Don’t panic, I’m not about to launch into a long winded post about how to communicate science effectively to a specific audience. How to present is, like many things, entirely subjective and there are no hard and fast rules for success.
I’ll say this though: if I see another slide called ‘outline’ with a list of content such as ‘introduction’, ‘methods’, ‘results’, ‘conclusions’ and ‘acknowledgments’, I will walk out (vomiting would be a little melodramatic, even for me). A content list for a presentation is a waste of time unless you’re going to do something really out of the ordinary and need to give some warning, and demonstrates a complete lack of imagination on the part of the presenter.
As per usual, I digress.
I picked up a wee booklet at ScienceOnline’09 called “Communicating Science: Giving Talks”. As today is Thursday, and I like to spend Thursday mornings dealing with my inbox, I found a spare 3 minutes to flick through it and a further spare 7 minutes to write about it. This booklet is produced by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and is aligned with their goal of helping early career scientists out. You can get a PDF version of this here.
Now, this is an American organization (I think, based on the address) and is full of very useful advice for presentations, most of which translates well across the Atlantic. Until, that is, we get to a section on ‘what to do when things go wrong’, subsection ‘The interpersonal disaster’. This section discusses the usual advice for technical hiccups, bored audiences, peculiar introductions and evil questions. Quite useful.
The evil question section recommends that young scientists take an “enjoyable lesson on parrying comments and moving on” by watching the British Parliament in action. Apparently, our right honorable MPs have refined their debating skills and practice the art of dealing with inappropriate comments. Rest assured, however, that young American scientists will not be picking up the art of the Great British Sarcastic Insult because the book cautions people “not to pick up that (UK Parliament) institution’s love of the well hurled insult”.
I was not aware that our politicians were in the business of educating young scientists in debating skills. I would rather that our young scientists were in the business of educating our politicians in science skills.
My 7 minutes is nearly up so as a parting thought: is the UK parliament really a good role model for how to deal with obnoxious questions during a scientific presentation?
A content list for a presentation is a waste of time unless you’re going to do something really out of the ordinary and need to give some warning, and demonstrates a complete lack of imagination on the part of the presenter.
That’s funny. I am of the same opinion (perhaps because during that particular slide on other people’s presentation, my mind seems to wander and I never get anything out of it. Just go ahead and give the talk, instead of telling me HOW you’re going to do it!). That’s why I never include any outline at the beginning of my talk, but I remember that when I used to get feedback after my talks during graduate school, one of the most common criticism I used to get was that the outline slide at the beginning was missing! I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who despises that practice…
The next time you ask a question in a talk, I hope the speaker replies with “I refer the honourable member to the answer I gave some moments ago”.
I totally agree about the outline slide. It can be useful, particularly in long talks, but for short talks that students give, it should be clear where you are in the talk. If there’s a graph of data the student collected, you’re in the results section.
I guess the outline slide is useful if the Powerpoint file is to be used afterwards by people who couldn’t attend. In that case, it acts like a contents page allowing the reader to quickly judge whether the content may be useful. However, if the headings are as bland as in your example, there is no point.
Yes get rid of the ‘Table of Contents’ but don’t forget to tell the audience at the very beginning what to expect from your talk. At a meeting I attended last year, all speakers were encouraged to have a slide of their take home message right at the start and I think that worked quite well in concentrating the minds of the speaker and the audience on what the essential point of the presentation was.
I’ve used outline type slides when half of my talk has been synthesis and results, and half has been computer modeling stuff. That was mainly to let the theoreticians know that there was something worth hanging on for!
I prefer to verbally outline the talk while the title slide is still showing, letting the audience know what they’re in for.
My “contents” slide was a slide that listed 3 levels of regulation of skin pigmentation. I went through all 3, then the last one disappeared and I said I would discuss the first two first and get back to the third. You can’t tell that it’s a contents slide if you just saw the slide without me talking about it.
is the UK parliament really a good role model for how to deal with obnoxious questions during a scientific presentation?
It’s a lot more entertaining than the German parliament, for sure… But, seriously, I always thought the most elegant thing is the old ‘we can talk about this more later’.
Which is code for ‘we could talk about this later, but I’m going to point out all the ways in which you’re wrong so why don’t you just quit while you’re ahead’.
Sometimes it’s code for “we could talk about this later if you buy me a pint at the pub”. Though not so much in talks in France. “We could talk about this later if you buy me a two-hour lunch at the local bistrot.” I can talk about a lot if I’m well fed and watered.
Well, everything is better over a 2 hour lunch with suitable wine…
A lot of good would be done in the world if the outline slide was replaced with ‘why you should care about the next 10 slides’.
Or: ’let’s discuss the content of the next 10 slides over a nice dinner later’.
This seems to be slipping into pick up lines for scientists…
On the other hand, as a questioner I once got the riposte "If you say that again I’m gonna come down there and punch you in the throat’. My recollection is a bit vague, but I think it was a joke!
That may well be behaviour learned from the Scottish Parliament!
I have just read the Burroughs Wellcome advice. Its rather long and I am sure 48 slides is somewhat longer than the presentation lengths they recognise. In my opinion giving good talks take practice. After a few years you become (over?)confident and take less time to prepare them. I still get nervous when I talk about stuff from collaborations and I know that with some of the bits I present from colleagues I would not be able to answer deep questions.
Well Katherine, at least your MPs face eachother and maybe even address eachother? that would mean a lot for some scientists anyway ;) [Swedish Parliament addresses the Speaker of the House and then you talk about what “that other dispicable person said” in a nice passive aggressive condecending voice. I mean, a very agreeable discussion with the SotH as a referee/‘grown up’/’mediator?!)
I’ve always liked the British Parliament, and the Canadian that I have watched too… especially since you sit so close to “the other side”. Imagine to have that set up with the reviewers of your paper (or I guess any conference presentation with a panel debate where the antagonists are facing eachother rather than next to eachother……)