Last summer I bought a book titled "Presentation Zen" by Garr Reynolds after a friend mentioned that he had heard the book title referenced on a podcast. In the book, Garr presents concepts and ideas for presentation design that are grounded in Zen principles of aesthetics. He also references real empirical research that guides the design concepts mentioned. I found the book very fascinating and practical. I have seen so may terribly designed presentations in my lifetime and this book opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about presentations. The point was bigger than just communicating a message; it was about connecting the audience to the message and using the visual aspect to evoke emotion, feeling, and action. So, in the spirit of sharing my newfound knowledge, and after doing some additional research of my own, I decided to hold two faculty development workshops on how to design effective presentations using PowerPoint. I figured that this information could be of great use to faculty who spent lots of time creating presentations for lectures, talks, etc. In actuality, the principles that I discussed were applicable to any situation in which a visual message would be delivered to an audience using any kind of software.
The workshops consisted of a PowerPoint presentation, a printed copy of the presentation notes handout, a YouTube video, a link to two online color picker tools, a link to sample slides designed by Garr Reynolds hosted on Slideshare, a link to a free digital photos website, and a link to a PowerPoint user resource. The YouTube video, color picker tools, the Slideshare presentation, and the web resources were embedded and linked in the workshop presentation but I have included them as separate content items for the purpose of this practicum activity.
The workshops were open to the entire College of Allied Health Sciences and College of Nursing. Only four instructors attended the first workshop. The other workshop had no attendees due to a conflicting event. The four faculty that attended the first workshop received the information very well but had some concerns about how to tailor such a design philosophy to healthcare related presentations that was driven by textual information more than any other type of media. I suggested that the lecture presentation be focused on the visual message and to include the “wordy” parts of presentation in a handout or other forms of media. In essence, the presentation should be balanced with other classroom/online teaching strategies and shouldn’t be the only instructional content used to teach. Some of them bought it; others were skeptical yet willing to try. Additional workshops on this topic will be offered periodically throughout the coming semesters.
The workshops consisted of a PowerPoint presentation, a printed copy of the presentation notes handout, a YouTube video, a link to two online color picker tools, a link to sample slides designed by Garr Reynolds hosted on Slideshare, a link to a free digital photos website, and a link to a PowerPoint user resource. The YouTube video, color picker tools, the Slideshare presentation, and the web resources were embedded and linked in the workshop presentation but I have included them as separate content items for the purpose of this practicum activity.
The workshops were open to the entire College of Allied Health Sciences and College of Nursing. Only four instructors attended the first workshop. The other workshop had no attendees due to a conflicting event. The four faculty that attended the first workshop received the information very well but had some concerns about how to tailor such a design philosophy to healthcare related presentations that was driven by textual information more than any other type of media. I suggested that the lecture presentation be focused on the visual message and to include the “wordy” parts of presentation in a handout or other forms of media. In essence, the presentation should be balanced with other classroom/online teaching strategies and shouldn’t be the only instructional content used to teach. Some of them bought it; others were skeptical yet willing to try. Additional workshops on this topic will be offered periodically throughout the coming semesters.