All presentations are made up of multiple messages:
- The story message: what you say
- The spoken message: how you say it
- The visual message: what you show
It is impossible to say which message is the most important. A great story message loses its power if it is spoken poorly. A great spoken message seems hollow if there is no story behind it. The visual message must enhance the story message and match the pacing of the spoken message. If the visual message fails in those areas, it distracts the audience and they fail to engage with the story or spoken messages.
Throughout the semester, we have had practice presentations with a focus on these different messages. In the final presentation of the class, student groups put together all that they had learned into one final presentation devoted to one of the four topics from the 2023 OIDAI SDGs Initiative.
While practice is a necessary task to improve a specific presentation, to improve as a presenter it is also important to pay attention to any presentation with a critical eye. After all, if you can recognize what works (or doesn’t work) in a presentation, you can focus on those aspects when making your next presentation.
One of the messages I tried to make clear to students was that as a presenter, the goal is always to make the next presentation better than the last. Students made a total of 5 presentations in this class, and with no exceptions, they got better and better. I look forward to what they create in future classes.