No wonder no one could figure out what happened

As of this writing, it has been 24 years since 1988 (man, you don’t know how old that makes me feel). You would think that would be enough time for us to figure out that filling slides with text doesn’t work.

Why 1988? That’s the year John Sweller formulated Cognitive Load Theory, a theory about how we learn things. It’s related to the work of Princeton’s George A. Miller in 1956 that suggests we can only retain around seven discrete items in short-term memory. Though CLT has a number of implications for learning, we’re concerned here with the insight that when we are presented with both a written and an “out loud” version of the same information, we ignore one or the other. In other words, we can’t listen and read at the same time.

This is news, of course, to the millions of presenters who bombard us with bullet-pointed slide presentations in support of their talks.

Garr Reynolds effectively warns us against the slideument. Bullet points deserve much of the blame for the average slideument, though not all. Some of it comes simply from confusing the strengths of material designed to be read vs. material designed to be heard.

Seth Godin, in his ebook, Really Bad PowerPoint (and How to Avoid It), says this:

Microsoft has built wizards and templates right into PowerPoint. And those “helpful” tools are the main reason that we’ve got to live with page after page of bullets, with big headlines and awful backgrounds. Let’s not even get started on the built-in clip art.

In other words, it’s not really PowerPoint (or Keynote or Google Docs presentation tool or OpenOffice.org’s Impress or Prezi) that’s the problem. It’s the strong hint that we should build our presentations around text.

Resist.

A rule of thumb is that your slide show shouldn’t be able to stand on its own–that it will only make sense when it supports something you hear. If it can stand on its own, there’s no need to talk about it.

Your slide show should have very little text. That’s why they call it a slide show.

Godin says that you should have no more than six words to a slide. Ever. Here’s what I think: When you limit yourself to six or fewer words, the slide can be grasped as a whole without being “read.” It acts like a graphic. It fits the show.

But after 24 years, we still haven’t gotten it. Godin hoped his ebook would end the matter. It didn’t. Reynolds has been preaching against the slideument since at least 2006, and has become the undisputed leader of this movement. But at an academic conference last October I sat through a session in which the presenter read every single word of his 45-minute presentation off his slides. Teachers are some of the worst offenders. Even making fun of it doesn’t stop it.

Please. Make a difference in 2012. Take advantage of the many sources for legal images on the Internet, and kill the bullet point.

Two bad things can happen if you try to end with Q&A.

1. They have no questions. Uncomfortable silence follows. Crickets chirp. The speaker tries to console himself (male pronoun used since “himself” refers to me in an earlier incarnation) that he must have covered all the bases, while actually believing he made so little impact as to leave the audience with no curiosity about the topic. Audience members will probably assume the lack of interest. In other words, a lack of questions can just suck all the energy out of what otherwise might have been a dynamic speech.Plus, it can leave you running short of audience expectations regarding the length of the speech. Although it has been said that no speaker has ever gotten in trouble for going undertime, that isn’t completely true. Audiences that have paid for an hour mini-seminar can feel cheated if they only get 40 minutes.
2. Someone has a combative question. Rather than ending on the strong note in the conclusion, the speaker winds up defending his contentions. Addressing objections is essential–but any sales professional will tell you that you don’t end there.

Instead, plan a Q&A after your last main body point, but before your conclusion. Deal with whatever questions come up, or the lack thereof with a plan B, a planted question, or introducing your own questions. Then end with your call to action.

Sometimes speech texts will say the parts of the speech with the most impact are the introduction and the conclusion. If you structure it properly, that is true. The most accurate way to put it, though, is that the greatest impact comes from the first thing the audience hears from you and the last thing. Make sure the last thing they hear is something you want them to remember.

photo credit: Question mark, by Horia Varlan

Over the 20 years I have been at my college, there have been three “eras” of teaching at a particular branch campus. The first was soon after I came to the college, over 15 years ago. The branch campus at the time was housed in a former elementary school. Though it had been upgraded for use by adult learners and had the generous support of the community, it still “felt” like an elementary school. That, coupled with the fact that most of the students had gone to high school together, gave classes there a particular challenge.

One class in particular illustrates the challenge. They treated classes (or at least my class) as if it were grade 13–cutting up in class, passing notes, even bullying the same kids who had been bullied in high school. One miscreant even put on a rubber Halloween mask while I was lecturing. I have no patience for people who have no investment in their own learning, and refused to teach at that campus again for a long time. I actually drove right by that campus to get to the college’s main campus 20 miles further away.

The second era began about 5 years ago, when for a number of reasons I needed to get classes closer to home. In the intervening decade, with changes to the job market and a generational shift, students were more serious and I was more skilled in classroom management. There were fewer miscreants, and those few didn’t last long in my classes. We still had the elementary school “feel” to contend with, though.

The effect became obvious during the third (and current) era, when we had the tremendous boost of moving to a new campus. This one, too, had tremendous community support, but the major difference was that it was built with the intention of using it for college classes.

I don’t think my skills increased much from one year to the next, and I don’t think the population changed that much, but in the new building everything seems different. Students are more serious, more focused on their own learning, and I don’t have to work at classroom management so much. In fact, the classes feel the way I believe a college class should: we’re all adults working together to help students achieve their goals.

I would like to think it’s because I’m so good, but I really think the surroundings have made the difference–it fosters the mindset that lets that level of learning take place.

Speaker can exercise only so much control over the physical environment. That makes it even more important that you exercise the control you do have. Much of this is just common sense–show up well ahead of speaking time and check to make sure the setting works. In a future post, we’ll consider some of the specific items to control, if you can.

Image credit: photo credit: ShardsOfBlue

photo credit: she always was the softest thing

Lisa Petrelli understands building on the strengths of introversion, and she also understands networking. She used her own introversion as the foundation for a successful run to the CEO’s chair and authored The Introvert’s Guide to Success in Business and Leadership. Rather than viewing introversion as a barrier to networking, she found ways to leverage it.

She gives good advice in An Introvert’s Guide to Networking, and I want to give a little tweak to that advice for speakers.

Among her excellent advice is this:

Generally speaking, business events — and particularly networking events that require engaging with groups — are demanding for introverts. An antidote to this, I learned, is to seek out conversations with one individual at a time. When I approach events this way I have more productive conversations and form better business relationships — and I’m less drained by the experience.

I think she’s right about networking events. This is a good place to distinguish between how we use introversion/extroversion in everyday language and how psychologists use the term. Introverted doesn’t mean “shy.” It means someone who gets their energy recharged by being alone with their thoughts, and who prefers to form their thoughts before speaking. Extroverts recharge by getting around other people, and form their thoughts by speaking.

Introverts might conclude from this advice that speaking professionally isn’t a good idea. It seems antithetical to “one individual at a time” and having challenges engaging with groups.

But my experience has been that some of the best speakers are introverted. They (and I, since I’m an introvert myself) are more comfortable on stage presenting a conversation they’ve planned for. The most nerve-wracking part of such events for us introverts is the socializing before and after the speech.

So in addition to Petrelli’s advice (did I mention I think it’s excellent?), I would make these suggestions for introverts who are considering speaking for whatever reason:

1. Go ahead and do it! Introverts experience no more stage fright than do extroverts. In fact, once we get past the stage that is really fear of the unknown, we probably experience less stage fright (although extroverts may be better at channeling the adrenaline into delivery).
2. Take advantage of your introversion to strengthen your speaking. Introverts draw their energy from solitude and the inner world of ideas. Use that to form your ideas into expression and test the expression solidly. You’ll take confidence in your preparation, and your audiences will benefit.
3. Don’t skip the socializing before and after your speech. Those times are really as much a part of your presentation as the stage time. Connect with audience members to help them relate to you and therefore remember your ideas. Have one conversation at a time, though–Petrelli’s networking advice comes into play strongly in this situation as well. Your conversations may be brief, but make each one significant.
4. Get some alone time before and after the event. Introverts can be as social and outgoing as anyone else, but will be exhausted by it. Don’t ignore the audience before or after the event, of course, but carve out a half hour, if you can, to gather your thoughts before joining them, and be sure to allow wind-down time after you’ve shaken that last hand.
5. The solitude that comes with travel and being alone in a hotel room challenges extroverts. Introverted speakers can thrive under these conditions. It’s part of the speaking career anyway–put it to work for you.

Everyone can build on whatever strengths they have without having to try to change their basic nature. Introverts have some tremendous advantages as speakers. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to make use of those advantages.

Esher Sketch photo credit: Wild Guru Larry

In Flipped classrooms hold implications for communication (part 1), we talked about an experiment I’m conducting this term, and explored the background a bit. In this part, let’s explore some of the advantages of the flip, especially for students.

Inside out

There are certain advantages for students getting “lecture” material outside of class via reading or podcasts (audio or video). I have tried to follow my own guidelines and speak rather than lecture, and I think it works in the way intended. I contend that “out loud” excels at giving the “big picture,” the context into which the details fit, making them more understandable because the audience sees the pattern, whereas print excels at explaining and mastering detail.

A skilled writer can show the big picture, and a skilled speaker can get detail across memorably, but neither are easy. Most of the time, why not simply focus on strengths? Give an audience a handout, a white paper, a book, etc., to master the detail, and use speaking to give the big picture.

Think about when you’ve been on the receiving end. Have you ever had a history teacher flood you with dates and names and wars and wound up simply empty? Have you ever gotten so lost in the details of a book chapter, you couldn’t find your way through? Most academic conferences, and most business reports, would improve fivefold from this simple realization.

A number of communication problems result from trying to meld the two rather than have them work in partnership. The “slideument” is one. This is the attempt to make your slideshow both support your speech (as it should) and act as a handout (which it should not). I’ll have more to say about slideuments later. Another such problem is the typical lecture, which attempts to replicate written material out loud. As we saw in Part 1, there are good historical reasons for this, but those reasons no longer apply.

A problem that concerns me about speaking vs. lecturing, however, is the possibility of different classes getting different material. Since I’m not reading out loud, it’s easier to leave something out for a given class. That’s fine and appropriate for a speaker, but it makes it difficult to test over later–and testing remain part of most classroom experiences.

Since a podcast records material once for playback multiple times, I can ensure that every student gets the same material. It’s not ideal for speaking (vs. lecturing) since it’s one-way. With no audience to give feedback, the delivery can get wooden (like a lecture), and there is no opportunity to adapt the material based on audience response. Even if I record a live talk to a class, it will target the live audience without necessarily providing what later “audiences” need.

It requires the same skills as a radio announcer, in fact–the ability to sound conversational even when the “announcer” can’t see or hear the audience.

I’ve been in radio, too, and although I don’t claim expertise on this, it seems easier to me to develop the announcers ability than the effective “reading out loud” ability, even though both may involve speaking a script out loud. Maybe it’s a matter of mind set. Courses in writing for broadcast emphasize the difference in writing for the ear and writing for print, and I suspect most academics simply write for print.

In any case, audio or video podcasts can provide consistency, as well as the opportunity to rewind, and so the advantages may outweigh the disadvantages.

Students also have more opportunity to use the material in the way that best fits their own learning styles. The more visually-oriented can watch a video version, complete with PowerPoint slides (if they’re so inclined). It is trivial to extract an audio track for students who either are more auditory in learning style or prefer to throw the file on an iPod for listening to as they travel. (I’ll post separately about problems and opportunities in listening to academic stuff while driving.) And there are at least a couple of ways to reduce either video or audio to text for those who prefer to read.

These advantages enable students to “get” the material more effectively and efficiently.

Outside in

Bringing the “homework” into the classroom has advantages beyond saving time for students outside class–a real consideration, since other approaches sometimes lead students to complain about an increased workload. Here’s the main advantage: some questions only come up when you’re actively working on a project or a problem–questions you don’t think to ask when you’re reading or hearing about how to do it rather than doing it.

Speech classes have always involved actually giving speeches, but much of the preparation has happened outside the classroom–we only see the “final result” in the classroom. That means that, often, students encounter their real questions at 2 a.m., when no one else is available.

The Web has helped with this somewhat, as long as the student works enough ahead of deadline to benefit. For instance, if I’m working on an informative speech about Shakespeare at 2 a.m. and confront for the first time the idea that Shakespeare may not have written the materials attributed to him, I may have trouble finding further sources (or, at least, credible ones). I can post something in the course’s Web-based “Help!” topic, but I won’t get much response until a more reasonable hour. If I still have at least a couple of days before I give my speech, no problem.

If it’s due in six hours, though, I have a problem.

By flipping the “homework” inside the classroom, I (the hypothetical student) will be working on this at 9 a.m. along with my peers. I can ask the question out loud and get an immediate response, perhaps interact with my professor about what I’ve discovered, and (depending on the plan for the rest of the period) might even be able to run over to the library for some directed help.

It doesn’t have to be “homework,” of course, but since the pure information portion of the class is gotten outside the classroom, more time can be spent inside the classroom on application.

Speech classes have always been a little more oriented this direction than, say, a history class anyway, since so much of our class time is devoted to giving speeches. Therefore, it should be relatively easy to implement. We’ll see.

photo credit: MichaelLaMartin

I’m trying an experiment this semester in the college classes I teach. In various circles it’s called a “flipped” or an “inverted” classroom, a term I’m not completely comfortable with, but it’s a handy term at the moment.

While relatively new, it is rooted in ideas and practices that are not, and it seems to me to be good communication practice, recognizing the strengths of various forms and building on them.

The flipping background

A flipped (or inverted) class swaps out what goes on in the classroom and what goes on outside the classroom.

Traditionally, since the Middle Ages students listen to a professor lecture in class, and do application work (otherwise called “homework”) outside class. Reading could fall into either category.

Almost everyone has heard that the lecture is passé, exemplified in the now-cliché, “Be the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage.” I’ve taken a related approach, demonstrated in workshops I’ve done for teachers around the theme, “Stop Lecturing and Start Speaking.” When you want to master detail, you do better to work with the information in written form. When you want the big picture, “out loud” excels. That partly has to do with the way we process information, and also with the interactive nature of “out loud.”

The problem with the traditional lecture is that it’s an out loud medium that tries to replicate reading. The Wikipedia article on Lecture points to this historic truth: at a time when books were very expensive and very scarce, lecturing was the cheapest, easiest way of reproducing something that someone had written. Lecturers read manuscripts or notes out loud, and students copied onto paper what the lecturers said.

Nowadays, written words can be produced pretty much for free, thanks to the Web. Yet, our teaching methods still tend toward the lecture under the pressure of time constraints and the need to “cover the material” efficiently.

Proponents of active learning strategies point out that students retain very little from the lecture anyway, and so it’s better to cover less material while learning it more thoroughly.

Both camps have valid points and concerns It’s understandable that we teachers get caught in an “either-or” mind set on this issue, but the concept of the flipped classroom transcends it.

The term itself originated from popular reporting of an evolving approach to education. Several teachers seem to have begun experimenting with it at about the same time, only later to find common ground.

Aaron Sams, often credited along with Jonathan Bergmann as one of the originators of the approach, has written about how it started and what it means in “The Flipped Class: Shedding light on the confusion, critique, and hype.” The original article stirred enough controversy that Bergmann and Sams wrote a followup entitled “How the Flipped Classroom Is Radically Transforming Learning.” Along the way, popular writer Dan Pink has covered the concept, and Salman Khan‘s mention of it in a TED talk caused interest to explode.

I might not have noticed it all that much since they were mostly talking about high school teaching, which in many ways differs from higher education in methodology. But then I stumbled across an article on NPR that talked about using it in a college physics course, and another article about a college teacher using the approach to teach video production technology.

It’s really a natural for a college classroom, where students can be expected to take more responsibility for their own learning. It seems to me a possibly best combination of active learning and “covering the material.”

Next post, we’ll look at exactly how it works, and how I anticipate it playing out this term.

My daughter

Forgive me if this gets too personal. It’s just that we are just about 18 hours away from major surgery on my special needs daughter, and I need to get some community support. There are a lot of “on the other hands” here. It is major surgery. On the other hand, it’s not uncommon (scoliosis surgery), and the doctors have done a lot of them. On the other hand, Hannah has medical issues that no one else has ever seen before. In the best of circumstances, unforeseen things happen. In these circumstances “foreseen” doesn’t mean much anyway.

Bottom line: I’m scared. I’m at work, and I’m getting my work done (and doing a good job of it, I might add), but every once in awhile the freakout wells up and it’s all I can do to contain it.

So whatever your spiritual bent might be, please, for Hannah and for us who will have to wait an unbearable few hours tomorrow, offer a prayer, chant, light a candle, sacrifice a chicken, meditate, sing, whirl, talk to your spirit guide, send out good thoughts, offer metta, or whatever it is you do. I think support in any form has no downside.

Please excuse me now–I need to go someplace quiet for a few minutes.

photo credit: HonestReporting.com

It’s easy to assume college students have social media all figured out. Experience shows, though, that while many are savvy about Facebook, they may not realize they need to build a social media presence in other avenues before graduation rather than after. Sue Murphy notes in her article Social Media Success Tips for Students two particular areas that seriously need attention while a student is still in school but looking to the outside world.

Many students believe they don’t need to worry about getting their profiles up on LinkedIN until after they graduate. But nothing could be further from the truth. You need to get on there. Now. LinkedIN is one of the best places to connect with the kind of companies and people you want to eventually end up working for. And the only way you’ll be able to find and connect with them is to start building your profile there.

She also builds a case for starting a blog–and she’s not talking about a chatty personal journal you share with the world.

The only thing I wish she had commented on that she didn’t: Twitter. Though Twitter gets a lot of media attention, it still lags in number of users (38.44 million unique visitors in November, vs. 162.85 million for Facebook according to Compete.com), and of course it is used quite differently. Nevertheless, its public nature (Twitter users can set their streams so that only followers can see it, but that’s very much the exception; otherwise, streams are completely public) and the difficulty of purging posts means that students should consider establishing an identity for the long-term in Twitter as well.

At least one former student has done a good job of doing so, and I think it likely contributed to his snagging a job he really likes. (Although Twitter streams are public, I’m not going to mention his unless he tells me it’s OK to do so. Maybe this post will get updated with his Twitter name later.)

EDIT: Got permission! Will Webb was in my public speaking class a couple of years ago, and even at that time was building a business. He has since moved onto the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is now doing an internship in Delaware that really excites him. His Twitter stream isn’t just business–you get a sense of his personality too, which is good. But I’ve been following Will for some time now, back before he graduated, and I can attest that he didn’t post things he needed to find later and delete. (Some other former students are really going to have to do a lot of that unless they go to work in product testing for Jack Daniels.) It wasn’t the major thing that helped him get the internship or promote his business, but it certainly fit those efforts.

In any case, check out the advice from Suze. Are you a student? What are you doing with social media? Use the comments to, well, comment.

[Note: cross-posted at my academic blog.]