I can't remember if I posted this rant already.
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I can't remember if I posted this rant already. Somewhere someone is teaching all science students to use the stupidest slide.
The slide says:
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I can't remember if I posted this rant already. Somewhere someone is teaching all science students to use the stupidest slide.
The slide says:
This slide is so useless.
It tells the viewer nothing about the talk they are going to see. We’ve all seen a lot of talks and know that they start with an introduction and end with future directions. Hitting results and conclusions in between.
Since we all know this, you’ve just used up 15 seconds of your talk on something everyone knows. Use this 15 seconds for something more valuable!
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This slide is so useless.
It tells the viewer nothing about the talk they are going to see. We’ve all seen a lot of talks and know that they start with an introduction and end with future directions. Hitting results and conclusions in between.
Since we all know this, you’ve just used up 15 seconds of your talk on something everyone knows. Use this 15 seconds for something more valuable!
For example, this slide.
It contains all of the info in the uninformative slide, but now it's all informative.
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For example, this slide.
It contains all of the info in the uninformative slide, but now it's all informative.
See-
Uniformative->informative -
See-
Uniformative->informativeI really want to know who is giving students the uninformative template without telling them that they are actually supposed to replace the generic bullets words with their own.
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I really want to know who is giving students the uninformative template without telling them that they are actually supposed to replace the generic bullets words with their own.
@MCDuncanLab
In my opinion the same applies to the “headers” showing whether a slide is “introduction”, “methods” or “conclusions”. I’ve frequently seen these in student presentations - but they do not add anything and if they have a progress bar type layout the presentation feels rigid, something to be endured (“are we still at methods?”) rather than enjoyed. -
@MCDuncanLab
In my opinion the same applies to the “headers” showing whether a slide is “introduction”, “methods” or “conclusions”. I’ve frequently seen these in student presentations - but they do not add anything and if they have a progress bar type layout the presentation feels rigid, something to be endured (“are we still at methods?”) rather than enjoyed.Oh progress is way worse...I've never seen that in a talk.
You must interact with students who have been trained by some truly malicious people.
All that effort wasted to do the tracker which does turn the talk into something to be endured.
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I really want to know who is giving students the uninformative template without telling them that they are actually supposed to replace the generic bullets words with their own.
@MCDuncanLab thank you for this thread! At some point in the past, I was told that this was the way to give a talk but being the rebel that I am, I don't follow the advice. I will likely have to teach a class on scientific presentations next year, and I would love to use this example (if you don't mind).
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@MCDuncanLab thank you for this thread! At some point in the past, I was told that this was the way to give a talk but being the rebel that I am, I don't follow the advice. I will likely have to teach a class on scientific presentations next year, and I would love to use this example (if you don't mind).
Please steal this slide.
There is an excellent PowerPoint presentation floating around from the early 2000s about better ppt presentations. I think it was done by a woman at Stanford.
I’ll see if I have a copy to send you.
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Please steal this slide.
There is an excellent PowerPoint presentation floating around from the early 2000s about better ppt presentations. I think it was done by a woman at Stanford.
I’ll see if I have a copy to send you.
@MCDuncanLab thank you!
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@MCDuncanLab thank you for this thread! At some point in the past, I was told that this was the way to give a talk but being the rebel that I am, I don't follow the advice. I will likely have to teach a class on scientific presentations next year, and I would love to use this example (if you don't mind).
@steveroyle @MCDuncanLab recently I started doing the first slide of my talk titled "TL;DR" where I try to tell the essential points of the whole talk in one slide, and telling the audience that they're welcome to go to sleep after this one slide if they want to. Quite a few people have told me they really like it, both those who did subsequently go to sleep, and those who found it useful for framing the rest of the talk. Doing social media threads has actually been really helpful for me, it's shown me that you can usually get the essential message over in very few words.
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@MCDuncanLab thank you!
Dang! I can't believe I found it, and it took a couple of minutes.
It was totally buried Labserver/mara/oldfiles/maraonbioark/maraonbioark/junk
and the title of the presentation was literally 'PowerpointPresentation"(don't ask me why maraonbioark was nested in maraonbioark)
I also sent a useful ppt on tips for Q&A from UCSF.
I used your warwick address from your 2022 elife paper. Let me know if you don't get it.
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@steveroyle @MCDuncanLab recently I started doing the first slide of my talk titled "TL;DR" where I try to tell the essential points of the whole talk in one slide, and telling the audience that they're welcome to go to sleep after this one slide if they want to. Quite a few people have told me they really like it, both those who did subsequently go to sleep, and those who found it useful for framing the rest of the talk. Doing social media threads has actually been really helpful for me, it's shown me that you can usually get the essential message over in very few words.
@neuralreckoning I’ve tried it in the past but I didn't like doing the exposé at the start. I prefer Inspector Morse to Columbo for the same reason! I like telling a story and trying to hold the attention of the audience through the talk. I found after I'd given the punchline away early, I lost interest, let alone the audience. Having said all that, we consume papers this way (with the abstract upfront) so maybe I should try it again. Agree for v short talks tl;dr works well. @MCDuncanLab
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Dang! I can't believe I found it, and it took a couple of minutes.
It was totally buried Labserver/mara/oldfiles/maraonbioark/maraonbioark/junk
and the title of the presentation was literally 'PowerpointPresentation"(don't ask me why maraonbioark was nested in maraonbioark)
I also sent a useful ppt on tips for Q&A from UCSF.
I used your warwick address from your 2022 elife paper. Let me know if you don't get it.
@MCDuncanLab I received it. Thank you so much! I am very impressed that you could dig it up!!
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@MCDuncanLab I received it. Thank you so much! I am very impressed that you could dig it up!!
@steveroyle @MCDuncanLab This sounds useful! @MCDuncanLab would you mind if Steve forwards it to me? He has my email address.
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@MCDuncanLab I received it. Thank you so much! I am very impressed that you could dig it up!!
Well, the only hard part was the title. But since I would NEVER title something powerpoint presentation, it stood out.
When it wasn't in my current teaching folder or any of the teaching folders from previous resets, I figured it was in a junk folder. I just went to the junk folder from the reset when I left UNC, which is where I received the ppt.
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@steveroyle @MCDuncanLab This sounds useful! @MCDuncanLab would you mind if Steve forwards it to me? He has my email address.
Please do!
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@neuralreckoning I’ve tried it in the past but I didn't like doing the exposé at the start. I prefer Inspector Morse to Columbo for the same reason! I like telling a story and trying to hold the attention of the audience through the talk. I found after I'd given the punchline away early, I lost interest, let alone the audience. Having said all that, we consume papers this way (with the abstract upfront) so maybe I should try it again. Agree for v short talks tl;dr works well. @MCDuncanLab
I don't like the full detective mode. Like in the overview, I posted I give a general idea of where I'm going.
Like my current research I'd introduce as Today I'm going to tell you about some new protein interactions important for clathrin mediated traffic and how those might explain a large class of neurodevelopmental disorders.
It lets you know in general where I'm going so you know what to focus on in the intro and early data.
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@neuralreckoning I’ve tried it in the past but I didn't like doing the exposé at the start. I prefer Inspector Morse to Columbo for the same reason! I like telling a story and trying to hold the attention of the audience through the talk. I found after I'd given the punchline away early, I lost interest, let alone the audience. Having said all that, we consume papers this way (with the abstract upfront) so maybe I should try it again. Agree for v short talks tl;dr works well. @MCDuncanLab
@steveroyle @MCDuncanLab the thing that I've found is that no matter how much we think we're telling an exciting detective story, for the audience it's not as exciting as we'd imagine. I think in my whole career I've seen maybe 2 or 3 talks that pulled off the detective story.
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@steveroyle @MCDuncanLab the thing that I've found is that no matter how much we think we're telling an exciting detective story, for the audience it's not as exciting as we'd imagine. I think in my whole career I've seen maybe 2 or 3 talks that pulled off the detective story.
@neuralreckoning @MCDuncanLab Dan, you brute, the audience is spellbound when I give a talk. Simply spellbound. Ha, no, you're probably right. Like Mara says though, setting out where you're going with the talk but not doing the full reveal is my preferred.
