You know when you get that “been there, done that” feeling? Now try replicating that 15 times, or 40 – or perhaps even 60 or 70 times! Now that feeling metamorphoses into excruciating pain.
I have had that experience – and if you’re completely honest, so have you, at least if you’re a teacher. Yes, I’m talking about the agony of sitting through wearisome student presentations with no end in sight.
Today, we will take a look at presentations and how storytelling helps in making a proposal better and less boring.
We want our students to learn presentation skills, if not master it like the late Steve Jobs, because it is a broadly applicable professional skill, and we’ve heard enough gripe from employers and the likes about the dire lack of communication skills in interviews or at the workplace.
So sure, we make presentation a key element in our assessment of the syllabus, and we prep our students for it – or not, since teachers for some reason have this uncanny knack of assuming students would know exactly how to go about doing a presentation!
But let’s just work on the premise that we’ve sufficiently communicated to the students the nuances in vocal delivery and body language, and exposed them to slide design. Undoubtedly we would issue them this one caveat surrounding slide design – do not copy and paste from research sources, or put chunks of text into your slides.
Use bullet points, we urge them. Yes, bullet points are quintessential. After all, that’s what we were taught ourselves, what we believe to be effective, and what we practise in our own classroom presentations
Don’t get me wrong. I am by no means opposed to bullet points per se. The listing of information or content, using mainly keywords and key phrases, has its uses, granted.
Just not in a presentation. Here bullet points serve as a metaphor for data dump, or information overload, where the presenter goes on and on, rolling out one slide after another, long after the audience stops paying her any attention.
But what’s the big deal about it? Why do we find bullet-pointed displays so revolting? Well, humans tend to process images faster than words – in fact, it’s estimated that visual processing takes up approximately 20% of the cortex.
It is therefore better to use visuals instead of bullet points on your slides as you want people to be engaged in what you’re presenting.
Visual aids also help you explain material more logically, making presenting and learning simpler for you and your audience.
They also assist to offer diversity to your presentation, which keeps the audience engaged. If the audience is more interested and understands what you’re saying, they’re more likely to be convinced.
Another visual aid that helps in making presentations better are icons. Icons are graphic representations of what you’re trying to say.
As a result, it’s only natural to employ them wherever possible. Because icons provide value to your text, your audience will be able to quickly comprehend and classify the information offered with symbols.
There are several reasons why presentation storytelling is so effective. One of the most important reasons is that a strong story will appeal to your audience’s emotions, allowing them to relate to and sympathise with the message you’re attempting to express far more than facts and statistics alone.
Humans have a proclivity to be led by their feelings. As a result, creating a strong narrative to get into your audience’s emotions is a wonderful approach for enticing action. Moreover, you can utilise it in any presentation, regardless of how dry the data or material you’re providing is.
Presentation storytelling can help the audience remember what you have shared after the session is over. One of the most successful presenting strategies is to weave a narrative into your deck.
Ensure that your time is not wasted and that your message is remembered by your audience. It was found that stories are recalled up to 22 times more than facts alone.
Instead of continuing to dump data, go for a more dynamic format and focus on not only informing, but inspiring and entertaining as well. This is where storytelling combined with visuals can work in tandem with factual information.
Almost no one is impervious to a captivating story. Appeal to the human senses and present information in a humanising, meaningful way. If the story can be seen as well as heard, all the better. Plan your lesson and outline a compelling story that delivers the content and speaks to the students.
Here are some ways you can incorporate storytelling into your presentation:
Begin by explaining life as it is known to the audience. Because you’re explaining what they already know, people should nod their heads in agreement. This strengthens your relationship with them and allows them to hear your suggestions for improvement.
After this, slowly introduce what your topic of discussion is going to be on.
Now that you’ve demonstrated what the problem is, continue to consider the contrast between the present and what the future could hold. The audience will find the prospective future more enticing as you bounce back and forth between what is and what could be.
You want a powerful call to action, and you want to show the audience the advantages of adopting your ideas. This communicates to the audience that your presentation will benefit everyone.
We all took a leap of faith with full online classes during this pandemic, and have, for the most part, come out trumps. We should do the same with our presentations. It’s time to revisit how we present information to our students, and motivate them to do the same when they present to us.
Make each and every one of your presentations count.
by Wan Laili Ibrahim
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