Health Communications in Practice

I think that overall our class 'Brown Bag Symposium' went very well. While a little nervous in anticipation of my own presentation, I was pleasantly surprised with everyone's performance. I think it may be helpful for Sheila to post our powerpoint presentations on Blackboard for those of us who would like to have a copy.

I thought there were many things that went well with the symposium. First, all of the presentations we saw incorporated some type of interaction or media such as webpages, YouTube videos, etc. I also thought the text message exercise Izzybeth did at the beginning of her presentation was very creative. I appreciated the 'Zen' message from our other classmate as well. I definately agree with the concepts from her book encouraging presenters to be clear, concise, and simple. That way, the audience is listening and paying attention to the presenter, and not inundated with muddied and verbose slides. Of course, as Sheila mentioned in class, a bonafide presentation is distinct from a lecture, in which a professor aims to transfer a sizeable quantity of information about a topic that students will need to learn and master. I suppose a presentation should be more entertaining, in a sense; however, I still think lectures also need to be interactive!

Well, I wouldn't be fair and balanced if I didn't also mention some of the aspects of the presentations that did not go so well. I won't name names (I'm sure there were some things that I also could have improved upon!), but I will briefly mention some of the things that I noticed. First, I know that we all get nervous in front of a crowd of people (even if those people are our peers), but speech rate is a hugely important factor for presenters to keep in mind. Whereas speaking too slow makes the presentation seem interminable and tends to lull the audience to sleep, speaking too fast is exceedingly distracting and the nervousness of the presenter makes even my heart race! For that reason, I think that erring on the side of 'too slow' is much better than sprinting through the presentation. Going along with speech rate is voice level. Certainly, it is much more attention-grabbing for a presenter to project her voice than to speak softly. Also, continuing the Zen presentation theme, slides with too many words, too many bullet points, and too small font is both distracting and frustrating. Not only am I squinting to read all of the words, but I struggle to follow along with the presenter as she speaks. I happen to prefer the use of charts/graphs that concisely summarize main points into a neat, easy-to-understand format. Finally, confidence makes all the difference when a presenter strives to catch the attention and engage the participation of the audience. A presenter who speaks like a little mouse and meekly asks the audience a 'discussion question' is not going to elicit a response from them. If the audience perceives the presenter to be shy, withdrawn, or even apologizing in her tone, they are not going to feel at ease to participate. The presenter may blame the audience for being "non-participatory" when really the problem lies in the lack of confidence in the presenter's approach.

I think that as we think about promoting health and educating the public, our presentation style is something to always keep working on, whether we're in a 'Smart' classroom with a fancy powerpoint presentation or in a small dirt floor hut with merely a pointing stick and a paper handout.