A few days back Nancy Duarte authored an opinion piece on presentations. I was reluctant to read it at first because I was afraid it was going to be yet another article that extoll the virtues of slide design but does not address other – more important – aspects of excellent presentations. When I finally forced myself to read the article I was pleasantly surprised to find that the piece was not on the importance of design, but on the importance of the narrative.
This excited me because the narrative is arguably the most powerful type of presentation. We are surrounded by narratives in our life. There are the obvious ones such as the childhood stories that will stay with us until we die, and the movie arc that had us glued to our seats. But there are also less obvious ones: the come-from-behind victory that our favourite sports team pulled off, the rags-to-riches stories of a favourite entrepreneur or entertainer, our child’s explanation of his/her day at school (and the even more interesting explanation for why the missing cookies are hot his/her fault).
And because narratives are all around us, we are used to the patterns and conventions in the stories. The introduction and set-up, the conflict, the rising drama that leads to a climax where the conflict is resolved, and finally the denouement where everything is wrapped up – all of this is ingrained in our psyches. And because they are ingrained into all of us these patterns are something that presenters can latch onto.
Why? The fewer demands you can place on your audience, the more room the audience has for the message you are trying to get across. When you use a non-narrative presentation format your audience has to first understand the format before they can assimilate the message. I have found myself in presentations where I was lost and had to take time to work backwards in order to understand why the speaker was talking about whatever it was he was talking about. And while I was doing that, the speaker was moving on and I was not paying attention. Had the speaker been using the narrative style I would not have had to backtrack and would have kept track of the what he was saying.
So how do you use the narrative? Look for the story. Look for the main problem that you had to overcome or the problem that you set off to solve. Then describe how you solved it – the steps, the problems you encountered, your minor victories. Use that arc in your presentation.
And watch as the audience follows along to see how story ends.
[Commentary] The most important science courses
I was just doing some research on scientific literacy. In light of some recent high-profile trends, I was looking to see if adult scientific literacy in the US has been decreasing and whether it is notably less than other industrial countries. The answer – which surprised me – is no to both. The US is, if anything, a leader in the world (In 2005 28% of the population could be said to be scientifically literate, second to Sweden in the study referenced below).
This appears to fly in the face of evidence that US primary and secondary students lag behind many of the their international peers when it comes to scientific literacy, as well as the general impression that the US is adopting many anti-scientific positions. So, somehow, the average American goes from a state of relative scientific ignorance in primary and secondary school, and blossoms into one of the the most scientifically literate in adulthood.
So the question that needs to be asked is “Why?” What is it that makes the average US adult more likely to be scientifically literate than, say, your average European adult?”
First year general science courses in college and university.
So says Jon Miller, currently at the University of Michigan. Dr. Miller is one of the world leaders on scientific literacy, and he asked the question above – what turns the average US from relatively scientifically illiterate to scientifically literate?
What he found, after taking all sorts of measurements and doing lots of clever things to make sure he was comparing apples to apples and not apples to squid, was that it boiled down to the fact that US colleges and universities require students to take at least one first year course in science, while European universities do not (he reported the results in a paper at the 2007 AAAS meeting in San Francisco).
Seriously – just taking that one course was enough to raise the level of the student’s scientific literacy to the point that they can better understand scientific terms and issues, and to make relatively informed judgements about the scientific and technical issues of the day.
This study compared Americans and Europeans, and did not include other countries such as Canada (which requires first years science courses in university), Australia, Japan, China and Russia, so I do not know if the results hold up more generally. Then there is also the question of why so many Americans seem to hold anti-scientific positions on e.g. evolution and climate change (these last seem to be related to the nature of politics in the US) and how things may have changed since 2005.
But it is very interesting nonetheless – first year general science courses are among the most important courses that a university can offer, and the most influential that a professor can teach.
Given this, one has to ask why the academic community – which has a vested interest in a scientifically literate taxpayer – has been devaluing these first year courses. Instead of treating these first year courses (which are typically large in size and time consuming to teach) as some sort of teaching purgatory perhaps the community should be putting more resources into teaching these very courses.
Offer more sections so that the classes are smaller in size and the professors are more approachable. Make sure that the very best and enthusiastic lecturers are teaching the courses. And stop looking down on the students who take them because they will not take any other science courses.
After all, the students that you look down on today are the taxpayers who will decide (through their votes) whether to fund your research in the future.
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