples, and a minimal number of bullet points (with minimal associated text). \u00a0 I want people to engage with what I’m saying, not read ahead.<\/p>\n

Tell what you’re going to tell\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 – The importance of giving your audience a simple outline of the presentation was impressed on me by Alex.\u00a0\u00a0 After a particularly boring talk we’d attended, he persuaded me how much better it could have been if we’d simply been able to follow its logic, which an outline would have provided.<\/p>\n

Tables<\/strong><\/em> – Avoid all but the simplest tables of data in a presentation, and make sure, if you want them to be read, that they are indeed legible from the back of the room.\u00a0 If I am showing a table primarily to present a layout, I would make clear as soon as the slide is shown that it is not meant to be read.\u00a0 (This is not uncommon for Institutional Researchers, who share strategies and techniques – sometimes it’s not the data we want to see, but how you presented it!)<\/p>\n

Graphs<\/strong><\/em> – I personally love a graph that contains a ton of information on one page.\u00a0 I could stare at it for hours, like someone else might stare at a painting and glean layers of meaning.\u00a0 Alas, I would try not to make such a graph for others!\u00a0 In general, the wider the audience, the simpler the chart should be.\u00a0 Avoid ratios, or even percentages that aren’t immediately grasped.\u00a0\u00a0 And be sure to use colors.\u00a0\u00a0 A simple, attractive chart that reveals an important relationship can reveal meaning to even the most staunchly anti-data.<\/p>\n

Involvement<\/strong><\/em> – Whenever possible, I try to involve the audience either through humor (but DON’T overdo it – I’m an institutional researcher rather than a comedian for a very good reason) or engaging with an exercise or activity.\u00a0 At a faculty lunch presentation a number of years ago, before I began (during lunch), I left displayed a chart reflecting faculty opinions about their adequacy of sleep by career stage.\u00a0 It certainly piqued interest – people love to hear about themselves!<\/p>\n

Certainly none of this is new, but I find it helpful to review and remind myself of them before starting a new project.\u00a0 As I look back through some of my past presentations I see that I haven’t always followed my own rules as well as I’d wish!\u00a0\u00a0 But presentations can be a powerful tool for accomplishing a primary goal of Institutional Research:\u00a0 getting information to people who need it. And so it’s something I continue to try to learn about and work on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In preparing to make a presentation at Swarthmore’s Staff Development Week next month, I thought it would be a good time to review some rules of thumb for making presentations that I’ve learned and discovered over the years.\u00a0 Because institutional researchers generally have such a range of people in our audiences, it can be tricky! … Continue reading Presently Presenting<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":776,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/institutional-research\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}