Mantra

The academic environment requires me to convey complicated and often esoteric material to an audience of varied backgrounds and skill-levels. Connecting with this wide audience as both a teacher and researcher forms a worthwhile challenge. People can remember a clear, cogent message. Simple visuals paired with discrete, short statements make a significant impact.

Practically, this often doesn't happen. Call it the "AGU Effect". The effort required to produce meaningful scientific results and the desire to impress and inform provokes an urge to heap information into a lecture, short-scientific talk, or poster. Good speakers may overcome disorganized supporting material, but without thoughtful construction most talks and posters collapse under their own intellectual weight.

Less is more. Conference-goers neither frequent wordy posters, nor listen to the speaker while having to visually navigate a crowded power-point slide. Additionally, improving the content and presentation of class material not only promotes better learning conditions but also allows you to improve command of the subject matter by internalizing the key points of the topic. I am certainly not above reproach. Until the last couple years, most of my presentations sucked.

Luckily, my peers in Arizona (chiefly Scott St. George) suggested how to improve my delivery and substance. Scott discusses how to effectively present a specialized subject here, using me as an example. Also, spending two semesters as a teaching assistant in lecture- and lab-based courses led me to think extensively on how to best deliver a message to novice, sometimes apathetic audiences of undergraduates. An authority and enthusiasm for the subject matter, presented concisely and clearly, allows your audience to appreciate much more of what you are trying to say. Refer to Presentation Zen for many suggestions and examples related to developing presentations that engage.

Suggestions

Know Your Material: Having command of your subject allows you to adopt a conversational tone during talks and lectures instead of stiff, rehearsed formality. It also allows you to be more adaptive when you receive questions. This is especially true in classroom settings. Anyone with the brightness to do science for a living can bother to learn the nuances of what they want to say within a few days. Practicing in front of an interactive audience always helps.

Show That You Care: Our cynical society has a talent for sniffing out the disingenuous. If you aren't legitimately excited about your science, why place yourself in front of an audience? No one wants to watch a presenter go through the motions, most especially students in an undergraduate course. Taking a tone that engages your audience will attract their interest. My best teachers were legitimately excited about what they discussed in and out of class. My worst were those who read, verbatim, off an overhead projection.

Develop Clear Visuals: Being able to display a figure that illustrates your concept with little to no additional explanation should be the goal of any presenter. Crowded maps and complicated diagrams serve only to confuse your audience. Plus, the time wasted while laboriously describing a complicated figure for your audience could be better spent emphasizing its relevance.

Project: You don't have to be a loud-mouth to be heard, though in my experience it helps. Speaking clearly, annunciating, and inflecting on key points keeps your talk easy to follow and maintains your audience's interest.

Use Examples and Metaphor: As a southpaw, I find myself more apt to learn a concept through observing its application or seeing its relation to something familiar. Using examples and metaphors in reference to abstract concepts allows your audience to much more effectively visualize a process. In lectures, this involves color images, videos, and even physical examples and demonstrations.

Employ Humor: If you can be funny, then do it. Obviously, don't be obnoxious or offensive. Dr. Peter Venkman once said of scientists, "they're usually pretty stiff." Loosen people up with a wry observation or absurd reference that relates to your material. It immediately makes them much more interested in what you have to say in addition to opening up a different perspective. In addition to being a genius and genuinely kind person, Dr. James Roberts at the University of South Carolina mastered the use of humor in the classroom. His stories, always spot on, managed to introduce a variety of concepts in Vector Calculus, Complex Analysis, and Ordinary Differential Equations. I used the following example for a lecture on Bolide Impacts in Geological Disasters and Society, an introductory science course at Arizona. This joke provided a timely counterpoint to talking about the effects of a global impact event.

Reviews (or, proof that I'm not a lunatic.)

Geoscience 218: Geological Disasters and Society (Superior Performance Evaluation)

Dr. Susan Beck, "Andy gave two great lectures that the students really liked. The students indicated that Andy's lectures were interesting, clear, and organized. They liked the movie clips." "Andy was engaged in the class even though most of his duties were grading. He put together and gave 2 lectures that I attended and they were better than my lectures."

Geoscience 322: Introduction to Geophysics (Superior Performance Evaluation)

Dr. Rick Bennett, "Andy was regarded highly in all categories by all of the students." "Andy is one of the best TA's ever."

Flowing Asthenosphere and a Slab Window Beneath the Coast Mountains Batholith, British Columbia (Best Overall Talk - GeoDaze 2008, Department Research Symposium)

Dr. Susan Beck, "Great explanation of shear wave splitting. Very clear and simple figures." "Great talk! Nice integration."

Dr. Clement Chase, "Good plan & graphics, well-situated w.r.t. geography. Excellent presentation." "Questions: handled articulately."

Dr. Roy Johnson, "Very strong voice, eye contact. Very good slides! Great." "Overall great talk!"