Topic Presentations
Boring, bad, ugly, pointless PowerPoint presentations -- we have all seen them.
The Topic Presentation counts for 25 percent of your grade for the course. If you don't follow these instructions, your grade will be low.
DO NOT BE BORING!
How can you avoid making a poor presentation?
Is the text legible?
- Is it large enough for everyone in the audience to read it?
- Is there sufficient contrast* between the background color and the text color -- on EVERY slide?
- Is the font** a clean, easy-to-read typeface?
* Note that the contrast on the screen in the classroom may not be as good as the contrast on your computer. You will be safe with white text on a very dark background or black text on a very light background.
** The computer in the classroom may not have a fancy font that you have on your home computer. To ensure that your presentation looks good in the classroom, use one of the most common Windows fonts, such as Arial.
Is there too much text on any slide?
Each slide should help the audience to digest the information. A big block of text does not achieve that goal. That's why good PowerPoints have only two or three BRIEF bullet points on most of the slides.
DO NOT read your slides!
This is the most boring thing you can do in a presentation. Your mission as a presenter is to be interesting and informative. To do so, you must PLAN a synergy between your slides and your talk.
What you say and what appears on the slide should complement each other -- not repeat each other.
Does your information have value?
You must KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE to answer this question. In this course, you must assume that your audience has read the assigned text about which you are presenting.
DO NOT BE BORING!
You are the expert and the guide to this text. You have read supplementary information pertaining to the text -- the audience probably has not. You have thought long and hard about this text.
YOU MUST HAVE THREE SUBSTANTIAL SOURCES -- ADDITIONAL SOURCES -- TO COMPLEMENT THE ASSIGNED READING. THESE ARE PART OF YOUR PRESENTATION!
Your goal is to make the information accessible and meaningful.
If you mostly tell us what was in the text -- which we have already READ -- that is a BAD presentation.
I'm going to grade you on HOW WELL you:
- Summarize: Try to condense ideas and themes into short, manageable chunks. Consider whether the chunk makes sense. As a line on a slide, "Informed public" does not say much. Instead, "Informed public necessary to choose leaders" says something clearly, and you can explain it further as you present.
- Synthesize: COMBINE the ideas in the text with other ideas you found outside the text. (If there's not a lot of new material in your PowerPoint, that's very bad.)
- Do not quote the text: Your audience has read the text already. Do NOT ask them to read it again on your slides!
- Select and compress: In a 200-page text, there may be 10 chapters, or there may be only four. But ... how many IDEAS are there? One chapter may really not have any interesting ideas in it. Another chapter may have three, four, five or more thought-provoking ideas. Sometimes you don't really appreciate the ideas in an early chapter until you have read a later chapter. Your audience will be well served if you can pick out the key ideas and explain how and why they are significant.
- Cut out the slack: Not everything in a text is useful. Part of your job is to figure out what to omit.
Use of images and sound
Clip art images are usually pointless. If you include graphics or photos in your presentation, make sure they have relevance and meaning.
You can find interesting photographs and other illustrations online to emphasize the points you make in a presentation.
Sound effects usually become annoying. If you use sound in your presentation, it should have some clear value. That is, it should add something useful to the presentation.
Relevant videos from YouTube and other sites can be great enhancements to your presentation. (Note the word "relevant"! That is key!)
The PowerPoint is not everything
You will be graded on the value of your presentation to your fellow students, which includes:
- What you say;
- How you say it (organization and interestingness);
- The usefulness of your handout (PLEASE MAKE A GOOD HANDOUT); and
- The quality of your PowerPoint.
The overall substance of your presentation and the way you handle the task of presenting the topic to your audience will be evaluated.
Reading your slides, for example, results in a big loss of points!
The handout
- Your handout must be single-spaced and use traditional outline format. (In MS Word, on the Format menu, select "Bullets and Numbering." Then select Outline Numbered to create your outline.)
- At the top, include your first and last name (both students' names, if there are two of you), the full title of the book or article(s), and the names of the author(s). Also include the page numbers or chapters.
- The top-level items in the outline (I, II, III, etc.) must be the chapter titles of the book. If you have an article, or articles, instead of a book, then use the subheadings in the article as your top-level items.
- List all the references and sources at the END of the outline (after the outline). This includes any VIDEOS (e.g., YouTube) you may have shown. Include the title and the complete URL for each online source you use.
More information
> A PDF outline of the information on this page (48 KB; one page)