Better Scientific Presentations

 It is paradoxical that some scientists approach teaching in a anecdotal way, rather than in a scientific way. I'm paraphrasing Harvard Physics professor Eric Mazur. Garr Reynolds has written a couple of very interesting post about presentation and education in the 21st century , that include a talk from Mr. Mazur. By a scientific approach to presentation I mean two things. First, the use and application of the theory of the psychology of a presentation: How people think and learn, how to grab and hold people's attention, ans how people listen and see. 5 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People from Weinschenk on Vimeo . The second thing is to measure how efficient a presentation is. It seems natural that if the scientific method is based on measurements, the outcome of a scientific presentation would also be measured. I have never heard or attend a scientific conference where the audience evaluates talks, or give feedback. That was exactly this measurement t

It feels odd to write this post. In fact it feels odd to write about pretty slides, when the power of a talk doesn't come from them. However, memorable visuals help the audience understand better and remember longer. That's why visual storytelling matters so much in presentations. Science tells us that stories is a great way to learn, then makes perfect sense that scientists use stories in their scientific presentations. In fact, as most people are visual learners it makes sense to know and apply visual storytelling to presentations. So here is the story of today's post. Some months ago I worked on a stack of visuals, which involved representing that a certain oral test is a bridge between education and professional life . After having found an appropriate image (Puente de Alcántara, Toledo Spain) and the talk's rehearsal. I came with a decent slide, that got noticed by the audience. If some more time in my hands, I tinkered a bit more and came up with this: Thi

Nicholas H. Morgan, Ph.D. No, in fact Dr. Nicholas Morgan is not a presentation guru, he's a presentation Jedi Master. His book Give your speech, change the word is considered —among experts in public speaking— one of the best.  What I mostly treasure about his book is PART III. Rehearsing the presentation . Most presentations suck because of their lack of preparation and feedback. Not only his book, but also his blog is amazing. Dr. Morgan's stand in Slideware is that the best slideware, is not slideware at all. He views communication as leadership, which to I completely relate to, because I believe that scientists ought to be leaders. By the way, wanna know what other books experts consider worth the time? The Top 35 Books on Presentations from Gonzalo Alvarez Image credits: Nicholas Morgan by nfrodom1 under CC BY 2.0 license.