Although most presentations right now are delivered in ballroom style (but badly), relatively few occasions actually call for ballroom style, because this style of presenta- tion is really only appropriate when you have a large audience (say one hundred or more people) whom you are trying to inform or entertain. If you are presenting to a smaller group and/or your goal is to persuade the group in some way — which would seem to be the more common occasion for a presentation — then you should use a conference room style presentation.
A conference room style presentation should look more like an architectural drawing than something you ’ d see on television. Good conference room style presentations should have lots of relevant detail and text, and should be handed out on paper, never projected.
Paper allows a much greater density of detail on your slides, which, if projected, would be mostly incomprehensible. On paper, you can use font sizes as small as 9 point without dif- fi culty, whereas in ballroom style 24 - point is usually the minimum safe size. 2
Conference room style therefore allows you to put much more information on each page.
This facilitates more productive conversations, because all the information for the dis- cussion of the moment is right in front of everyone on a single page; a single printed page can fi t the contents of three, four, even ten projected slides. Paper delivery also allows people to write on the presentation, so that they can engage with your content better, and — as Edward Tufte says — it sends a message that you are confi dent in your content, because you are allowing your audience to walk away with it. Because conference room style presentations contain so much more detail on each page, they tend to have signifi - cantly fewer pages — you could spend anywhere between ten minutes to over an hour on each conference room style page.
Conference Room Style and the Problem of Control
Conference style is a very powerful presentation idiom, but it is new to most people.
Since it is new, it will take some practice to become profi cient in it. However, some
2 Many people prefer illustrated paper handouts. Research on subjects with lower reading ability found that illustrated paper handouts outperformed plain text handouts, video, and self - paced PowerPoint presentations (Campbell, Goldman, Boccia, &
Skinner, 2004).
2 Many people prefer illustrated paper handouts. Research on subjects with lower reading ability found that illustrated paper handouts outperformed plain text handouts, video, and self - paced PowerPoint presentations (Campbell, Goldman, Boccia, &
Skinner, 2004).
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people are reluctant to even try it because they do not like the idea of giving out their slides for fear of losing control of their presentation. If you hand out your slides to your audience, they can read ahead — they do not have to wait for you. But if you project your slides, you decide when to go to the next slide. So with a projector, you keep control. You decide where the audience ’ s minds will be at any given point.
Or do you? In reality, with a projector, you only have the illusion of control . Certainly, you decide which slide is being projected, and when. But you have little or no control over where your audience ’ s minds are. They could be thinking about anything — the problem they left burning on their desk, their last vacation, lunch . . . . And with many projected presentations, they probably are thinking about anything — anything except the presen- tation, that is.
At least with conference room style slides, you have some feedback as to whether your audience is keeping up with you. You can see whether a person is getting bored and read- ing ahead, because you can see that she ’ s turned the pages, or if another person is having trouble keeping up and is falling behind, because he ’ s still looking at the previous page.
With conference room styles slides, you give up the illusion of control, and in return you get the reality of knowing whether your audience members are still with you.
I think that the concern with audiences reading ahead stems from experience handing out copies of ballroom style slides — which is something you should never ever do, as we noted above. Ballroom style slides, by their nature — with their big fat 30 - point text, have very little content on each, and so it is no wonder that your audience will be reading ahead — there ’ s so little on each slide. Properly done, each conference room style slide will be so rich that your audience will not want to be reading ahead.
One other benefi t of handouts for conference room style presentations is that they avoid the apparent tension between presenter and audience that comes from one having control of the projector, while the others do not. When one person controls the projector, it appears as if he or she is trying to dominate the room. By contrast, when everyone has copies of the handouts, then control over the presentation feels as if it is shared. As an audience member, no one is forcing you to move to the next slide if you are not ready, or to stay on the current slide if you are bored. Also, perhaps most importantly, you can mark up the slides in front of you — deface them if you want — which helps maintain that sense of each audience member being in control. This reduction in tension should be helpful for presentations with emotionally charged or particularly contentious topics.
How Many Slides Should a Conference Room Style Presentation Have?
The quick answer to this question is: as few as possible. Do not assume that each of your S.Co.R.E. cards should become one slide. The goal is to fi t the content of as many cards as possible onto one slide, to keep your presentation as brief as possible.
Fewer slides is always better here. Has anyone ever said to you: “ I think your presenta- tion was great . . . except that I wish that you had a few more slides ” ?! I ask this question
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LAYING OUT ALL THE ELEMENTS ON EACH PAGE 115
in every workshop I run, and almost no one has ever had this experience. It is probably fair to generalize that almost all presentations are too long. Therefore, it is a good idea to try to shorten them for a change. When you think your presentation is too short, it will probably be just right.
Fewer slides make for better presentations because they allow for more understanding and richer, more interactive discussions. Your audience can see more steps in your logic on each page in front of them, so they can understand your argument better. People learn better when presentations follow what are called the spatial and temporal contiguity prin- ciples: where words and graphics are presented all together, on the same page — spatially — and at the same time — temporally — rather than spread out over multiple pages. 3
When your audience has all the information relevant to a particular discussion right in front of them, that discussion can fl ow more freely than if they have to keep asking you “ Could you back up two slides to the one about, um, cost savings — no, not that one, three slides back I guess . . . . ” If you want your audience to absorb and adopt what you are presenting to them, then it is important to allow interactive discussion, which gives them the opportunity to engage with your material and refl ect on it. Having everything on one page in front of them allows for this.
But isn ’ t communication more effective when complex information is presented piece by piece rather than all at once? On the contrary, research indicates that, from an edu- cational perspective, if you break up a complex task into too many steps, learning can be less effective. 4
Finally, having fewer slides that you hand out is better because people are limited in how far they can read ahead if it turns out that you are going too slowly. If you have only fi ve or seven pages in total (rather than the forty or so pages that make up an average PowerPoint presentation), then you can spend the time to make each one of them just right.
3 Both principles are derived from extensive empirical research.
See especially Mayer (2001) and also Moreno (2006).
3 Both principles are derived from extensive empirical research.
See especially Mayer (2001) and also Moreno (2006).
4 A multimedia learning experiment conducted on law students in Holland found that breaking up a learning task into a higher number of steps actually reduced learning effi ciency (Nadolski, Kirschner, &
van Merrienboer, 2005).
4 A multimedia learning experiment conducted on law students in Holland found that breaking up a learning task into a higher number of steps actually reduced learning effi ciency (Nadolski, Kirschner, &
van Merrienboer, 2005).
RESEARCH ON THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERACTIVITY
The importance of promoting interactive discussion of your presentation is underscored by the interactivity, refl ection, and personalization principles:
The interactivity principle states that “ Interactivity encourages the processing of new information by engaging students in an active search for meaning. ”
The refl ection principle states that “ Students learn better when given opportunities to refl ect during the meaning - making process. ”
The personalization principle states that “ Personalized messages heighten students ’ attention, and learning is more likely to occur as a result of referring the instructional material to him/herself. ” Interactive discussion gives you an opportunity to personalize your information to individual members of your audience, as you respond to their questions.
See Moreno (2006, p. 65) for more details on each of these principles.
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What Is the Ideal Length of a Conference Room Style Presentation?
The theoretical, ideal length of a conference room style presentation is one page — with lots of detail, well laid out. Why? Because if you can achieve the goals of your presenta- tion in one page, why would you use two, or ten, or forty? If you are able to distill your message down to one page, your audience will get the sense that you have really captured the essence of the subject. They will also appreciate (and probably be stunned by) the brevity of your presentation.
You will work through the S.Co.R.E. method described in Chapter 6 to organize your material into a story, and then you will use only as many pages as you need to tell the story. Any extra material that does not fi t into your story but might come up during the presentation can go into an appendix. You could have a one - page presentation and a fi fty - page appendix. The main thing is that you are not compelling your audience to sit through fi fty slides.
One page is an ideal, not a rule. The rule is: use as few pages as possible to deliver your mes- sage effectively . When we take this approach in workshops that I have run, participants routinely end up with presentations that are seven, fi ve, or two pages long, and occa- sionally they do come up with a one - page presentation, where in the past they would typically present between twenty - fi ve and fi fty pages. By aiming for the ideal of a one - page presentation, you may not hit it, but you will end up with far fewer pages than you would have otherwise. This is a good thing.
What if you are given a one - hour time slot for your presentation, and you show up with a presentation that is only one page long? One slide, well designed and rich with detail, can easily absorb the interest of a group of people for an hour. It makes interaction and discussion easier: we are all poring over the same page, rather than being frog - marched through fi fty slides, and so the meeting tends to be very satisfying and productive.
Decisions are made, and people act on them. Finally, if you do fi nish early, give your audience some time back. Who could possibly be upset with that?