Group presentation tips

March 22, 2006 3:27 PM

I'm in business school and am getting sick of my classmates boring group presentations. Building upon this question, what are the best tips for giving a group powerpoint presentation?

Often, the presentations are crappy text-filled slides, divided into equal parts, with transitions like "Now Joe will talk about blah blah blah..."

One of the challenges of academic presentations with PowerPoint is that teachers are often looking for there to be "content" in the slides, rather than just a picture or one word. My plan is to put additional info into the notes.

My presentation is in two weeks. I've begun working on the slides and have grapics and diagrams now and little text, fortunately. But I want our group to present more interactively - with each other and with the class.

posted by pithy comment to education (22 comments total)

Practice.

Practice, practice, practice.

Practice in the room you're going to present in (or a similar one) to get the feeling of the room and also see how your slides look on the big screen. Critique each other.

Words are fine but just not too many.

Also see if the classroom is equipped with a remote. If there isn't one, it's a good investment. You put a little connector into your usb port (either of your laptop or the classroom computer) and the remote allows you to control the presentation while walking around. Also has a laser pointer for a nice touch (And doubles as a cat toy!).

Does your school not offer a management communications class? It was required for my MBA. I hated it at the time but it helped a lot. Maybe talk to the administration about getting one.

Also, make sure everyone dresses nicely.
posted by radioamy at 3:42 PM on March 22, 2006

If the audience would learn the same amount without you actually doing the presentation, that is, just by reading the PPT file themselves, it's a bad presentation. If the material is just this side of understandable without a presentation, that is better. I'm not advising you to obfuscate, but rather learn to use the giant screen as no more than a vague outline and/or place to present highly visual details that are difficult to explain verbally.

In other words, give the presentation in practice once without a screen or overheads, then figure out where the pain points are in flow and explanation, then use the presentation to iron those out.
posted by kcm at 3:53 PM on March 22, 2006

Give handouts with the slides and extensive notes in non-PowerPointy language (that is to say, make the notes clear).

Make your own graphics and make them really simple: the graphics that PowerPoint makes for you are what Tufte calls "chart junk": lots of bells and whistles with no added information. In fact, the 3D pie charts and such really distort the true meaning of the graph. Present no more than one big idea per slide.

If you have to present more than a few words on slides, break it up with interesting/meaningful graphics or photos. If people expect your whole presentation to be dozens of bullet points, you've already lost them. Try writing things out without bullets first, to make sure you understand the relationship among the points you're making (I cannot believe the number of PowerPoint presenters out there who don't even understand what they themselves are saying).

Please, when you graduate, fight the good fight! So many of us are drowning in boring PowerPoint.
posted by lackutrol at 3:55 PM on March 22, 2006

This guy gives interesting slide show presentations. Not sure how his approach would transfer to a group setting, or to your particular topic for that matter.
posted by nyterrant at 4:30 PM on March 22, 2006

I give quite a few group presentations. If possible, no more than 3 people should present per 20 minute presentation. If your group is larger than 3 people, consider switching to a dialogue-style of presentation - think marketing or script pitches, where two people trade points back and forth on the same slide. This takes LOTS OF PRACTICE, and can be very difficult to pull off.
posted by muddgirl at 4:51 PM on March 22, 2006

Disclosure: I hate the cult of powerpoint and destructive distillation into bullet points.

The most engaging presentations I have ever seen all shock, puzzle or tease the audience by using illustratations that the counterpoint the spoken word. If you are aiming for drama and memorability, text sucks.

Use some lateral thinking to identify images that sum up what you're trying to say, and use them.

And if you want to stimulate your brain, I would look at Metatalk threads that have got out of control with images. Or snoop Monkeyfilter for some of Chyren's fine contributions.

IAJS RECOMMENDS
------------------------
- shock audience
- illustrate concepts
- lateral thinking
- Metatalk, Monkeyfilter
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:09 PM on March 22, 2006

Or to sum up in your own words, "crappy text-filled slides."
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:10 PM on March 22, 2006

And since you have a group, tag-team. Pretend you're broadcasters in a newsroom with remote correspondents. Over to you, pithy comment.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:36 PM on March 22, 2006

EVERY SLIDE MUST HAVE A PICTURE. EVERY SLIDE MUST HAVE COLOR.

There's your mantra. Other useful details include scripting what you'll say in your head as you make slides. I personally believe that all crappy slides were born of someone simply putting stuff into powerpoint without imagining himself actually presenting the stuff.
posted by rxrfrx at 5:36 PM on March 22, 2006

A rule like "every slide must have a picture" is okay, but not ideal. You might wind up with the same crappy slides, but now, with some crappy clip-art thrown in.

Here's what I recommend: make the deck that you think you need. The one with the outline of what you're going to say. Save it. Print it out. Then start a new deck that can help you illustrate your slide notes -- POWERPOINT IS NOT FOR *YOUR* NOTES, they're for the audience... make sure that you still have the talk outline / notes that you made. They'll be important for what you say. But make sure you're not saying them off of the screen.
posted by zpousman at 6:33 PM on March 22, 2006

Now that I think about it, I can see how "every slide must have a figure" is wrong for general use because outside of data-based fields, it might be useless to have a figure on every slide. If you're doing sciency things, though, it really keeps things moving.
posted by rxrfrx at 6:37 PM on March 22, 2006

Tell them what you're going to say. Say it. Then recap what you said. It's the "Dora the Explorer" method of presenting, but it works.
posted by SashaPT at 6:54 PM on March 22, 2006

read this book by david byrne.
posted by ab3 at 7:14 PM on March 22, 2006

hah! I forgot. Go to the library and get everything you can by Edward Tufte. And in the meanwhile explore his site.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:39 PM on March 22, 2006

I graduated from business school a couple years ago. God those presentations sucked. To avoid those blah transitions, the first person to speak ought to give a simple roadmap of the presentation, and tell the audience what topics each person will be covering. That way each person can give their talk, conclude, and its clear who is going next and what they will be discussing. I saw it work best when the first person goes, concludes, and flicks over to the next slide, which simply has the title of the next person's topic, and they step out of the way. Then the second person does their intro and then dives into their real slides.

If your professor wants you to put a ton of content on the slides, he is stupid and wrong. You want the audience to listen to YOU, not tune you out while reading a slide behind your head. Slides are a tool, they are not the presentation. You should prepare the presentation as you would if it was merely an oral presentation; pretend the slides are like those lame posters you made in elementary school to help you with your book reports.

Powerpoint slides should have pictures minimal text. Caveat - only use pictures if they actually help your presentation. It's sometimes hard in business school to do the minimal text thing - you are often using numbers and parts of spreadsheets that gobble up tons of space.

If you are a finance or accounting major, and a significant part of your presentation is in Excel, then you have special problems that are easy to address. Use different colors for different blocks of cells to draw the eye to different areas. I normally despise those laser pointer things, but if you are showing a complex financial record then even with color-coded cells, a pointer can be a major asset if you need to point to individual cells.

If you use handouts, be careful. Weave it clearly into your discussion - tell the audience to turn to page X, look at line 5, etc. Don't assume they will do it on their own. Otherwise they will just sit there, look at the pile of papers on their desk, and wonder why you are giving them garbage to throw out. Force them to look through it during your presentation. Too many people make handouts, don't adequately use them, and try to rest on the fact that they put a ton of work into making something that didn't actually get used.
posted by gatorae at 8:28 PM on March 22, 2006

Be revolutionary. Don't use PowerPoint. Use the chalkboard. it slows you down and forces you to think about the main points. It also makes the audience take notes if they want to learn something. If you hand out PP notes, your audience will put down their pens, cross their arms, and tune out your talking.

Write main ideas or key words on the board (don't write out sentences). USE COLORS! Go back as necessary to underline, box, draw arrows to. This way you keep emphasizing your points.

For years as a prof I used PP in lectures. This term, I went back to the chalkboard. I liked better and the students liked it better.

On topic: If you use PP, put one concept (as a picture or in less than five words) on each slide.
posted by GarageWine at 9:04 PM on March 22, 2006

Dick Hardt (I know, I know) is the guy in the presentation linked above at identity20.com. Dick kind of rips his style off Lawrence Lessig. Lessig's been doing it for years and years but the first online example of it was a 2002 presentation which you can watch as Flash here.

The gist of the style is this. Have big themes you can pause a slide one with just one or two words on it, then follow it up with a single word or concept illustrating what you are saying. It takes a crapload of practice to get it right.
posted by mathowie at 9:27 PM on March 22, 2006

Be consistent with the design of your slides, e.g. same background colour, same font, similar font sizes, etc.

Use a moderate number of photos, and list only a few sentences per slide and use bullet points. You don't want to overwhelm the audience with each slide. You also don't want to use flashy distracting animations, etc, or those cheesy transitions. Keep it simple.

Don't rely on PP alone.

Using the chalkboard to illustrate ideas/graphs are an excellent idea, GarageWine.

Here are some other ideas I've picked up in my public speaking class:

If you can manage it, incorporate conversation with another presenter in your group. Interaction with the other presenter(s) can make the audience attentive.

Where appropriate, use different mediums. Powerpoint, stuff on the internet, video clips, songs, skits... This all depends on the context but in general, the more diversity, the better.

Begin your topic or your sub-topic by asking the audience (rhetorical) questions. This encourages the audience to pay attention and think about what you're saying.

Use connectives, which connect your thoughts and make your speech more cohesive. e.g. "Today we're going to look at x, y and z. This will help us accomplish 1, 2, 3. Let's get started with x ...." Once you're done one point, smoothly link it into the next. "Now that we've looked at x, let's look at y." It sounds really simple, but it helps your audience map out exactly where you are going with your speech, which is quite helpful for them. It also helps you organize your own thoughts as you speak. It can also help you overcome nervous ticks, like saying "uhm."

And speaking of which, practise your speech in front of friends. Have them point out your nervous ticks. We all have them. Watch for them but don't resort to anality, because that will make you more nervous. Realize they will only go away with increased time onstage.

Make eye contact, or at least pretend to. If you find a few encouraging faces, keep going back to them. This gives you positive feedback and will help your onstage confidence, which is important!

If you don't find any encouraging faces, don't fret. You have two options:

Look above or beside a person's head, so it appears like you are physically addressing the audience.

The second option, if you're brave enough, is to keep making eye contact with bored/snotty faces and smile at them. This may actually force someone to acknowledge your presence and start listening, and who knows, maybe even smile back!

Use cue cards, or a sheet of paper, and for each point you wish to address, figure out several key words that can jog your memory for that point. If you have specific information that is too difficult to remember, jot it here.

Use point form wherever possible. Sentences are too difficult to read and can distract your attention away from your audience.

This whole note-writing business can take a LOT of time to prepare, and be sure to practise several times to figure out what works for you. It was a lot more difficult than I imagined.

Maintain your pace! Get feedback from your friends as to how you're doing. People typically talk faster out of nervousness. We just want to get it over with, which is not a positive outlook for giving presentations, and it will be obvious when you're up there that you want to be anywhere but.

Go up there and take your time. Breathe. Use pauses. Make sure you've practised it a few times and TIMED it at least 2-3 times to ensure you are not going over your limit.

If you want to ensure it's not boring, maintain a positive outlook through your body language and facial expressions. Also, ensure that you stretch the tone and range of your voice. Don't speak in a monotone voice, and if you naturally do so, try saying your presentation in different ways: e.g. as fast as you possibly can, in a high pitched voice, in a different accent, etc. This forces your brain to think about saying words in different ways, and is a practise commonly used by actors.

And make sure you project your voice. There's nothing I hate more than whispering presenters. Bring a water bottle.
posted by Menomena at 10:43 PM on March 22, 2006

The "B" key is your friend. It makes Powerpoint display a blank screen until you press it again. Use it when you want your audience to focus on you - as a speaker - rather than on your slide.

Well produced TV shows may give you a better example of how to proceed than you would get from looking at other powerpoint presentations. With a group you are producing something akin to a news or magazine program. Choose one you like and look at the way they structure handovers, display of supplementary visual information, etc.

I would recommend the PresentationZen blog for some great further tips.
posted by rongorongo at 2:26 AM on March 23, 2006

In advance, full disclosure: I loathe PowerPoint with a brutal, visceral, spasmodic loathing just shy of gibbering and the flinging of feces.

Why the vitriol, you ask? Simple experiential correlation: Extensive use of slideware has been an excellent predictor of wasting my time, poor preparation, and lousy teaching technique; on the other hand, truly excellent teaching has been a perfect predictor of no slideware whatsoever. If I could send my pre-college self just one ten-word telegram, it would read: ATTEND THREE LECTURES IF TWO POWERPOINT CHANGE PROFS AT ONCE. And it would save me a lot of regrets. Hmm, now I'm contemplating an AskMe post soliciting statistics on teaching quality and slideware for analysis with Bayes's Theorem ... watch the green for details.

That said, if you're going to use it, let me cite for you Matthew Arnold's dictum:

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.

The most vital part of that -- having something to say -- we can't really help you with. But the clarity criterion has strong and helpful implications; each medium (oral, up-front visual, handout) is well-suited to a certain kind of information, and ill-suited to others. Let each one play to its strengths and you'll be engaging and informative.

The oral channel is ideal for narrative. And narrative really is the meat and potatoes of your task. Your audience will remember your presentation only insofar as it gives them a story to follow. That doesn't mean you need to compose and insert short fictional pieces in which human characters illustrate your points. What it means is that you've got to arrange your points so that one leads the mind to the next, showing how and why your actors (be they people, phenomena, or ideas) cause an initial situation to change into a final one. This is the same thing you do when you organize a paper, but it's more necessary when you're presenting orally, because a listener can't skip around to fill in the hazy bits as a reader can.

The up-front visual (slides, board, or overhead projector) conveys small amounts of information, but it conveys them fast. (If a slide can be read at all, it can be read in under two seconds; if it can be read comfortably -- one second.) Therefore, PowerPoint is best used to circumvent the limitations of a purely oral presentation, most importantly by scaffolding the audience's learning process. Just before you explain the four reasons neural networks fail at your classification task, put up a slide with the header 'Failure mechanisms' and four bullet points to name each one. Instantly and unconsciously they will prepare to learn all four of them. Or if the benefits of your revised employee vacation plan depend on the interaction of six separate changes, put all six on a slide so you can point to them repeatedly as you talk through a couple of examples. If the spoken narrative is 'tell them', the slide you put up is 'tell them what you're going to tell them', and occasionally 'tell them what you've told them'.

(And it sure as heck is not 'tell them what you told them you were going to tell them'. If you ever catch yourself saying the exact words that are on a slide, either you're telling them something they've already read, or the slide is too full to be legible. Either way, hit yourself in the crotch for me (advisable to do this behind the podium, out of sight) and move on.)

Handouts are high-bandwidth and permanent, but you don't really control how, or whether, anybody attends to them. Use them for supplementary information. Tables of numbers belong on handouts, because they don't make sense aloud, nor can they be discerned in tiny figures on a slide. Any graph that's worth studying, or any graph that's worth commenting on, belongs on the handout -- use PowerPoint only for graphs that can be grokked in an instant. Quotes longer than ten words are miserable to read off of a slide, and if they're any good your audience is going to want a copy anyway, so put them on the handout. In fact, make the cutoff six words, just to be safe. Lay out your handout so that all of this stuff reads in your narrative order, or you'll throw people off. If appropriate, also use the handout to remind them what else was in your presentation -- 'tell them what you told them' -- and if that is an explicit outline, it needs to have more detail than your slides did. (Slides preview; handouts review.)

Your handout should allow the audience members, post-presentation, to see your theme entire; then it should help them recall and integrate all the details that you gave them orally. So ideally it will be a single page, or will have a self-contained front page for the holistic stuff before all the nitty-gritty. (Why are those endless rows of numbers in your handout anyway, and not in a dreary official report safely locked away in a three-ring binder somewhere?) Actually, gatorae's concept of handout as mini-workbook is a good one, and probably one I'll use about a week from now, and it might also justify a multi-page handout.

Now that you've got a handle on your material, you ought to have no problem breaking it naturally to assign it to different people. Perhaps Alice can tell why the company was pursuing neural networks in the past, and then Bob discuss your new approach using analogical modeling; Dave can explain how the old vacation policy was delaying product rollouts after Carol states that you've revised the plan and summarizes the proposal. At this point, if your message can be made more clear by broadcast-style handoffs, or by one person's filling in a diagram on the board while another person talks, or by a visual analogy employing somebody's juggling skills, or whatever, you'll know what to do. And if not ... well, another quote, from Somerset Maugham this time:

There is nothing to be said against lucidity, and against simplicity only the possibility of dryness. This is a risk well worth taking when you reflect how much better it is to be bald than to wear a curly wig.

Last caveats: Don't settle on a slide without trying to read it on your computer from ten-plus feet away. Don't start with irrelevant jokes, with proto-excuse-like discussion of the circumstances wherein you prepared the presentation, or by telling your audience, in any manner, that they are scary. Don't do anything that resembles the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation. All of these are step-behind-the-podium offenses. Other than that, you should do fine. It really does come down to 'hav[ing] something to say, and [using each information channel to] say [the corresponding part of] it as clearly as you can.' Good luck.

Both quotes came from Joseph M. Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace.

Oh, and:

Metafilter: hit yourself in the crotch for me

posted by eritain at 3:52 AM on March 23, 2006

Well, here's an exercise. Choose a representative topic, something you either know about or can do the necessary research on. Break the big idea down into 4-6 parts logically (steps in a process, different products, whatever).

Now, sit down with someone and start to explain the topic step by step. Have a pad and a pencil handy. There will come a point where you are going to want to draw a map or jot down a list or sketch out a flowchart because the concept is difficult to explain just in words. These sketches will show you where you need to use Powerpoint slides.

Now you find another victim. Start with a deck of hand-drawn versions of the quick sketches you did earlier. Check to see if you need additional information on the sketches this time around. Note also at which points your subject nods, "yeah, I get that, move on" and where he seems lost. Notice, too, where he asks questions, because that's where your audience will likely ask them.

By now you have (one hopes) 6-8 sketches to create as ppt slides. If you notice that you have a long stretch of jus talk with no slides, then you can invent a "transition" slide with a pretty picture or some provocative text.

Your next rehearsal should be in a room comparable in size to the presentation room. Again, recruit at least one audience member, and have him sit in the back of the room. Speak conversationally to the "audience" and that will give you an idea of what volume level your speaking should be. (Unless you are presenting in a large auditorium, try to work without amplification. Under no circumstances get tied to a rostrum mike.)

By this time you should be ready for the presentation. If you've got an assistant, he should arrive at the presentation room 10 minutes or so early with the AV guy to test the projector, LAN connection, all the tech stuff, because the one thing you can count on is that nothing will be ready and nothing will work. Be mentally prepared to do your whole show as pure standup (no props, no tech) if a catastrophe happens.

Handouts are for two purposes: 1) so the audience can review your presentation, and 2) to include details that are too cumbersome to present orally or on your slides (note the emphasis). If you have to include the annual sales for 12 districts over the past 30 years, put it in the notes. In your presentation, you refer to the general trend (or whatever your point is) and then add, "the complete sales statistics are in the handout if you care to look those over later."

So, to sum up. Powerpoint should be reserved for those moments when you say, "Look, do I need to draw you a diagram?" If you can get your point across without a slide, don't make a slide. And remember that a presentation is basically just a conversation where you do most of the talking.
posted by La Cieca at 8:43 AM on March 23, 2006

You mentioned that you want to be more interactive:

- Have a "homework assignment" i.e. bring in a picture or drawing that represents your views on globalization, your management philosophy, your favorite ad campaign, the local real estate market, whatever is applicable to the topic at hand. Have people break out into groups to discuss and then reconvene to share viewpoints from everyone in the class, not just you.

- Ask people what they think of the topic, write it down on the board and discuss. Then show your slide on the topic. i.e. what makes a leader?

- Do not give out reading material in advance or even during the presentation, people will read it and ignore you. If you must do a handout, distribute it at the end or have it be not so chock-full of info that people will read it and ignore you.

- You could have a break and do a handout that is basically a quiz on the material (like match this accounting term to the definition) and then the answers form the basis of your next topic or the presentation at large

- No laptops. Tell your classmates to put away the computer. No one is doing anything related to your presentation on those computers, they are looking at the PGA tour and checking email. They will be ignoring you.

- Clips of video or sound are always nice, but they have to be both interesting and relevant. None of those case studies from the 1980's.

Good luck!
posted by ml98tu at 9:05 AM on March 23, 2006