Dr. Mike Doughty, Assistant Superintendent Monroe #1 BOCES 11

Dr. Mike Doughty, Assistant Superintendent
Monroe #1 BOCES
11 Linden Park
Rochester, NY 14625
585.383.2201
michael_doughty@boces.monroe.edu
Advanced slide design
“Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of
design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.”
- Tom Peters
While I am nearly certain that Tom Peters was not talking
about PowerPoint presentations in the quote above,
his words still apply. To improve the quality of our
presentations, we must pay careful attention to “design,
manufacturing…layout, processes, and procedures.” To
ignore these in favor of canned templates and text-filled
slides is a one-way ticket to boredom for your audience.
In his 2007 book Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological
Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations,
Stephen Kosslyn describes eight psychological principles
with vivid examples and just enough research to make
skeptics believe. His eight principles and their brief
descriptions are listed below:
A few examples will help illustrate these several
principles. Consider the graph below; quickly try
to determine how the fourth graders did in 2008.
This takes some effort and is a good example of the
principle of capacity limitations. You can figure it out,
but it takes time. If your goal in the presentation is to
give your audience practice reading complex graphs
from far way, you nailed it with this graph.
1.The Principle of Relevance –
Communication is most effective when neither too
much nor too little information is presented;
2.The Principle of Appropriate Knowledge –
Communication requires prior knowledge of
pertinent concepts, jargon, and symbols;
3.The Principle of Salience –
Attention is drawn to large perceptible differences;
4.The Principle of Discriminability –
Two properties must differ by a large enough
proportion or they will not be distinguished;
5.The Principle of Perceptual Organization –
People automatically group elements into units,
which they attend to and remember;
6.The Principle of Compatibility –
A message is easiest to understand if its form is
compatible with its meaning;
7.The Principle of Informative Changes –
People expect changes in properties to carry
information; and
8.The Principle of Capacity Limitations –
People have limited capacity to retain and to process
information, and so will not understand a message if
too much information must be retained or processed
(Kosslyn 2007, pp. 4-11).
If you are trying to make another point using the data,
you might want to consider something like this graph.
In this case, it’s easy to tell how the fourth graders did
in any of the years shown on the graph. This pair of
graphs also demonstrates the principle of relevance,
whereby just the right amount information is displayed
in the second example.
Spotlight on the presenter:
Think about a presentation you’ve seen
that was very effective. What did the
presenter do? How did she engage with the
audience? Did she use slides? What did the
slides look like? Do you think the effectiveness of
that presenter is a result of innate traits with which
she was born? Or do you think she developed those
skills over time? In her 2006 book Mindset: the New
Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck explores the
differences between a fixed mindset and growth
mindset. She demonstrates conclusively through her
own research and the work of others, that just about
anyone can get better at just about anything. She
cites the work of educational researcher Benjamin
Bloom, “After forty years of research on school
learning in the United States, as well as abroad my
major conclusion is: What any person in the world
can learn, almost all persons can learn, if provided
with the appropriate prior and current conditions
for learning” (Dweck 2006, 65-66). The key is to
be willing to believe that you can get better and
to take steps to actually get better. Geoff Colvin’s
(2008) research on top performers sheds light on
the essential elements of what he calls deliberate
practice:
● The practice is specifically designed to
improve performance, that is, it stretches you
just beyond your current ability.
● High levels of repetition are required that
goes beyond running through something once.
● Continuous feedback is essential. The
element here is that the feedback must be
rigorous, precise, and from a knowledgeable
colleague, mentor, or coach.
● The practice itself must be mentally
demanding. We are not talking about
mindless repetition. This is the kind of
practice that can be mentally exhausting,
where you pinpoint minute aspects to
improve. It’s not fun.
“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice.” While often attributed to Jack Benny,
the origin of this joke and punch line
is sketchy. In any case, its message is
at the heart of good presentations.
So how do you approach deliberate
practice when it comes to
presentations?
Prepare.
It sounds simple, but for so many
presenters, preparation is typing titles
and bullet points into PowerPoint
slides. Even if you are not going to
stand up in front of a large screen and
rehearse your presentation, sit at your
desk and talk through it. Close the
door and actually say what you plan
to say to the audience as you click
through the slides.
Get high-quality feedback.
For particularly high stakes
presentations or for presentations that
I have not given before, I find a trusted
and honest colleague to watch me give
the presentation. It can feel contrived
giving the presentation to one person,
but the act of actually putting my
words with the slides invariably yields
positive changes and reduces my
anxiety for the big show.
Presenter tips
Getting it just right – lessons from orchestra.
My high school orchestra teacher, Mrs. Carr, always
used to say that her goal in crafting the program for any
concert was to leave the audience wanting more, not
wishing they heard less. Find that balance. It’s a little
like packing for a trip. My mother would always tell me
to lay out what I thought I needed and then put half of it
away before packing my suitcase. She was always right.
All’s well, that ends well.
Your ending is as important as your beginning. Make
sure that you plan and practice how you will end your
presentation. And be sure that you plan to end on time
or early. Remember, the difference between a good
meeting and a great meeting is the ending time. On time
is good. Early is great. Late is unacceptable.
Test the equipment.
Get the audience involved.
Experience has taught me and research has confirmed
that humans have short attention spans. I have taught
kindergartners up through post graduate students,
and my observations have been consistent: about ten
minutes is the maximum that anyone can pay really close
attention. As a result, you need to build in opportunities
for the audience to process information and participate.
This can be as informal as a “turn and talk” or having
participants jot something down on paper. Recently, I
have started using www.polleverywhere.com to get real
time responses to questions from audience members.
You can create a free account on the website and have
participants text their answers to your question. You can
even display the graph as people are responding to show
the responses as they are recorded. The free version of
the website will only allow you to have up to 40 votes per
poll question.
I have been presenting for a long time, and my hubris got
the better of me recently. I was giving a presentation on
the new Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR)
regulations for teachers to our local school boards group.
I arrived early to make sure the equipment worked. After
restarting the computer and the projector, I was able to
get the image to project on the screen, only to have the
resolution and an earlier version of PowerPoint goof up
the layout of my slides. Beautiful slides turned mediocre.
One solution is to click through all of your slides quickly
before the presentation to be sure they appear on the
screen as you created them. Another solution is to bring
your own computer.
Buy a clicker, and learn how to use it.
There is nothing worse than being tied to a podium so
that you can advance slides. Remote controls are around
$50 from any office supply store and are well worth the
money and peace of mind. Keep it in your briefcase or
computer bag, and you will never be tied to the podium
again.
Use a microphone.
Here are a couple of my favorites: “Can everybody
hear me? Then I won’t use the mic.” “I don’t like
microphones; I’ll just use my teacher voice.” In large
groups, this might work for the first few minutes, but you
will end up shouting yourself hoarse and annoying your
audience with your harsh tones. If the group is larger
than 50, you are likely to need a microphone. Get over it,
and use it. It’s not about you; it’s about your audience.
Making the case (again) for a handout.
I have often had to work with colleagues to plan
presentations. As with any creative endeavor, putting
together a presentation with a group or even just one
other person can be challenging. There is a temptation,
for efficiency’s sake, to divide up the work – you make
the first five slides, and I make the next five. Tempting
as this is, it makes for a disjointed and often incoherent
presentation. I have seen this deteriorate into presenters
reading the slides to the group during the presentation.
Say goodbye to audience engagement.
Another pitfall of group presentation design is the
tendency to load slides up with text. Working with
groups over time in graduate school and in large
organizations, I have found that people retreat to this
comfort zone when they are not confident in their own
knowledge of the content. Rather than risk forgetting
something, there is a tendency to put all of the text on
the slide – just in case. The result is a predictable death
spiral. Once the text goes on the slide, preparation
stops. When it is time for the presentation, the
presenter hasn’t prepared beyond keying the text on
the slide, so they end up reading it to the audience.
Intervening in a group to prevent this can be tricky.
When I have pushed back, the response is often
something like, “people like my slides because they like
having the information to take with them.” The easy
answer to this is “make a handout.” Remember, the
presentation is about what the presenter has to say,
and the slides should support the presenter, not the
other way around. If you feel like participants need
something to take with them, make a handout using a
program designed for that purpose like Microsoft Word
or Microsoft Publisher.
I have used the process of creating a handout as a way to
clarify my thinking about a presentation. Before I sketch
my slides or even create a new PowerPoint file, I try to
make the handout for the presentation. Writing down
what you think is most important, and what you hope
people will take away from your presentation, forces you
to get your act together. When I have expressed clearly
the essence of my presentation, creating the slides and
telling the story becomes the easy part.
A note on story
or issue in the context of what could be is a powerful
design for an effective presentation. For a quick primer
on Duarte’s application of story to presentations, watch
her TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/nancy_
duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks.html).
Getting to the story can be difficult and will require
effort. Consider the following as you try to craft your
story.
Find the connection
Recently, I was asked to prepare and deliver a
presentation about the Common Core State Standards.
Knowing that this is not the most exciting content, I
searched for a story. As I was reading about the major
shifts in practice related to the Common Core, I started
thinking about my own experiences in mathematics
and ELA instruction. One of the major concepts in the
Mathematics Common Core is the emphasis on a deep
understanding of fractions as a precursor to algebraic
thinking. I remembered that my high school geometry
teacher always used to say that, “fractions are your
friends.” So I called up Mrs. Hage who retired from
Cortland Jr.-Sr. High School and asked her if I could have
a picture of her to use in a presentation I was giving
about the Common Core State Standards. She laughed
and sent me a picture. The story humanized me as the
presenter and made the dry content more interesting.
“I don’t necessarily start with the beginning of the book.
I just start with the part of the story that’s most vivid in
my imagination and work forward and backward from
there.”
- Beverly Cleary
“You can have piles of facts and still fail to resonate.
It’s not the information itself that’s important but the
emotional impact of that information.”
- Nancy Duarte from Resonate (2011)
“The human brain automatically tries to organize and
make sense out of experience. One happy consequence
is that humans like to tell and understand stories”
(Kosslyn 2007, p. 34). In her 2011 book Resonate,
Nancy Duarte describes how great presentations
follow a predictable story grammar. Using examples of
presentations from politics, business, education, and
the arts, Duarte makes a strong case for the natural flow
of stories throughout effective presentations. Helping
audiences understand the current state of a problem
More examples
Since I became a school administrator in 2001, I
have written a weekly newsletter for staff. In my
section of the newsletter, I try to connect something
going on in the “real world” or in my life to our work
in the organization, whether a school or a BOCES.
The inspiration for these weekly columns has been
everything from quotes, to popular culture, to statistics,
to my children. I have the most recent versions archived
here: http://instruction.monroe.edu/bulletins.
References – Annotated
Colvin, G. (2008). Talent is overrated: What really separates world-class performers from everybody else. New
York, NY: The Penguin Group.
Colvin systematically unpacks what it takes to become a world-class performer in a variety of areas from sports to
music. His examples are illustrative and his descriptions of the essential elements of deliberate practice are very
clear.
Duarte, N. (2010). Resonate: Present visual stories that transform audiences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc.
This is Nancy Duarte’s follow-up to her first book, Slide:ology. She does a fantastic job using examples of famous
talks and speeches to show the impact of the elements of story on presentations. While the book is wonderful,
seeing Duarte present the major concepts at TED is even more powerful. Filmed in November 2011 and posted
in February 2012, Nancy Duarte’s TED talk on the secret structure of great talks is a wonderful summary of the
book and is well worth the 19 minutes it takes to watch. In addition to providing great information, Duarte is an
excellent presenter (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks.html).
Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Random House, Inc.
Dr. Carol Dweck describes several studies that show the power of a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset. She
provides several examples in sports, business, and relationships. She also offers ideas and implications for parents,
teachers, and coaches.
Kosslyn, S.M. (2007). Clear and to the point: 8 psychological principles for compelling powerpoint presentations.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Kosslyn’s scholarly approach to communication through PowerPoint is refreshing and accessible. He describes his
eight psychological principles with vivid examples and just enough research to make skeptics believe. His eight
principles are 1. Relevance, 2. Appropriate Knowledge, 3. Salience, 4. Discriminability, 5. Perceptual Organization,
6. Compatibility, 7. Informative Changes, and 8. Capacity Limitations.
Reynolds, G. (2008). Presentation zen: Simple ideas on presentation design and delivery. Berkeley, CA: New
Riders.
This was the first presentation book I picked up after reading Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. Pink referenced
Presentation Zen as an example of effective use of design principles. In Presentation Zen, Reynolds explores the
concepts of planning, designing, and delivering effective presentations in the context of graphic design principles
and story-telling. This is a great place to start reading about presentations as it is accessible and highly practical
with many sets of before and after slides. You might also want to take a look at Reynolds’s blog (http://www.
presentationzen.com/). He regularly updates it with new content, and I have found it to be very helpful.
Reynolds, G. (2010). Presentation zen design: Simple design principles and techniques to enhance your
presentations. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
This second book by Garr Reynolds expands on concepts introduced in Presentation Zen while focusing on the
design part of the process. There are many examples of before and after slides. The chapter on displaying data is
particularly strong.
Reynolds, G. (2011). The naked presenter: Delivering powerful presentations with or without slides. Berkeley,
CA: New Riders.
In his third book, The Naked Presenter, Garr Reynolds focuses his attention on what the presenter does. Great
slides and visuals are important, but if the human being in front of the audience can’t deliver, all hope is lost.
Reynolds’s practical tips and techniques are helpful and easily accessible.