Teaching the Assertion-Evidence Design of Presentation Slides

Teaching Slides and Exercises Teaching Slides, 2011 (ppt) Before-and-After Examples (ppt) Exercises on Slide Design (pdf) Research on Slide Design Tech Comm (November 2009) Tech Comm (November 2009) Tech Comm (May 2006) Tech Comm (November 2005) Assertion-Evidence Template: PowerPoint Template

This web page presents resources for instructors on teaching the assertion-evidence design for presentation slides that is described on the following web-site. Three other references that document this slide design are a November 2005 article in Technical Communication, chapter 4 of The Craft of Scientific Presentations, and Beyond Bullet Points. Instructors are welcome to use the resources on this web-site in their teaching as long as they give credit to the original sources. Resources for teaching the assertion-evidence design include teaching slides to introduce the design, in-class exercises, model slides, and a special PowerPoint template. Instructors are also welcome to submit both questions about the design and resources for other instructors to use. In addition to teaching resources, this web page also presents a listing of instructors who teach the design and a list of frequently asked questions pertaining to the design. Assertion-Evidence Slides: Students Penn State (Atamturkur) Clemson University (Fishel) University of Illinois (Dibbern) Los Alamos Dynamics School (Simmers) University of Oslo (Aspmo) Assertion-Evidence Slides: Professionals United States Geological Survey (Bekins) Army Research Laboratory (Rochester) Norwegian Institute for Air Research (Laupsa) Scandpower Petroleum Technology (Holmås) Simula Research Laboratory (Bruaset)

Frequently Asked Questions If you have a question or comment on one of the answers given below, please contact the editor of this web-site. When is it appropriate to use the assertion-evidence design in engineering and scientific presentations? First, slides should be appropriate for the presentation. A common criticism of presentation slides is that slides are used for presentations (or portions of presentations) in which no visual aid would be appropriate. Second, the success of the presentation should depend on the audience understanding the content. Generally, when engineers and scientists use this design, they report receiving more questions than if they had used the traditional topic-subtopic design. The reason is that the audience better understands the content. Yet a third criterion for using the assertion-evidence design is that the slides should be a visual aid for the audience rather than a visual aid for the speaker. One allure of a traditional PowerPoint slide is that it allows presenters to project their "talking points." The assertion-evidence design, on the other hand, presents only the key assertions of the talk, forcing the speaker to know the content well enough that he or she can speak from the assertions and the supporting visual evidence. Why does not a period follow the sentence-assertion headline? The presenter certainly could place a period after the sentence-assertion headline, but most presenters using the design follow the billboard convention of punctuation. That is, since each sentence is a stand-alone text block, and not part of a paragraph, the period has no function. Therefore, the period is dropped for the sake of simplicity. Why is the title slide treated differently? In other words, why not have a sentence-assertion headline on this slide? The presenter could format the title slide to have a title slide and in fact Larry Gottlieb and a few others teach that style. In their teachings, they advocate the title slide having essentially the same sentence headline as the conclusion slide. The reason that most people do not teach this practice is that it is too radical for most learners. Also, learners have to be careful about stating the main conclusion up front (tell then what you're going to tell them) when the news is negative or when the audience just is not prepared for that result.

Instructors of Assertion-Evidence Design If you are an instructor teaching the assertion-evidence slide design and would like to be listed here, please contact the editor of this web-site. Name Ahlers, Sharon Alley, Michael Atkinson, Cliff Bailey, Carol Brantley, William A. Breindel, Harlan Curtis, Cody Davies, Angela Doumont, Jean-luc Felix, Jesse Finklestein, Ellen Gilbert, Rick Gottlieb, Larry Hart, Hillary Heath, Peter Jennings, Ann Johnson, Carol Kasarda, Mary Krages, Kathryn Leedom, Bob Lerner, Neal Linsky, Elisa Marshall, Melissa Mayer, Robert J. McPherson, Cynthia Moore, Christy Nathans-Kelly, Traci M. Neeley, Kathryn A. Nicometo, Christine G. Pierrakos, Olga Podur, Justin Ramgopal, Art Randall, D'Arcy Schreiber, Madeline Sharp, Julie E. Srajek, Leslie C. Taylor, Summer Wolfe, Christine Wojcik, Edward Wolfe, Joanna Yale, Robert Institution Cornell University Pennsylvania State University Sociable Media Virginia Tech Univ. of Louisville MIT Oregon Health and Science University UNC Charlotte Principiæ Wells International School, Bangkok EllenFinklestein.com, PowerSpeaking, Inc. Lawrence Livermore National Lab Univ. of Texas at Austin Prof. and Engr. Communication Univ. of Houston-Downtown New Jersey Institute of Technology Virginia Tech Oregon Health and Science University Northrop Grumman MIT Polytechnic University Pennsylvania State University Univ. of Puerto Rico at Aguadilla Univ. of Alabama at Huntsville Univ. of Texas at Austin Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Univ. of Virginia Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Virginia Tech York University IIMK (India) Univ. of Texas at Austin Virginia Tech Vanderbilt University Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Clemson University LSU Medical School Ohio University Lancaster Univ. of Louisville University of Dallas

Assertion-Evidence Slides: Home

Web Article: Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides

References