Shifting Focus from Text to Visual in Presentations

A paradigm shift is in the making for catchy presentations. TTSS staff member Linda Putman attended a training program at Arizona State University in May, in order to bring Ball State faculty and staff the latest ideas and tools in creating engaging presentations. Since her return, Linda has shared her enthusiasm about this new way of creating presentations with a number of faculty members during the University Libraries’ Summer Faculty Enhancement Series and the New Faculty Training Program in August.

The idea behind this new technique is to make your slides more attractive to the eye by providing visual cues relating to your topic rather than the traditional bullet points. The communications company who is spearheading this movement, Aspire Communications, claims that the visuals serve two purposes: (a) they act as memory aids in recollection of points made during a presentation; (b) they allow the audience to pay attention to the speaker instead of reading from the slides.

Another dimension to this new wave of presentation technique is linking several presentations together so that you have a whole array of slides available to you and will be able to adapt to the needs of your audience as you are presenting your material. This relational presentation mode outdates the old linear slide presentations and creates a much more dynamic and audience driven environment.

To view the fall schedule of classes offered by the University Libraries, please visit www.bsu.edu/techtrain or call (765) 285-5902.