Speaker 1: Hi, Writing Specialist Whitney Kurtz-Oglevee here again. Today we're going to talk about how to make a successful presentation. And as you can see from the first slide, I specified PowerPoint, but really this can work for Prezi or any of the other presentation-type programs, any kind of audio-visual presentation that you might be making, I think this would work very well for. So let's get started. There's my e-mail address, by the way, if you are a graduate student at the University of Kentucky College of Nursing or a nurse with UK Health Care, then I'm available to you for a one-on-one consultation. So if you need help with a writing project or presentation, be sure to make note of my e-mail address and get in touch with me. I'll be happy to help you. I'm here 11 months out of 12. I'm off in July, so if it's not July, I'm available. Okay, so what are we going to cover today? We're going to talk about preparation for our presentation. We'll do a little bit of discussion about audience and purpose and how thinking about those things ahead of time can save you a lot of headaches down the road. We'll also talk about how to organize our presentation, introduction, body, conclusion. We'll talk about design and layout tips, and then we'll talk about some tips for speakers because I suspect that some of you watching are among the millions and millions of people who are terrified of public speaking. So I'm going to give you some tips for how to conquer that nervousness and feel better and more confident. Okay, so preparation, audience and purpose, and message. Let's talk about that. So before you get started writing anything, and that includes a paper as well as a presentation, you should do some preliminary audience analysis. And that's really just a fancy way of saying that you should think about who is going to be watching, reading, listening to your presentation or paper and why, what do they want to get out of it, and then what do you want them to get out of it as well. And the reason why it's important to think about that is because it's really going to help you determine content, tone, style, format, what kind of language to use, whether you can use technical jargon, abbreviations, things like that. So all that's really important. So the first step for any presentation is to think about that and also to think about the purpose of your presentation. What is it for? So audience analysis, who is going to be there? Why are they there? What do they know already about your topic and what don't they already know? And that can vary a lot depending on what kind of presentation you're doing and where you're doing it. So in terms of analyzing who is in your audience, the first and most obvious thing would be, you know, are they colleagues? Are they fellow nurses? Do they have the same kind of education and training that you have? Why are they there? Are they there because they have to be? Are they a captive audience? Is this a presentation for a class and everybody has to be there, or are they there because they chose to be? That's going to have a pretty heavy impact on a lot of different things, and we'll talk more about that in a moment. And obviously what information do they have and what information don't they have. So in terms of who, you know, I said to determine whether these are fellow health care providers, fellow nurses, but even within that, think about the wide range of different people that that could encompass. So it could be nurses who are actually at the bedside doing direct patient care. It could be administrators. It could be educators, professors. It could be researchers. That's their focus instead of on direct patient care. We're talking about a huge range of educational training from registered nurses, APRNs, so, so, so many different education levels that your audience could have. And are they doctorally prepared or not? So all of that is going to have an impact on what information you include, how technical to get, how specific to get, what kinds of terms you might have to define, all of those things. You might also have other health care providers in your audience. So there could be doctors there. There could be PAs or physical therapists or psychologists, pharmacists, dieticians, all sorts of different people, and they're all going to have different education. They're all going to have different training. They're all going to have different experiences, and they're all going to come at the topic from a slightly different angle. And that doesn't mean that you have to please everybody and include something for everybody, but it does mean, as I said, that you need to think about what terms might you need to define, how technical can you get. You have to anticipate what questions people might have if there are people in your audience that either are not nurses or are not nurses in your specialty, are not as far along in the educational process as you are. Anticipate what kinds of questions they may have, and then you can preempt that by putting that information in your presentation. You also might have lay people in your audience, and that could be anybody from patients or parents of patients, students, legislators even. You know, nurses are often called upon to speak to legislators, and that can have a major impact on policy and lawmaking and all of that kind of stuff, so that's hugely important to think about that. And, of course, it could be a mix of all of those different folks. So what are your audience members likely to already know? This is going to influence what to emphasize. It's going to influence how to present your message, how much explanation to include. We've already talked about use of jargon and abbreviations, et cetera, et cetera. And this doesn't mean that you can't use jargon. That you can't use abbreviations doesn't mean that at all. It just means that you have to be clear about what those things mean. So if you're going to throw out a technical term, just quickly explain it so that people in the room who maybe don't have the same training or same specialty as you will know what it means. So once you've thought about all of that, you also want to ask yourself, okay, what do these people want to learn from my presentation? What are they likely to expect from me today? What do I want them to learn? And sometimes those things dovetail perfectly and sometimes they're a little bit different. You can also ask yourself how you can tailor your talk to your specific audience. And you absolutely should do that to an extent at least to make sure that people who are coming to listen to you speak are getting something positive out of the experience. So once you've thought about your audience and you've considered all of those questions, the next thing to consider is your purpose. And that is basically just what's your end game? What do you want to achieve with this presentation? And this also, by the way, applies to writing. So if you're writing a paper, you should ask the same sorts of questions. And I use this little simple equation to come up with a purpose. First, I come up with a general purpose statement. And then I come up with a specific purpose statement and then a thesis statement. And we're going to break that down one by one. So stay with me. So for your general purpose, there are lots of different possibilities. You might want to simply provide information. Maybe it's just purely informative. You just want to give them some facts. You may want to put an issue on the table, make them consider an issue that they maybe haven't considered before. You might want to strengthen or weaken your listener's commitment to a particular point of view. So it may be that you go in already knowing that your audience is on the same side of an issue than you are. But you want to strengthen that commitment to move them from, yeah, I agree with you on that, to I am really fired up about this, and now I want to take action. Or on the other hand, you may go in knowing, you know, this is going to be a tough crowd, they might disagree with me about this, and I'm not going to necessarily set out to completely flip them on this issue 180 degrees, but I'm going to weaken their commitment by at least giving them some things to consider on the other side as part of a process of moving them towards maybe being more open-minded about the issue, whatever. So those are just a few examples of general purposes. Some more, you might want to change your listener's minds about something, and that's the most challenging general purpose of all, because how many of us have ever really succeeded at completely flipping somebody 180 degrees from an opinion? It happens, absolutely it does, and it's a worthwhile goal sometimes. So that's another potential general purpose. And one more is to persuade them to take a specific action. This one is good for nurses because it's specific, it's practical. This one comes up a lot in the type of presentations that you guys do, because a big part of nursing is evidence-based practice. So we look at what the latest research is saying, and then we make practice changes accordingly. And along the line, that often means presenting, you know, here's what we know lately about this topic, here's what's working for people in hospitals across the country, I think we should do this here. So that's just kind of a quick example. So those are a few examples of general purposes. And, of course, you don't just have to pick one. You can combine these. So you might want to both provide information and raise an issue, or you might want to strengthen commitment to an idea plus induce an action. So, you know, it doesn't have to just be one. Now, once you've got that general purpose nailed down, then you want to come up with your specific purpose. And the specific purpose is your general purpose plus whatever the specifics are of your topic. And that's going to lead us to basically your take-home message, what you want your listeners to take away from your presentation. So let's say our general purpose is to inform, just to provide information about something. And our specific purpose might be to inform listeners of widespread academic dishonesty among medical researchers. So we're going from very general to informed to very specific to inform them about the fact that there's widespread academic dishonesty among medical researchers. And now we're going to come up with our thesis statement. I'm sure you guys remember that term from your high school English class or your college writing class. This is essentially the purpose statement or the specific aim statement of your presentation. And this is probably the only part of the purpose equation that you're actually going to include in your presentation, that you're actually going to speak aloud. Your general purpose and your specific purpose are just kind of there for you to know as you're putting your presentation together so that you can stay focused and have a clear idea of what you want to communicate. Your thesis statement, you actually will want to state this in the beginning part of your presentation. And this is where you state your central idea or claim. It should be succinct, so not rambling or wordy. It should be clear and it should be very specific. There shouldn't be any ambiguity or any doubt about exactly what message you are sending with your presentation. And it should summarize your take-home message, what you want your listeners to get out of your presentation. So let's look at an example. Let's look at an example of a specific purpose in a thesis statement. So let's say my general purpose is to inform, to raise an issue. My specific purpose is about widespread academic dishonesty among medical researchers. And then my thesis statement might be, a surprising number of medical researchers are engaging in academic dishonesty in the form of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and exaggerated or falsified data. So you see how with every step we're getting more and more specific. And this works just as well for writing projects as well as presentations in terms of coming up with a good purpose statement. So we're getting, it's like peeling an onion. We're getting more and more specific, deeper and deeper. And in that thesis statement, you notice the list of examples. So first we present the general topic, academic dishonesty among medical researchers. And then we actually have a list of specific examples, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and exaggerated or falsified data. That previews for the listener that we're going to get into each of those three things in detail in our presentation. And I used to teach public speaking, and there is a lot of research in that field that suggests that giving listeners a roadmap like that in the very beginning of a presentation will keep them focused. Because people tend to zone out during a presentation. Some of you might be doing it right now. But if you give people a roadmap in the very beginning, we're going to talk about this, this, and this. Then their minds are better able to stay focused because they're like, oh, okay, we're on number two of the three. We're moving along. And they can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. You'll remember that at the beginning of this presentation I did that very thing. Here's what we're going to cover today. This, this, this, and this. Right? So it's very simple to do. All right. So we've talked about audience analysis, and we have talked about coming up with a purpose statement. Now let's move on to talking about organization. So let's start with the physical side of things and talk about slide design. In a PowerPoint presentation or a Prezi presentation or any of those, definitely less is more because too much information will be very difficult to digest. Now remember that when you're giving a PowerPoint presentation, you're talking as well as showing slides. It's very hard to both read and listen at the same time. So you want your slides to be pretty minimal, and otherwise you're going to overwhelm your viewers. Your slides are going to be too busy, and your viewers will just end up reading instead of listening to you. And that's not what you want. You want the narration to be the main thing. Now look at this slide and tell me, if I were talking you through that, wouldn't that be difficult to follow? That's a really congested slide. So this would be an example of what not to do because there's just too much information on there. This one is the other end of the spectrum where it's extremely minimal, and it might be okay to do this if your narration, you know, is sort of extrapolated on each of those words. But ideally, I would aim for somewhere in the middle of those two things. And I think the slides we've seen so far are good examples of that. So remember, narration is the key. The slides are not the main thing. That's not what ought to be driving the bus. What's coming out of your mouth is what should be driving the bus. Your slides are there as visual aids and signposts along the way. So they're there to echo and highlight key points. Okay? That's what they're there for. They're there as kind of an underline or a bold face. Like, here's, this is really important. This is really important. And it's just kind of there for a touchstone as your listeners are listening to you. They're seeing the most important points kind of echoed there on the slide. You should limit yourself to one or two points per slide. And use keywords. So words that you would expect people to use in a database search if they were looking for something about this particular topic. You can give more detail in your narration.