Presenting Effectively Summer Series

How often have you zoned out in a presentation?

If you can’t pay attention to the presentation, you can’t retain the information. What would have made those presentations—what would make your presentations—memorable, influential, and successful?

Rethinking Presentations will show you how to use structure, visuals, and stories to make memorable presentations. You will rethink how you have been developing slides and walk away with a step-by-step plan for creating impactful presentations. With your new skills, you will use outlines and storyboards to ensure your slides are not filled with mind-numbing text. Come to this session and leave with the expertise to plan your next presentation and never fall into the same pitfalls most presenters do ever again.

Attendees will:

• Discover how to cater to your audience’s working memory
• Learn how zoning out is rampant in presentations and how to prevent it
• Hear why stories are so influential and persuasive and how you can use science to ensure your story is heard
• Learn how to implement effective visuals that will be more memorable for audience members

Do you struggle with how to make your materials more professional?

Do you wish you had a guidebook on how to make your social media, white paper, diagrams, or presentations look more polished? This session will walk you through the psychology of graphic design and the graphic design principles that everyone can implement.

Learn what graphs are easiest for people to comprehend and learn how to use this to your advantage. Practice putting your design skills to the test with the breakout exercises and learn some insider tips from a graphic designer-turned-science-communicator to make your presentation shine.

This webinar is designed so that anyone can walk away understanding how to apply basic visual communication guidelines to their next presentation. Participants will receive tips, tricks, and tools for their next presentation. Designing for Non-Designers builds on the material discussed in Deconstructing Presentations (or Beyond Lecturing). While we encourage you to attend Deconstructing (or Beyond Lecturing) before Designing for Non-Designers, you do not need to attend one to understand the other.

Attendees will:

• Learn how the visual language is like any other language
• Discover the basic rules of grammar and syntax in visual language
• Apply visual rules to sample slides to make them more memorable
• Learn how to direct your audience's eyes to enhance learning instead of distracting
  

You understand the theory of how to make better slides, now learn how to apply it in PowerPoint using advanced tools!

Now that you've learned you shouldn't have too much text on a slide, and you should include visuals, you're ready to start making better slides in PowerPoint. However, many of us still struggle to apply those principles when it comes to our own presentation.

People often ask:

• How do I make my presentation look good?
• How do I make my slides look professional and more visually engaging?
• How do I take the theory discussed in Rethinking Presentations and Redesigning Presentations and turn it into practice?

This hands-on PowerPoint lab will walk you through how to apply theories and techniques to slides. Part Three in Danielle Hennis' workshop series teaches you how to be a graphic designer in training with these easy PowerPoint tips.

Attendees will:

• Learn how to align objects in PowerPoint to make sure the Proximity Effect is being utilized
• Replace images and icons that do not adhere to the Similarity Principle
• Practice highlighting the most important section of a chart or graph
• Make an infographic using only the tools found in PowerPoint
• Learn how the Rule of Thirds can be applied to images to be more appealing
• Practice directing your audiences' eyes to where you want them to look
  

What Is a Story Arc, and How does that relate to my research?

Science and stories are about problem-solving, so why do they seem so separate?

There is sometimes pushback in the scientific/technical community about storytelling, but at their root, science and stories share a lot of similarities. This session will discuss how you can use storytelling ethically in science and how you can elaborate on them with visual stories.

In this session, we will review common storytelling structures, how you can use them in a technical presentation, and practice with your own presentation.

We will cover how you can ideate and get to the root of your presentation, which might be different than you originally thought, and we’ll discuss how you can use that in a visual or verbal story.

We will also cover how you can use analogies and metaphors instead of stories and how to achieve the ultimate goal: to connect with your audience.

Attendees will:

• Be given examples of the different story structures and apply these with their own presentation.
• Brainstorm and answer questions to help ideate stories within their topic that they might not have been aware of
• Learn why stories are powerful, and how they can be used to connect with their audience
• Apply these principles to their upcoming presentation.