Are you still trying to cram, stuff, squish, or shoe horn every bit of text onto every slide? Stop it. NOW! Read the remaining 4 steps, then go back to shoe horning.
POWERPOINT® DIET (continued)
Here are the remaining steps of the diet and a few thoughts on its impact on learning, memory, and engagement:
7. Repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 for each slide in order to distill the essence of each slide and draw your audience into your itty-bitty text and focus their eyeballs on the main point (NOTE: Keep in mind your audience may be thinking “get to the point,” if you don’t.)
8. Your draft Presentation Deck should tell your story or convey the low-fat, meat or tofu of your message concisely
9. Edit this deck to streamline what your audience will see to grab their attention from the get-go and what you will say in the presentation; draw your audience in by highlighting key words or phrases with a contrasting color, larger font, italics, bold, etc., and inserting engagement activities
10. Edit your Handout Deck so it covers exactly the material you want in the format you want; think like your audience to determine what and how the content should be included
You now have a skinny, svelte PRESENTATION DECK for your presentation and a fat, blubbery HANDOUT DECK for your audience. You have what you need to maximize learning, memory, and engagement of your audience during the presentation; your audience has the amplified content to read and study after you’ve made your points, plus space for fill-ins, exercises, and notes during your presentation.
Now isn’t that a more efficient and effective strategy to communicate your content than trying to present 1 monster blubbery deck on the screen, which will be difficult to present and nearly impossible to comprehend and remember? Think about it. The PRESENTATION DECK is like a CliffsNotes version of the handout. Who doesn’t prefer a short, concise, right-to-the-point dose first compared to the full-blown blubbery version?
For several articles on the research and more detailed practices for PowerPoint® presentations, go to http://www.pptdoctor.net.
I hope you find these suggestions useful in your work. Let me know your thoughts.
COPYRIGHT © 2011 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
It seems like there are countless diets out there, all promising to be the most effective way to shed those unwanted pounds. While these diets might have unique labels and marketing the ones that actually work really take one of three approaches, they are either calorie controlled balanced diets, low fat diets or low carbohydrate diets. To make things slightly more complicated some are a combination of two of the above, but their main underlying philosophy will typically be built upon one of the three.
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