For most of the science sort of fields, you will at one point have to present to your peers in a way that they understand. I've sat through some really bad presentations that my fellow students have done, and I have probably given a couple too. My biggest gripes are: way too long (20 min presentation that last 45 min); too much material (TONS of text on a slide); or just not clear. And this doesn't just apply to students, but professors as well.
The reason why I am going off on this today is because I was reading a post on slashdot about them blaming PowerPoint for bad presentations. Yes, I think that sometimes you are limited with what PowerPoint can do, but if you stick within what it was meant to do, you'll be okay. Like any other engineering field, you should the right tool for the job. So don't try and put a whole technical paper into a couple of slides, it just won't work. If the conclusion of the presentation is what it can cost people's lives, have this on one slide by itself in big bold capitical letters. PowerPoint is only to help you make your points, and have a visusal reminder of what you are going to talk about, it is not supposed to be the whole presentation in itself.
If people die because you made a shitty presentation, that's not the tools fault, it is yours.
Listening to: Naughty By Nature - OPP
Speaking as someone who's dropped classes to avoid presentations, I fully agree with you that all Engineers should be forced to take a presentations course.
ReplyDeleteI actually think that we should have to take an "Effective Communication Skills" class. Something that would go over the psychology of communications both work(ie development)-related and simply in the workplace. And not a waste-of-time 1 credit course, but a full, 4-credit course with labs.
I spent 4 years giving presentations [for my BBA], I so can say with total confidence that too many people rely on PowerPoint itself to give the presentation. Like you said, it's a tool, a supplement. Highlight key points, expand on them yourself. When you have to sit through a week of 2 hour long presentations, you LEARN to be different...at least I did.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Engineers are BRUTAL at relaying what the hell they mean to simple people. You guys SHOULD take a course or two. :)
Us science geeks are WAY ahead of you engineers... we do in fact have one of these "wonder" courses...right. They're almost good. (1 credit presentation course). We did 3 presentations over the year - all on overheards. (stone-age, I know). I think that the first presentation should be on overheads, and only then should you be allowed to graduate to powerpoint. the classes were painful, but retrospectively useful.
ReplyDeleteha ha ha... nice to know that some one has figured out that it would be a good thing to do.
ReplyDeleteI know that in mech eng. they have to do presentations, but the prof has an egg timer. After the timer goes off, you have like 10 seconds to finish your sentence, that's it.