science of fail

Presentations in their current form fail. This failure is due to construction and delivery. They are the result of a failure to understand psychological principles.

 

Hysteron proteron

The slideument

Can you send me your presentation please?

Chicken or egg?

Hypnotised, like a chicken

 

 

 

Your powerpoint is not the presentation

hugely complex slide with diagram and data graph supported by massive amount of unreadable text

Your PowerPoint is not the presentation. If you believe that it is, then you have entirely missed the point of every single presentation you have ever “delivered” or “received”. You are not alone in this erroneous belief but you are…
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One more time…

one more time...

One more time… please stop using bullet points and text in presentations. Ask any audience member what they hate most about presentations and you will receive the same answer. There is an overwhelming volume of research data on why text…
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Tell me why

tell me why

Tell me why people believe that reading out huge lists of facts to a passive audience is effective communication? Tell me why we put huge lists of facts on our slides? Tell me why, when we present, we look at…
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What is wrong with presentations?

What is wrong with presentations? Presentations as they are currently delivered, fail. There is little debate on the matter. Empirical research in communication suffers from many confounding factors and becomes almost impossible to generalise. Reflection highlights, embarrassingly, the fact though…
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Bloom’s taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy is a classification of thinking, moving though six layers of complexity frequently described as a staircase from lower to higher ordered thinking. Initially proposed in 1954 and revised in 2001 it offers a framework to consider teaching and…
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Listening is not learning

listening is not learning

Listening is not learning. The impact of The Matrix thought that reading is not teaching recently struck me as having an important and essential corollary; listening is not learning. This has clear implications for the presenter in their construction of…
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information is not knowledge

information is not knowledge

Information is not knowledge. Sitting in a library does not make you clever. Pouring water over your head does not satisfy a thirst. Reading out a ton of information in a presentation does not make the audience cleverer. It may…
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doing it wrong

doing it wrong

You are doing it wrong if you think a presentation is about the transmission of a large quantity of information. You are doing it wrong if you think the presentation is a script or a handout. You are doing it…
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The Matrix

the matrix

The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction film in which humans experience a world that is not real. Morpheus explains to Neo that his perception of the world is computer simulated and the true world is The Matrix. He explains…
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only one way to present?

one way

A recent interchange on twitter was sullied by one commenter using the phrase “presentation gestapo”. This abuse was intended to express their disapproval of people who express an opinion on twitter about presentations, an opinion which runs contrary to theirs….
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