Date and time: 11.30am - 12.30pm, Friday 28th March, 2008
Venue: 10.08.04 (Building 10, Level 8, Room 4)
Abstract:
Most lectures are now accompanied by presentations, using tools such as Powerpoint or OpenOffice. Such
presentation tools are increasingly powerful, allowing inclusion of all sorts
of special effects such as movies and animated slide transitions.
Unfortunately, many lecturers simply treat slides as a "mental dump"
of facts and information. Common mistakes include:
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lack of any organization, outline, summary, or
emphasis on what will be learned
§
too much content on a page, or lack of
organization of information into bullets and sub-bullets
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sentences that are merely 'cut and paste'
§
lack of "engagement" techniques to
foster class discussion such as questions, comments, and "gotchas"
Contrary to expectations, creating more engaging presentations is not necessarily significantly more work than simply dumping information on a page (and it produces presentations that can be reused, minimizing overall effort). Most of the techniques for creating more engaging presentations come down to a few simple rules and guidelines that are easy to use in practice and provide a framework for creating presentations
About the speaker:
Bill Appelbe
is CEO of VPAC, the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing, and an
Adjunct Professor at RMIT and Monash. He was formerly the Head of the
department of Computer Science at RMIT from 1997 til 2000, and prior to that
taught at US universities for twenty years. He is also an author and instructor
of commercial training courses in advanced IT for Learning Tree International,
a large international technical IT
training company based in the USA, since 1980. Learning Tree has develop a set of guidelines for presentations that have been
tested, adapted, and improved over several decades.
Seminar Organisation
Seminars are free and open to the general public. No booking is necessary. If you are interested in giving a presentation in this seminar series, or to make suggestions for speakers, please contact Xiaodong Li, the seminar co-ordinator.