Charisma, Content Make For Effective Scientific Presentations

KUDOS AT ACS: Spicing up a presentation on polymer architecture earned rave reviews for Cornell grad student Portia Yarborough. A few hours before her scheduled talk at the American Chemical Society's meeting this fall in Las Vegas, Portia Yarborough rehearsed her presentation for a friend. A chemistry graduate student at Cornell University, Yarborough wanted her talk to be perfect. Practicing, she laid out the slides, spoke slowly, and shared her research results. Her friend's comment: "Boring." What Yarborough had forgotten was enthusiasm. It's a common mistake, communications specialists say. In the worst cases, researchers simply read from transparencies, piling monotone fact upon fact. Another frequent gaffe is information overload. Cramming too much material into a talk, scientists either saunter past the time limit or speak too quickly. Jargon, too, foils many a presentation. And cluttered visuals-such as posters or transparencies-bury main messages in a sea of prose. LEARNED STYLE: "Everyone can learn tricks to improve their presentations," says N.C. State's Robert Anholt. The good news is that you can avoid these pitfalls, according to Robert Anholt, a zoologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and author of Dazzle 'Em With Style (New York, W.H. Freeman and Co., 1994; R.R.H. Anholt, The Scientist, Dec. 12, 1994, page 22). Public speaking isn't a rare talent like a knack for fine music or foreign language. "Speaking well isn't in your genes," Anholt says. "I probably couldn't play the violin beautifully, even with the best teacher. But with a little instruction, everyone can learn tricks to improve their presentations." For Yarborough, the key trick was tone. Remembering her friend's admonishment, she decided to spice up her presentation on polymer architecture. Like talking to friends, she varied her sentences, using short, punchy language. She also raised and lowered her voice, again as in everyday conversation. Afterward, audience members congratulated her on a talk well done. "This was the first time I actually had fun giving a presentation," Yarborough says. "It felt different-a good kind of different." MEETING BLUES: Audiences at national meetings see too many quickly prepared presentations stuffed with information, asserts author Jerry Wircenski. Quickly prepared presentations stuffed with information are common at national meetings. "Literally nine out of 10 presentations are like this," asserts Jerry Wircenski, a professor of applied technology, training, and development at the University of North Texas in Denton and coauthor of Technical Presentation Workbook: Winning Strategies for Effective Public Speaking (New York, American Society of Mechanical Engineers Press, 1996). "I don't think audience expectations are very high. They go to one session like this and then another. That's the norm." Clearly, re-searchers say, content drives the show. Colleagues attend lectures to learn about research, not to enjoy a charismatic performance. Still, presentation style has its place. "What a good presentation does is convince the audience that you're right," says Robert Parmenter, a research associate professor of biology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and local chairman of the Ecological Society of America's meeting. More than 3,000 scientists attended the annual meeting this past August. "Content gets them into the door and into the chairs. But in order to really carry the day, you need to have a story line and clear information." Anholt agrees, adding that good presentations can even advance your research: "It's a major career boost to be a good speaker. The perception of your persona in scientific circles improves." Researchers who give engaging talks often get invited to symposia, he notes. For job hunters, a great presentation can increase the odds of landing a tenure-track slot. Just as important, peer reviewers-like those scoring grant applications at the National Institutes of Health-may remember the researcher whose talk stood out. "The people in your study section may know who you are, which always helps," Anholt says. Indeed, in today's era of tight funding, clearly explaining your work to legislators, grant reviewers, and university administrators is more important than ever, researchers report. But science continually grows more complex. How do you explain the complicated worlds of optical imaging or genetic analysis in an easy, quick talk? With a little help. "In the old days, researchers learned how to give presentations sheerly by trial and error," Anholt says. "But today, many universities offer [communication] courses to graduate students." Some universities also offer short courses-maybe just a couple of hours-on speaking style to researchers of all ages. There are a host of books on the topic, too. In addition to the books by Anholt and Wircenski, presenters might find helpful pointers in Communicating Science: A Handbook (New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1991), by Michael Shortland and Jane Gregory, and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Cheshire, Conn., Graphics Press, 1983), by Edward R. Tufte. At national meetings, researchers often browse poster presentations like paintings at an art gallery. Blinking at a sea of black ink, they occasionally stop, step forward, and survey the fine print. The trick is to make sure your poster gets read. After 10 years of presenting posters, Jeanne Erdmann, a research associate at Jewish Hospital, affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis, thinks she has the answer: keep your text clean. "At the past couple of meetings, I've double-matted [posters]," Erdmann says. "I also make the title and the fonts huge. And I try to keep everything really, really simple." CLEAN AND SIMPLE: Designs that are "really, really simple" help posters get noticed, according to Jewish Hospital researcher Jeanne Erdmann. Once considered the step-child to oral presentations, posters are becoming a main feature at crowded meetings (R. Finn, The Scientist, Jan. 25, 1993, page 20). At the Ecological Society of America's (ESA's) August meeting in Albu-querque, for example, about half of the 2,000-plus submitted abstracts became posters. As meetings grow, so do the rows of posters. "Many people do cram too much into a poster," says Robert Parmenter, local chairman of the ESA meeting and a research associate professor of biology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. "Posters are there to give the [points of information] and a touch of supporting material." If your poster catches a scientist's eye, of course, then a quick, informal presentation of your research is in order. Communications specialists say these short briefs are like an outline: your hypothesis, followed by methods and results. Once you offer a short portrait of your study, be ready to answer more detailed questions. Depending on the meeting, you may be asked to bring copies of research papers along as well. -K.S.B. In both workshops and books, communications instructors offer some tried-and-true tips for scientific presentations. First, know your audience. Are you speaking to chemists? Strictly organic chemists? Or some biochemists, too, with a few neurobiologists joining in? STARTING POINT: It's important to assess your audience's background when preparing a talk, points out Cornell's Bruce Lewenstein. "The balance of your audience is tremendously important," notes Bruce Lewenstein, a specialist in science communication at Cornell. "If it's a group of people who already know your methods, you can jump fairly quickly into the big question you're asking and the results. If you're talking outside your subdiscipline, however, you need to explain how your tradition frames the research questions and what may be unique about your methods." In a short talk, less is often more. Anholt suggests that those asked to give brief presentations limit information and avoid jargon whenever possible and frame the high points in a format with introduction, main body, and conclusion. For example, a researcher giving a one-hour talk might spend 10 minutes on the introduction, 30 on the main body, and five minutes for summary. That leaves 15 minutes at the end for questions. The goal, he says, is to provide your "take-home message" without rushing. Another tip: get visual. Forget transparencies cluttered with data tables and chunky blocks of text. Instead, keep graphics minimal and offer the audience copies of the paper, which relates the data in detail. "You don't have to fight the transparency to get the point across," says Geraldine Richmond, a chemist who also teaches science literacy at the University of Oregon in Eugene. "I try to give colorful presentations. I use pictures whenever I can, for example." For corporate-and some academic-presentations, researchers might try buying presentation software to make slides, advises Lewenstein. "If you simply choose the defaults [the software] gives you, you're going to make a decent slide, with just a few bulleted points and a readable text size. It's a useful constraint." But he suggests thinking twice before delving into multimedia presentations with sound and graphics. While technology tricks can be fun, they also add more details that can go wrong. Of course, one way to circumvent snafus is to practice. Running through a presentation-something many scientists stop doing after graduate school-can smooth style. Practice sessions also are the perfect time to create a "cheat sheet" or dash notes in the margin of the draft of your talk. These re-minders can keep you on track during your time at the podium. "Build questions and examples into your notes," offers Wircenski. "Remind yourself to use voice inflection. Basically, you want to personalize the paper you're going to present. Put yourself in the seat of the audience. What would you like to see? A dynamic, energetic presenter." PICTURES SAY IT ALL: Colorful graphics often are more effective than transparencies cluttered with tables and text, says Oregon's Geraldine Richmond. Researchers offer several other tips on keeping your talk lively. If you can avoid it, don't shunt all questions to the end, which limits interaction with the crowd, Wircenski says. Instead, involve the audience. Richmond agrees. She has found that making constant eye contact with the audience helps keep them engaged. She also repeats herself, hammering home the key points of her talk-as well as any questions that crop up along the way. These techniques can turn your talk into "the one they remember," says Lewenstein. "What appeals to the audience? It isn't the person who tells the best joke, or the one who has the fanciest overheads. It's the person who got up and said, 'Look, I know it's a crowded meeting, and you don't have a lot of a time. Here's what I did, and here are my results.' " Say it with style, and the science is sure to be a crowd-pleaser. Kathryn S. Brown is a freelance science writer in Columbia, Mo.

Charisma, Content Make For Effective Scientific Presentations

Oct 12, 1997

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