soa+d research manual - School of Architecture and Design, KMUTT

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28 REsEARch NOTEs its own problems and can lead to presentations that appear rushed, shallow and, consequently, do not engage the audience. The second also summarises the paper but does so in a more flexible and open way. usually, you already have a distilled and user-friendly version of your paper. Where is it? in your paper: the introduction. your introduction summarises your research and outlines your argument/ findings. Whilst it is too short to simply read it (see below), it can serve as a useful framework within which other material can be included to produce a more balanced presentation. inexperienced researchers do neither, they attempt to say everything, speak as quickly as possible, skip through large chunks of their eighty or more slides and when told to finish are mid way through their introduction. Don’t go there, it’s not pretty for presenter and audience alike. bearing these comments in mind, the question still remains: but what do i leave out? Whilst there is no off-the-shelf answer to this a rule-of-thumb might be useful: prioritise and allocate time. firstly, prioritise your material: what can you not do without, which parts of the paper can be put to one side? for example, in a twenty minute presentation there is little time to dwell on the review of literature. far better to simply establish your theoretical/ philosophical framework and mention key sources than go into great detail. if anyone in your audience wishes to question you about this they can do so in the Q and A session. Once you have decided what to include allocate rough time percentages to each component. STRUCTURE & RHETORIC (OR THE RHETORIC OF STRUCTURE) The film director jean-luc godard famously noted that every movie has a beginning, a middle and an end, but, “not necessarily in that order”. The same goes for your presentation. Does it follow the same conventional pattern mentioned already above—introduction, methods, findings, discussion, for example—or do you begin with your findings, move back to your methods and conclude with a discussion. The issue here is one of rhetoric. Rhetoric is an Aristotelean concept that simply means the art of persuasive argumentation. Every presentation is an argument (an argument in favour of the argument expounded in your favour). The various presentational choices you make will all impact on how well you convince your audience of the relevance and rigor of your inquiry. for example, decisions about structure and order are rhetorical. Decisions about presentational media (see below) are rhetorical. Decisions about the design of slides if you use them— typographic treatment, colour, animation—are rhetorical. Decisions about the relative formality of your speech are rhetorical. Decisions about how you dress are rhetorical. in making these decisions, much depends on what you want to achieve with the presentation, what you want to communicate about yourself and the nature and expectations of your audience. for example, it has become a convention in certain conferences for male presenters to wear a suit and tie. A decision not to follow convention might be seen as transgressive or a statement of difference. in either case the issue at stake is one of presentation of self. in Asian countries, institutional image often trumps personal expression, hence the tendency to follow Western conventions of formal dress. in the West itself, a far greater latitude is given and there is even a certain expectation that architects, designers and artists will both flout conventions and express individuality through their self presentation (the architect’s bow tie?). At a recent design science conference i attended every key note speaker dressed conventionally bar one. The main keynote presenter—the celebrated veteran cognitive scientist Donald Norman—delivered his speech wearing old jeans, sneakers and an open neck shirt. PRESENTATIONAL ERGONOMICS Nevertheless, some of the issues mentioned above are not simply rhetorical but ergonomic. you can’t persuade someone of the merits of your argument if they can’t read your text because it is too small, set in a blackletter gothic typeface or its colour merges into the background. Every formal issue for you is always a perceptual issue for your audience. That means a careful consideration of the needs of your audience when making choices about how you communicate your ideas. This is true of each medium that you use. you will, for example, need to make sure your audience can hear what you are saying when you deliver your presentation. however, it is particularly important that your visual material—text and image and other media—are appropriately formatted for the perceptual needs of your audience. how? There are now plenty of books offering career salvation through Powerpoint presentation. some of these offer good advice. There are also numerous standards on offer that advise about issues of legibility and accessibility. i would
suggest, however, that you fall back on your professional skills as designers, artists, communicators and educators. The presentation is like a mini-lecture. Deploy the same techniques you would use to attract, sustain the interest of and inform your students and things should go well. One particular issue that might be worth thinking through, however, is the use of redundancy to increase comprehension. Redundancy simply means making the same (or similar) point in multiple ways at the same time using different sensory channels; reading and listening, for example. The theory is that redundantly coded messages are more effective because a failure to get one part of them is compensated for by another. many road signs, for example, make redundant use of colour, shape, images and words to reinforce their message. The use of spoken and visible language (projected text) is, of course common in presentations. some researchers argue, however, that this strategy is particularly important for multi-lingual audiences who may be more proficient in reading that listening (or vice versa). Whatever the case, there is something to be said for using more text than bullet points at times like these. give the audience something to read or see whilst they listen. PRESENTATIONAL MEDIA These days there is little choice here. most conferences expect you to produce a Powerpoint. many require it. is this a good thing? Well, nobody—apart perhaps from bill gates—planned it that way. There is, however, plenty of critical discussion about the malign impact that Powerpoint has had on the way in which we communicate and encounter knowledge. if you are interested you might looks at the musician and artist David byrne’s work that subverts the ideology of Powerpoint whilst celebrating its creative and communicative potential (http://www.davidbyrne. com/art/eeei/) TO READ OR NOT TO READ? i have already alluded to the this challenge above. Put simply, do you prepare a script and read it or adopt a more conversational tone? This is a difficult and sensitive question. On the one hand, a prepared script is, perhaps, the safest way to deliver your presentation. you can draft, preview and hone it prior to the presentation. This can help calm nerves and build confidence. On the other, ‘read’ papers can be extremely dry and, frankly, boring for your audience. On the other, a presentation improvised around your slides is a risk for all but the most experienced presenters. finding a middle way that suits you is essential. REsEARch NOTEs 29 some alternatives. memorise a script. forget it, it’s like reading from the paper only weirder (unless you are a really good performer). memorise the argument and express it in a conversational way on the day. better, but how? 1) go from paper to rough draft of what you want to say. go from there to index cards and from there to the design of your slides. 2) Rough draft the presentation by sketching text and image on index cards (the advantage of both the above is that you can quickly and easily add, subtract, reorder the material.) 3) Again using index cards, prepare a small set (one per slide) that contains bullet points, key words and important phrases. briefly glance at these whilst the audience peruses your slide (the advantage of this is that it builds in pauses to your presentation and gives you and the audience time to think). 4) Design memory aides into the slides. Obvious, that’s what Powerpoint is for. Well yes. but by creatively thinking about how you combine word and image, how you diagram your ideas, you can produce interesting visuals that simultaneously deliver for your audience and support your presentation. ON THE DAY common sense. get there early. load your presentation onto the computer or make sure that the connection to your own works. Try to meet with the session chairperson to introduce yourself and your work. make sure that they know who you are (name, institution, paper title etc.). make sure that your presentation contains contact details front and back. Take your business cards. have some extra copies of the paper to distribute. Present to your audience. make eye contact. Pause. speak clearly. common sense, yes. Easy to do, no.
Page 1: SOA+D RESEARCH MANUAL 2012/13
Page 5 and 6: PREFACE Welcome to the updated vers
Page 7 and 8: it is hardly worth doing. Research
Page 9 and 10: 2.1.6 Additional funding for Englis
Page 11 and 12: 2.8 TRF THAILAND RESEARCH FUND 2.8.
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Page 15 and 16: SOA+D RESEARCH MENTORS sOA+D has ap
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Page 21 and 22: 2 REVIEWING THE LITERATURE INTRODUC
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Page 25 and 26: 4 THE CONFERENCE PAPER WHAT IS A CO
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