Through these varied assignments I’ve gleaned about a half-dozen insights that will be valuable for anyone who has to deliver a presentation from the stage or facilitate a more interactive learning experience. With a little effort on your part, the same content can also inform how you generally communicate with others, particularly when trying to influence decisions being made. I’ll be offering each one of these insights as separate blog posts during the month of May.
#1 Design With the End in Mind
Seems obvious, doesn’t it? And most conference program proposals require you to do this by asking you to share learning outcomes for your session: "At the end of this session, participants will … "
While writing learning outcomes is indeed an initial step of presentation design, thinking of your workshop as the end immediately sends you down a wayward path.
That’s because your session isn’t the end of the learning process. The real learning occurs when participants actually try and apply the information they take from your talk. It’s natural to write learning outcomes that focus on what you hope participants will take away from your session. But your content and session design needs to have an end in mind that is farther out on the horizon.
- How will participants act differently weeks after your presentation?
- What results will they be producing that previously were beyond their capabilities?
- What personal or professional habits or behaviors will they have altered?
- What changes in their work might their colleagues be noticing?
- How might they feel about the work they do or the personal choices they make?
So, yes, the start of good presentation design involves honing your learning outcomes and beginning with the end in mind. Just don’t forget that what usually is thought of as the end is really just the beginning.
4 comments:
What a GREAT post, Jeffrey... Really a slam dunk for me.
I'm looking forward to the other five!
Thanks, Jeff. This is a great post. While it makes such obvious sense, it's not so immediately obvious.
Yes, yes, yes! Begin with the end in mind when you start designing your presentation. If more presenters would do this, they would succeed!
What top three things do you want your audience to remember and put into practice? Three to five main points only. Anymore than that and it becomes a data dump and the audience is lost. Build the rest of the presentation around those three to five points.
When creating those learning objectives (LOs), be careful of using hype and sales words. Create LOs that are measurable. For example, don't say: "After attending this session, you will be able to increase sales." Instead, think of it like this, "After attending this session, you will be able to identify three ways to increase your sales." That's measurable, and an attendee can identify if the LOs were met. Ultimately, it's up to the attendee to implement it.
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