Michael Alley (Penn State) 1: Rethinking Scientific Presentations: The Assertion-Evidence Approach
Summary
TLDRThis video script emphasizes the importance of effective presentation skills for research scientists, focusing on the pivotal role of slides in conveying complex information. It critiques common PowerPoint pitfalls such as excessive text and clutter, and introduces the 'assertion-evidence' approach to enhance comprehension. The script advocates for visual storytelling, clear messaging, and the use of templates to avoid cognitive overload, ultimately aiming to make scientific presentations more impactful and memorable.
Takeaways
- 🕒 The significance of effective presentation time is emphasized, especially for research scientists who spend more time in the lab than presenting their work.
- 📑 Slides are crucial for the success or failure of scientific presentations, often making a more significant impact than people realize.
- 📈 The importance of making decisions about what to include and exclude from slides, and how to emphasize or de-emphasize certain points through visual and spoken presentation.
- 🔄 The 'death by PowerPoint' rhythm, where presenters constantly turn between reading slides and speaking to the audience, can negatively affect the presentation.
- 🎨 The best presenters use visual aids as a support for the audience, not as a script for themselves, speaking from their knowledge and experience.
- 🧠 Research indicates that challenging PowerPoint's defaults can significantly increase audience comprehension through a different approach to slide design.
- 🏆 Examples of successful presenters who have adopted the new approach and achieved recognition for their presentations are highlighted.
- 📝 The common problems with scientific slides include too many words, cluttered slides, and unreadable text, which can lead to cognitive overload.
- 🤔 The script prompts the audience to consider the issues they see with slides in scientific presentations and the research behind why too many words can be problematic.
- 🎯 The assertion-evidence approach to slide design is introduced as a method to improve presentations, focusing on clear messages and visual evidence rather than bullet lists.
- 🛠️ The assertion-evidence.com website is mentioned as a resource for PowerPoint templates and example presentations that follow the new approach.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the film discussed in the script?
-The main focus of the film is to teach how to make scientific presentations as effective as possible, with a particular emphasis on the creation and use of slides.
Why are slides considered crucial for the success or downfall of scientific presentations?
-Slides are crucial because they help convey the presenter's message and emphasize key points. Poorly designed slides can lead to cognitive overload and reduced audience comprehension.
What is the 'assertion-evidence' approach mentioned in the script?
-The 'assertion-evidence' approach is a method of creating presentations where each slide starts with a clear assertion or message, followed by visual evidence to support that assertion, rather than using bullet lists.
How does the script suggest improving audience comprehension through slides?
-The script suggests challenging PowerPoint's defaults and adopting the 'assertion-evidence' approach, which has been shown to increase audience comprehension significantly.
What is the cognitive overload theory as discussed in the script?
-The cognitive overload theory, proposed by John Sweller, suggests that when audiences are presented with too many words, the part of the brain processing both written and spoken words can become overloaded, leading to reduced comprehension.
Why does the script criticize the use of bullet lists in presentations?
-The script criticizes bullet lists because they can lead to cognitive overload by requiring the audience to process too much written information while also listening to the presenter.
What are the three main problems with slides as identified by scientists and engineers?
-The three main problems are: too many words, cluttered slides that distract the audience's attention, and text on slides that is often not readable.
How does the script relate Allan Paivio's research to the design of PowerPoint slides?
-The script points out that Allan Paivio's research found written and spoken words are processed in the same part of the brain. However, the creators of PowerPoint were not aware of this research, leading to defaults that promote cognitive overload.
What is the advice given in the script for creating effective presentation slides?
-The advice given is to build slides on clear messages, support these messages with visual evidence, and fashion sentences on the spot to show ownership of the information, rather than relying on bullet lists.
What is the role of the sentence headline in the 'assertion-evidence' approach?
-The sentence headline in the 'assertion-evidence' approach serves as a clear, concise statement of the message or assertion that the visual evidence on the slide will support. It acts as a filter for information and a safety rope for the audience.
How does the script suggest using visual evidence to support messages in presentations?
-The script suggests using visual evidence such as photographs, drawings, diagrams, graphs, equations, films, or tables to support messages. This approach allows the audience to focus on the visual while listening, reducing cognitive overload.
What is the significance of the 'B' key or blank screen technique mentioned in the script?
-The 'B' key or blank screen technique is used to direct the audience's full attention to the presenter when a slide is not necessary. This can help in creating a more impactful and focused presentation.
Outlines
📈 Effective Scientific Presentations: The Role of Slides
This paragraph emphasizes the importance of making presentations effective, given the limited time researchers have for public speaking compared to lab work. It highlights the role of slides in presentations and how they can impact the success or failure of a scientific talk. The speaker discusses the decisions made while creating slides, including what to include or exclude and how to emphasize points. The paragraph also touches on common issues with presentations, such as overuse of PowerPoint defaults, which can lead to a monotonous delivery and reduced audience comprehension. The effectiveness of the presentation is linked to how well the audience understands the material, and the speaker suggests that challenging PowerPoint's defaults can significantly improve audience comprehension.
🎓 Cognitive Overload in Presentations: The Science Behind It
The paragraph delves into the cognitive overload theory proposed by John Sweller, which suggests that too much information presented simultaneously in speech and text can overwhelm the audience's cognitive capacity. It discusses Allan Paivio's research indicating that both spoken and written words are processed in the same part of the brain. Sweller's experiments showed a decline in comprehension when audiences were subjected to excessive text and speech. The speaker also lists common problems with scientific presentations, such as too many words, cluttered slides, and illegible text, which contribute to poor audience understanding. The paragraph criticizes PowerPoint's defaults for not being based on cognitive research and for contributing to these issues.
🔍 Rethinking Slide Design: Challenging PowerPoint Defaults
This paragraph discusses the history of PowerPoint and how its creators were unaware of the cognitive research that suggests its defaults are not conducive to learning. The speaker points out that PowerPoint's defaults encourage the use of excessive text, clutter, and ineffective headlines, which can detract from the presentation's effectiveness. The paragraph also includes a quote from PowerPoint's creator, Robert Gaskins, questioning the widespread adoption of its default style. The speaker advocates for the reconsideration of slide usage, suggesting that slides should only be used if they actively support the presentation and help the audience understand, remember, and believe the content.
📝 Building Presentations on Messages, Not Topics
The speaker encourages researchers to construct their presentations around key messages rather than traditional topics, which often leads to a basic structure of introduction, methods, results, and discussion. The paragraph illustrates how to create a focused message for each part of the presentation, using Dr. Barbara Bekins' presentation as an example. It emphasizes the importance of developing a clear, concise sentence that captures the main point and serves as a filter for what to include in the presentation. The speaker also advises against filling slides with bullet points and instead recommends using visual evidence to support the messages being conveyed.
📚 Supporting Messages with Visual Evidence and the Assertion-Evidence Approach
This paragraph introduces the assertion-evidence approach to presentation design, advocating for the use of visual evidence over bullet lists to support messages. It discusses the cognitive benefits of processing images separately from text, as per Richard Mayer's research, and how this can enhance learning. The speaker uses Jacob Snyder's presentation as an example to demonstrate the effective use of visual evidence and the importance of storytelling in presentations. The paragraph also provides guidelines for creating effective slide headlines and emphasizes the importance of avoiding clutter and ensuring the slide design allows the audience to focus on the speaker's message.
🚀 Embracing the Assertion-Evidence Approach for Scientific Research Presentations
The final paragraph summarizes the assertion-evidence approach to scientific presentations, encouraging researchers to experiment with this method. It outlines the three principles: building talks on messages, supporting messages with visual evidence, and fashioning sentences on the spot to demonstrate ownership of the information. The speaker invites the audience to visit a website for free PowerPoint templates and example presentations to aid in adopting this approach. The paragraph concludes by expressing hope that the audience will apply these techniques to enhance their own presentations and looks forward to a follow-up film that will provide further examples and guidance.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Presentation
💡Slide
💡Cognitive Overload
💡Bullet Points
💡Visual Evidence
💡Assertion-Evidence Approach
💡Cluttered
💡Readability
💡PowerPoint Defaults
💡Confidence
💡Storytelling
Highlights
The importance of making presentations effective given the limited time spent presenting compared to lab work.
The critical role of slides in the success or failure of scientific presentations.
Decision-making in slide creation: what information to include and emphasize, and what to leave out.
The negative impact of PowerPoint's defaults on presentation delivery and audience engagement.
The assertion-evidence approach to increase audience comprehension significantly.
Examples of individuals and organizations successfully using the assertion-evidence approach.
The goals of research presentations: understanding, memorability, and credibility.
The problem of too many words on slides and its cognitive overload effect.
The research of Allan Paivio and John Sweller on the processing of written and spoken words.
Common issues with slides: clutter, lack of readability, and ineffective use of space.
The historical context and evolution of PowerPoint's defaults and their impact on slide design.
The importance of phrase headlines in filtering information on slides.
Robert Gaskins' criticism of PowerPoint's default style and its widespread adoption.
The advice against using slides unless they actively support the presentation.
Steve Jobs' approach to presentations as a story, using slides effectively to enhance narrative.
Building presentations on messages rather than topics for clearer communication.
The use of visual evidence over bullet lists to support messages and reduce cognitive load.
Principles of the assertion-evidence approach: messages, visual evidence, and on-the-spot sentence formation.
The assertion-evidence.com website offering free PowerPoint templates and example presentations.
Encouragement to experiment with the assertion-evidence approach in scientific presentations.
Transcripts
As a research scientist,
think about how little time you spend presenting
against how much time you spend
working in the lab or on your computations.
You might give one presentation at a conference
for 20 minutes,
or you might give a colloquium at your institution
for 50 minutes.
The question comes:
how do you make that time as effective as possible
to represent all the work that you've done?
This film focuses on that question.
And in particular, this film pays a lot of attention
to the slides that you create for that presentation.
Now, you might ask, why?
And one thing that I have found
in my 30 years of researching scientific presentations
is that slides make more of a difference for the success
-- and I would say more often the downfall --
of scientific presentations
than people realize.
First, when you're creating slides,
you make important decisions:
what information you're going to include,
and equally important,
what information you're going to leave out.
And of that information that you include,
you also make decisions...
what am I going to emphasize,
perhaps by putting on the slide,
and what am I going to de-emphasize
by folding into your speech?
A second way that slides affect a presentation's success
occurs in the delivery.
Sadly, many presenters use PowerPoint's defaults
and spend so much of their delivery
turning, reading or paraphrasing a bullet on the slide,
turning back to the audience,
then turning, reading or paraphrasing,
then turning back.
And that rhythm
-- what a lot of people call a death by PowerPoint rhythm --
pulls down a presentation.
The best presenters, however...
they speak from what they know,
and their visual aids are in fact aids for the audience
rather than notes for them.
Yet a third way that slides
affect a presentation's success
occurs with how much the audience
understands from them.
Our research has found
that challenging PowerPoint's defaults
and using a different approach,
such as what you're gonna learn in this film,
actually increases the amount of comprehension by the audience
in a statistically significant way.
So, I've had a number of people
who have used this approach.
The woman in the upper left, Katie Kirsch...
while she was getting her PhD,
she used this approach in all her conference presentations,
and she won best presentation at the conference
three times.
The gentlemen at the bottom,
professor Are Magnus Bruaset from Simula Research Laboratory
and University of Oslo in Norway...
he uses this approach, and his colleagues use this approach,
in all their presentations
that they make to industry to present their research.
And the woman... scientist in the upper right,
Dr. Barbara Bekins from the US Geological Survey...
she had to give a lecture
to 40 different places across the country,
and she decided to use this approach
for that lecture
because so many people
were going to see her work presented in that fashion.
We've had research groups
use the assertion-evidence approach,
and what you see here on the screen
is a large gas turbine research group
at Penn State.
We've had courses adopt the approach,
and here you see a law design course
at Penn State.
And this... and the approach was used by both the professors
who taught the class
and by the students who reported on their designs.
We've even had one national organization,
the Engineering Ambassadors Network,
adopt the approach for all the presentations
that they use in high school
to recruit STEM students.
Now, one assumption that I'm going to make
in this presentation
is that the goals for your research presentations
are that they are understood,
that your presentations are remembered,
and that your presentations are believed.
I'm also gonna have another assumption
that on a personal level
you have a goal of wanting to feel
and project more confidence.
So, where do we start?
Where I would like to start is
I would like you to think about
when you watch scientific presentations
and you see the slides,
what are the biggest problems that you see with those slides?
I've asked this question
to hundreds of scientists and engineers around the world,
and the number one answer
-- and it's not even close --
is too many words.
And no doubt,
you see many examples of that weekly
in presentations that are given at conferences, in seminars,
in classrooms that are...
that include slides.
And you... and that particular problem
is not one that actually is so surprising.
In the mid-1980s, some research came out,
and that research points to why
having too many words is a problem.
So, let's say you have a speaker and you have an audience.
Now, we've known forever
that the speaker's spoken words...
those are gonna be taken in through the ears.
And if the speaker has any written words,
those are gonna be taken in through the eyes.
But it wasn't until the mid-1980s
that a Canadian psychology researcher
by the name of Allan Paivio
found that those written words and spoken words
are processed in the same part of the brain.
And another researcher,
this one from Australia, John Sweller...
he thought about Paivio's research
and he asked this question:
if written words and spoken words
are processed in the same part of the brain,
could that part of the brain become overloaded,
much as a central processing unit
can become overloaded
when it tries to do too many tasks?
And so Sweller... he did experiments.
He had one room where people just read,
one room where people just listened,
and another room where people read and listened.
And when there weren't too many words,
in the comprehension tests that he gave after those presentations,
the room where they read and listened,
they did the best.
But what he found is...
that when there were too many words projected,
that what happened is that room
that was both reading and listening
went from first to worst.
And so, Sweller came up with this theory
that if audiences try to process
too many words,
this cognitive overload occurs,
and that is what happens in many presentations.
Now, scientists and engineers
will also talk about a couple of other problems.
I mean, they'll actually talk about a lot of problems,
but there are three that stand out.
So, too many words is number one.
A second one is that the slides are cluttered.
And by cluttered, they mean that the...
that the audience isn't sure where to look.
And so, you have a slide,
and maybe what you want to do is you want to look at a graph on the slide
because you think the graph contains the most important things...
but there's text and arrows
and other things that are impinging on that graph,
and your eye gets pulled away.
A third problem is that many people
find that much of the text on slides is not readable.
And you can see in this graph
that even though maybe you can see the curves,
what you cannot read are the axes.
And if you can't read the axis of a...
axes of a graph,
then the value of that graph plummets.
A big takeaway is that
because so many people -- something like 95% --
use PowerPoint,
that then PowerPoint's defaults become important.
And what we realize is PowerPoint
came out about the same time that Paivio
was coming out with his research.
And the two gentlemen who created that program,
Robert Gaskins, who was an entrepreneur,
and Dennis Austin, who was a computer scientist...
they were not aware of Paivio's research.
Now, they ended up, I think, doing the best they could
with the computer architecture of the day.
But a problem is that the defaults
were not based on any research.
Worse yet, and maybe the big tragedy,
is that PowerPoint's defaults have not changed significantly.
Yeah, in 2003 they changed from Times New Roman to Arial,
and in 2007 they changed from Arial typeface to Calibri,
and they threw in Microsoft's little artistic insert...
but... but nothing actually changed here.
So, one thing that I want you to realize
is that PowerPoint's defaults run counter to how people learn.
That text box in the body
that has all those nested bullets...
that leads people to create too many written words.
As John Sweller says,
it is a disaster how many words
people will put on slides.
That textbox also consumes valuable space
that could be used for images,
which makes the slides cluttered.
And then one last thing,
and something that I've been paying a lot of attention to,
is that that headline
leads scientists and engineers to write phrase headlines.
On the surface, that sounds like a good idea,
but a problem is that a phrase headline
does not filter noise.
And as you can remember
from when we first talked about why slides are important,
it's important for us to have a filter
on what to include and what not to include.
I'm gonna give you one quotation,
because we can do better.
I'm gonna give you one quotation...
and I could have chosen a lot,
but I'm gonna choose this one.
"The real mystery to me
is why PowerPoint's default style has been adopted so widely.
Why do medical researchers use the PowerPoint style
at academic conferences?
Why do engineers use the PowerPoint style
for technical discussions?
And the reason I like this quotation
as a criticism of PowerPoint
is that it was said by none other than Robert Gaskins,
the creator of PowerPoint.
I mean, if Gaskins himself
challenges the defaults,
then you should as well.
So, the question comes, what should we do?
But before we do that,
I have yet another assumption I want you to have.
And that is,
you should not have slides
if slides do not support the presentation.
In other words, if sl...
if slides do not help the audience
understand, remember, or believe the content.
And someone who was very astute
at that particular point,
and did not include slides if they weren't needed,
was Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs thought about his presentations,
in a sense, as a story,
and then each slide or blank screen...
that was a scene.
And so, if you don't need a slide,
press the B on the control panel of your...
of your computer,
or use your advancer to blank the screen,
or better yet, insert a black slide
so that then the audience knows to focus on you.
And while that focus might seem frightening at first,
that focus is important
because, as Faraday said,
for your presentation to be a success,
the audience has to believe in you.
You have to show ownership of the information.
Now, maybe you won't have a blank screen
at a conference presentation
because those are so compressed.
But in a symposium that's 50 minutes,
think about having at least one scene
where there is no slide
and you move to a part of the room
where no one typically stands.
That will command attention.
Okay, now we're ready.
So then, what should we do?
And my first piece of advice to you is,
build your talk on messages, not on topics.
Most scientists and engineers in research
build their presentations on topics:
introduction, methods, results, discussion.
You can do better than that.
So, what often happens is...
let's say you're putting together a presentation,
and you're at a particular scene
and you decide... mmm... electron acceptors,
that's what I'm gonna be talking about here.
And so you write "electron acceptors"
in your biggest typeface up at the top,
and then you write down all the things you want to say...
you write those down below.
And then, if... and you put those in this bulleted list.
And then, if there's any room,
then you include an image.
What I'm telling you here is
go back to step one and stop there.
You can do better.
Build your talk on messages.
And so, Dr. Barbara Bekins,
when she was putting together her presentation
on the effect of hydrology
on the 25-year degradation of a crude oil spill...
on this particular scene,
she thought deeply about what she wanted the audience
to walk out the door with.
And then she wrote this sentence:
a succession of electron acceptors occurs
when an aquifer becomes contaminated with oil.
And then, she took that sentence,
tightened it as much as she could,
and put that at the top of a slide.
And once she had that,
then she had a filter.
And then she created visual evidence
to support that.
And so, when you've got an oil spill
that occurs in an aerobic aquifer,
what depletes first is the oxygen.
And so, what you see here is that this oxygen...
this becomes depleted in this outer band of the plume.
And once that is depleted,
then you get these bands of other types of depletions.
You get a reduction of nitrate and manganese,
and then you get a reduction of iron,
and then there's a reduction of sulfate.
So, what she has done
is she has stated her assertion up at the top
and then supported that assertion visually.
That's principle number one.
Principle number two
is to support your messages with visual evidence
-- not a bullet list.
It could be photographs, drawings,
diagrams, graphs.
It could be an equation. It could be a film. It could be a short table.
And then what you are to do is...
by creating that, you allow the audience
to focus on the visual evidence
and then what it is you're saying.
You avoid that cognitive overload.
So, let's go back to Paivio.
And if you remember,
Paivio found that written words and spoken words...
they're processed in the same part of the brain.
But his research also found
that images are processed in a different part of the brain.
And another researcher, professor Richard Mayer
from UC Santa Barbara...
what he did is he really ran with the question of,
what is the effect of using images in a presentation?
What is the effect on the learning
that the audience has?
And so, he's done a number of experiments,
and what his big takeaway
is that people learn much more deeply
from words and relevant images
than from words alone.
So, let's take a look at an example,
and I'm gonna choose a PhD graduate student, Jacob Snyder,
who's presenting a scene from
one of his conference presentations and from his PhD defense.
And so, in this scene
he's talking about the effect of using additive manufacturing,
or 3D printing,
on some really small channels.
And so, he begins the scene
by showing a channel that is built in the vertical direction,
much as a smokestack is.
And what you can see
-- and what he points out --
is the variation that occurs in that 3D printed channel.
And then, once he has set that up,
then what he does is he shows a channel
that was built as a pipeline.
And what you see is that there's much more variation
in that particular channel,
that parts of it actually almost cave in.
And so, you might think, ohh, well, it's obvious
-- we would go with the vertical one.
Except that these channels... they are...
serve to produce heat transfer of these very hot gases.
And so, as it turns out,
having that roughness can be an asset.
And then he went on to show another channel
-- this one at 45 degrees --
and he made the point that manufacturers
could choose different angles
to balance having the overall shape that they want
with increased roughness.
Now, we've looked at an assertion-evidence slide here.
Let's take it apart.
And the slide began with the assertion headline.
Now, some of you might say,
you know, I... I bet if I had seen Jacob Snyder give that talk,
I would understand exactly what was going on
and I would not have read that sentence.
And what I would say is, fantastic.
You were on your game as a listener
and then Jacob was on his game as a speaker.
But that sentence at a conference or in a symposium...
that sentence serves as a safety rope for the audience
in case they zone out, they get tired,
they receive a text, or whatever...
that allows them to stay in the presentation.
A couple of other things about the sentence headline:
keep it to one or two lines.
If it goes more than two lines,
our focus groups find that people won't read it...
perhaps it's just too much time away from the speaker.
Capitalize it the way you would a sentence.
It's just easier for people to read a sentence
that's capitalized as a sentence.
Also, don't center it; left justify it.
It's an easier read for the audience.
And the period... do you need a period?
Because it's a standalone sentence,
a period isn't required.
However, if you hear the voice of your fifth grade teacher
to put a period there and it haunts you at night,
put the period.
It's not that big of a deal.
So, that's the sentence.
What about the visual evidence?
With the visual evidence, I'd say the big thing is to avoid clutter.
In other words, try to have the slide breathe.
And I think Jacob Snyder did a really good job here
with the positioning of the three contour plots
and not allowing them to crowd the headline.
Leave some space there -- very nice.
And one last thing is, think about how you're gonna tell the story of the scene.
So, in this case, Jacob Snyder
discussed the one contour plot
and then animated in the second one,
when he was ready and when the audience was ready,
and then animated in the third,
again when the audience was ready.
So, we've talked about two of the principles
of the assertion-evidence approach:
build your talk on messages, not on topics,
and support those messages with visual evidence
not bullet lists.
The third principle of the assertion-evidence approach
is that when you present that visual evidence
fashion sentences on the spot.
In other words, show that you own the information.
Now, many of you might be
afraid of this particular principle.
You think, oh, I don't think I can do it.
I need those bullet lists for me to know what to say.
And what I would say is, you don't.
It is your research.
If you choose visual evidence
that is from your work,
you can present it.
You don't need those bullet lists.
As a research scientist or a research engineer,
be an experimentalist.
Try this approach.
And in trying this approach,
rather than starting with PowerPoint's defaults,
go to our website -- www.assertion-evidence.com --
and download one of our PowerPoint templates.
They're free. It doesn't cost you anything.
But it's gonna save you a lot of time.
You'll also find some example presentations
by people such as Jacob Snyder and Katie Kirsch,
whom I had mentioned earlier.
So, what we've done here is that
I have shown you a different approach
to give a scientific research presentation.
And I hope that you'll be an experimentalist
and try this approach.
In a second film that's coming up,
we're going to walk through
a research presentation
-- title slide, mapping slide, the body slides, conclusion slide --
to show some best examples on what it is that you can do.
Thank you.
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