Welcome to Academic Presentation Skills. In this course we will learn about such elements of a good academic presentation as organization, language, delivery, and audio-visual material(s). Students should complete this course with a firm grasp of how to deliver presentations clearly and persuasively as well as how to be a thoughtful consumer of presentations. Classroom time will include some lectures and work in groups, and students should expect to participate in every class. The culmination of this course is a polished, effective presentation on a topic of the student's choosing.
Class #1 - Course Introduction (October 7)
Introduction, class outline; organization fundamentals
As promised, here (belatedly) are the class notes from Class #1. Apologies, and I'll try to get them posted in a more timely fashion from now on.
Take care these couple days with Typhoon #19 on the way.
Class #2 — Student introductions (October 14)
A fine set of introductions, everyone!
Class #3 — Presentation Language (October 21)
Language & expression (PPT) and as a PDF
The practice paper on Fuel vs. Food
Class #4 — Our Friend, Powerpoint (and its Evil Twin, Prezi) (October 28)
Good day to everyone! Thank you for your patience with last night's class, which got a bit technical (perhaps). Nonetheless, I think we were able to cover some important skills for enhancing your PowerPoint skills. I would like to take 10-15 minutes next week to cover a couple more potentially useful points, so stay tuned!
Prezi
As you'll remember from class, there is an interesting alternative to PowerPoint with a rather different conceptual basis. Prezi zooms around a single 'painting' (or palette, or canvas) to which you add all the regular things such as text, videos, and images.
To give you an idea of what Prezi can be used for, click on this link for some Prezi examples.
To the right you'll see a link (click the picture) to a cute
Prezi example from YouTube.
I have been asked several times whether Prezi with all its zooming around is suitable for academic presentations. My basic answer would be, "Sure, why not? Just make sure your content is academic!" Seriously, here is a very useful blog post by Ned Potter on using Prezi in an academic environmnet.
Among the links on the good Dr. Potter's post you'll find this link on the use of Prezi in an academic environment.
Class #5 — Delivery: Verbal and Non-verbal Elements (November 4, 2014)
To begin things this evening, we have a couple admin things to take care of. First, I would like to provide you with video clips of your first presentation some three weeks ago. These are for you to admire, of course, but also for you to have in hand as you prepare your next (and, indeed, all future presentations). Please take a few minutes and watch yourself speaking and using PowerPoint. Then do so once again. Critique yourself. What could you have done better? What was done well? After having talked in class about PowerPoint, what things in your PowerPoint were done well, and what things are in need of work?
Ah, yes, you should have prepared some homework to submit this evening. Of course, if you submitted it by email, thank you.
Here is the PowerPoint about delivery from today's class. If you'd rather, here is the same presentation as a pdf.
Class #6 — Animation and Media Additions (November 11)
One of the necessary conditions of using online video clips and such is that those things be available. This means, of course, that you either need Internet access or you need to have a downloaded copy of that particular object. The particular service I have used in the past is CC Converter, which cleverly converts and then downloads online video clips from such fun sources as YouTube.
Here is a rather helpful page on inserting multimedia into your PowerPoint, courtesy of the good folks at Xavier University.
As promised, here are the class notes with all the technical details from our class discussions. Enjoy!
Class #7 — Final Presentations, Part 1 (November 18)
Class #8 — Final Presentations, Part 2 (November 25)
An update from Brazil (Angelo, 2012) on our earlier example of "food vs. fuel".