So today, I wanted to finally start cracking on my review of
some of the research, hints and tips on teaching and in particular, teaching seniors.
Why is this important? They are our
clients and the more we can adapt our teaching styles to suit them the better and
lets face it, there is no point re-inventing the wheel after all, if someone
else has already done the research lets see if we can build from there. Furthermore,
we have to remember that while we are educators, we are providing education for
people who are learning for the simple pleasure of learning. Thus, unlike students
in high school who are forced there or University students in awe of all the
degrees after your name, our clients are exceptionally discerning and rightly
demand a very high quality of teaching from our facilitators.
So, I have spent the last couple of months compiling a lot of
the research that has been done in this field and hopefully over the next
couple of blog entries I will be able to dissimilate this into a working form
that can assist myself and Hale & Fun’s growing community of facilitators
in better providing educational opportunities for the seniors in our society.
To get the ball rolling the first aspect I would like to
discuss is the presentation material, in particular the Presentation material. Power
point (and similar programs) are amazing teaching tools and allow us to develop
very visual orientated programs. However, their simplicity belies a number of
potential pitfalls that a person can fall into, particularly when preparing
presentations for the more mature audience. Make no mistake, badly designed
slides can distract or worse, irritate the audience.
The first and foremost is content. As the saying goes,
Content is king (or Queen or democratically elected leader), but what to
include? This really comes to the crux of the matter. You could be forgiven to
think, if content is the leader, then logically the more material the better.
After all, the audience does want to get their money worth right?
Wrong- Dead Wrong.
The rule of thumb is be concise with your text. The important
thing when putting together a presentation is to remember that the actual
material up on the screen is meant to be an “aid”. A very important aid
that is true but still only an aid. Many people make the mistake of including
pretty much every possible aspect of their class on each slide. Ask yourself
this “Do you really want the audience to be sitting there reading what is up on
the screen or listening to what you have to say?” and make no mistake, people
will read it, it is an instinctive thing, no matter how loud, excited or
creative you try to be- if there is a page of words on the screen behind you
they will try to read it. I personally like to limit the material I put on the
screen to the bare minimum. Use it like a scaffolding- 4 or 5 key points at the
most, with maybe 6-7 words in each. Then build up from there using the handouts
and your own wonderful personality and speech. Content is the entire package, the
presentation, the handouts, your knowledge and your presentation. The material
you cover should be spread throughout all these aspects not just up on the
screen.
This does bring another important point about presentations,
waay back when I was but a young lad eager to learn the skills of teaching
there was this great theory about the cognitive load limits that students are
under when learning. Bare with me because I will in no way do justice in my
description to this field of research, but fear not, I will be coming back to
this topic in a later blog. The main aspect of it was that students have a
cognitive limit to how much they can “absorb”. Fair enough, however, the trick
for a teacher or facilitator is to maximise this. Now this is important when
deciding what should be put on the screen behind you because the last thing you
want to do is waste some of this cognitive skill on repeating what is being
said in written form as well.
Which brings us to the second point. The Font. Some
important rules are: Use
large font size – minimum of 18 or 24 points screen (Although I have been known
to ignore this suggestion, however you should consider the size of the
audience, the screen on which the presentation is going and how long you will
be staying on each slide to decided on how big the font should be). But the
important thing is Make
it big. Cant fit it all on a single screen, then either cut down how much you
have put on or use more than one slide.
In addition, limit
use of boldface, italics, and underlining; Don’t write in all upper case
letters; Use common fonts (Times New Roman, Arial, etc,) and no more than two
fonts on a screen. These
may look good to you but to the audience
they can just be annoying and confusing. In the same way, limit your use of
animation and special effects. Once again, it comes back to the idea of whether
you want the audience to be looking at you or the screen. Having said that, my
main reason for not getting too arty with all of the fonts, special effects etc
is because they just increase the likelihood
of something going screwy..and spending the first five minutes of a presentation
trying to figure out why the hell all your slides are now in Wingdin really doesn’t
convey a sense of professionalism to those watching you.
Having said that- I do really like having video
clips, particularly for courses such as animal behaviour where it is really benefit
to actually let people see the things being described. All the tools available have
their place just remember to not get arty for the sake of arty!
Now what colours to use. Colour is an exceptionally strong
influence in the observer. The colours you use can help to convey important
meanings and influences the attitudes of the people you are addressing. So it
is important to get it right. Now, there is whole fields of vision research on
colour perception, on what is best and what works well. In fact and rather
surprisingly, Microsoft has an impressively understandable short information
sheet on it-have a look if you want to be that person at the party..yeah you
know who I am talking about (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/choose-the-right-colors-for-your-powerpoint-presentation-HA001012072.aspx).
http://www.slideshare.net/gdimock/color-theory-power-point-presentation
also gives some interesting overview of the whole history of colour theory and
aspects of the study.
Now one of the key things to remember (And boy has this
happened to me a few times) how something looks on the computer screen may not
be the same as how it looks once projected up on the big screen, if possible it
is a good idea to test out before hand for this very reason. Nothing makes you
lose impact than having a graph that appeared perfectly comprehensible on the
computer show up as a solid brown block in front of all your professional colleagues….
But that isn’t always possible- so here are some
combinations that do in general work: green on purple, white on black, violet
on yellow, blue-green on red. Which is all well and good but to be honest, I
personally stick with the tried and true Black or dark Blue. Comes out well on
almost any background, is dark enough to be seen even in reasonable light and
saves a lot of mucking around (green on purple is just wrong, I don’t care if
it works it is just wrong). But it does obviously rely on the background. In
this regard remember that patterned backgrounds can make it difficult to read
some of the text, particularly if it is really complicated patterns. Personally,
I like to stick with the simple coloured ones- maybe a very subtle line pattern
or something. Remember the purpose is for the screen to have information, not
to be a form of contemporary art.
So to summarise, the first of Daniels Golden rules:
1.
Be concise- don’t not include everything in the
presentation written up on the screen
2.
Make it big- particularly, for mature audiences
smaller fonts are just annoying
3.
Don’t mess around too much with fonts, special
effects and so forth. Remember you are meant to be the focus of the course, not
what is on the screen!
4.
Colours- keep it simple but make sure that you
have the right contrast combination so that the writing shows up. When in
doubt, stick with the classics such as black or dark blue. It is always better
for the writing to be seen than for it to look pretty.
For more excellent and easy to
read advice- check out http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-tips-for-preparing-a-professional-presentation/
Till next time,
Cheers
Daniel
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