TDN March meeting - Presentation

At the last Traning Directions Network meeting, we had Monica Lamelas who is CCWT Senior Learning and Development Project Manager who presented the topic: “Better Powerpoint presentations” and this is a brief summary of Monica's presentation and discussion.


What is wrong with Powerpoint presentations

• The tool has been blamed for the bad presentations we have all experienced
• It is possible to make it more inspirational
• The documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” of Alan Gore is a good example how powerpoint presentation can be a good support to a talking head and conveys a very emotional component
• What kind of presenter are you? Steve Jobs or Bill Gates? Steve Jobs used to use a clean or blank background for example. On the contrary Bill Gate tend to use a more crowded powerpoint presentations
• Presenters who “abuse” powerpoing tend to use it as a prompter, handouts or data dumps. This is not what powerpoint was designed to do.
• Powerpoint slides are not the presentation – the presenter is the presentation and the PPT slides are there to back up the presenter
• Participants need to focus on the presenter, not on the slides.
Let’s use it as best we can
• Before developing a powerpoint presentation, you usually think about: number of slides, colours and font size. What you should be focusing on is the story instead of the technicalities
• The presenter needs to keep to one clear message all the time. Think about the learner and how much information can the learner digest information - What does the learner need to take away?
• What is the subject, what matters to you?

Developing a Powerpoint presentation

• First step: step away from the computer to do your planning
• Second step: work out who is your audience?
• Third step: decide what role are you playing?

Think like a designer – like an artist

• Reduce the noise: use the billboard principles
• Use colours appropriately – get the right combination
• Be very aware of your font size – 54 or more is appropriate – the bigger the better
• Fonts: be aware that too many fonts can be distracting
• Use of wide space – very powerful
• Go easy on animations – use them very sparsely. One animation per presentation
• Avoid cheesy clipart – people prefer real photos – if you must use clipart, keep a consistent style
• Charts: are very powerful and a good visual interpretation for data and information

Slide Makeovers

• Use one picture or combine that picture with text
• Assist participants to make an emotional connection with your presentation
• Never leave any participant with a problem and without a solution – resources and links
• Guide participants to the right information
• Keep the key points in case we are not able to use images
• The visual component will carry the information more powerfully than words
• There are always three main documents: the presentation (PPT visual aid) to create the emotional impact, the presenter’s notes and the handouts.