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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.
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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
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
Randall, D'Arcy
Schreiber, Madeline
Sharp, Julie E.
Srajek, Leslie C.
Taylor, Summer
Wolfe, Joanna
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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
PowerSpeaking, Inc.
Lawrence Livermore National Lab
Univ. of Texas at Austin
HAMK Univ. of Applied Sciences
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
Univ. of Texas at Austin
Virginia Tech
Vanderbilt University
Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Clemson University
Univ. of Louisville
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