I just got back from a great conference for the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). This conference had training and education leaders from all sectors: private, government, education, non-profit, and corporate. At the conference, I had an opportunity to see several fantastic presentations. Unfortunately, I walked out of two presentations. Members of higher education gave both. Also, the last keynote presenter paled compared to the first two simply because of her presentation choices.
While the members of higher education may have had great content to present, the presentations were so bad I had to get up and leave. When compared to the presentations given by those who make a living on giving good presentations, it was easy to make the comparison. Higher education presentations regularly disappoint me. Recently, it occurred at AERA.
There is a lot of research available explaining that a screen of bullet points read to the audience is not effective. Why do we keep doing it? More importantly, when are we going to stop giving terrible presentations? We lose credibility from the corporate sector each time we give a bad presentation.
I know we can do better. I am pursuing a degree from the University of Wyoming, and I took a class on visual literacy. In this class, I learned about the importance of visuals in learning. Yet educators regularly fall back on poor choices when putting together a presentation. Let’s stop giving crappy PowerPoint presentations.
“Death by PowerPoint” is real. It is caused by the overuse of bullets. Save a life with a visual.
