Complicated work can lead people to believe that complicated slides are necessary. In truth, the opposite will work better. Keep complicated technical or scientific content simple when on the screen. Here’s a great example.
For a course titles “Computer-Aided Engineering: Applications to Biological Processes,” the student team of Taha Ahmad, Karann Putrevu, Remy Walk, and Cher (Xuexiang) Zhang performed some amazing work for their project titled Optimization of reversible electroporation for the destruction of an irregular brain tumor. When it came time to showcase their work, they worked hard to make the findings accessible in an efficient manner.
This example shows one of their typical slides that follows our recommended assertion+evidence approach. There is a complete thought at the top, with powerful visual information in the center acreage.
Next, let’s look at how the team deployed the notes to their advantage. During the talk, the slide does just what it needs to do: support the speaker. Then, because notes are used, the slide deck can go on to provide help and information later because of the notes.
Thinking carefully about what it *is* that your audience needs at the moment of the presentation versus what information they might need in two or three months is a key shift that you should make. Using notes allows your slide deck to offload wordiness while supporting the larger technical endeavor.
Permission to use this slide example was granted from the authoring team. Reports from this class (not slides) can be found here, starting in 1999: http://4530.bee.cornell.edu/ .
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