Understanding Presentations
Everything you say, do and show effects understanding.
1. Why use presentation software?
2. How does the way I use the show impact the audience?
3. What can I do to make a slide show effective for the audience?
First
function,
then form
Effective Order of Verbal Content
 Give the epitome example (initial synthesis principle)
 Zoom in to a part of the epitome, then return to epitome, then back
to another detail
 Instruction moves from general to detail, and from simple to
complex
 At the beginning of each elaboration, relate it familiar through
analogy
 Teach the most important thing first
 Keep the elaboration short enough to be recognized and
synthesized (less than 5 ideas), but long enough to give detail (at
least 3)
 Every so often, summarize before moving on
Graphics
Processing graphics uses
 Perception (sense understanding)
 Cognition (mental work)
Benefits of Good Graphics
 Improves concept retention
 Shows visual and spatial
relationships
 Organizes well, makes
easier to remember
 Promotes usability
 Motivates learners or
promotes trust
Problems with Graphics
 People don’t understand
abstract or complex visuals
 Cognitive effort required to get
complex visual
 Can distract or mislead learners
 Not appropriate for every
purpose
Stages of Processing Graphics
1. Preattention
o When we look at graphics, we perceive before we pay direct attention
(preattentive perception)
o Preattentive perception determines what is figure (girl) and what is
ground (background)
o We look horizontally and vertically (not front to back or diagonal)
o We make images into meaningful hierarchies
2. Attentive perception
o Directed by organization we made preattentively
o Draws on cognitive resources
o Is limited and selective (we choose what to pay attention to)
o May be influenced by forming or chunking
o Is reduced by too much or too little to look at
Discontinuity = Less
Understanding
3. Cognition
o People form partial interpretation almost immediately, then keep
amending
o Use all information available to interpret (irrelevancies become “noisy”)
o Is text-driven – cues come from prose and graphics (put picture with
words)
o Is knowledge driven (beliefs and preknowledge effect perception)
So I should. . .
Concept
Create Pre-attention
Create Attention (first
impression)
Support Motivation
Support Cognition
Practical Application
o chunking
o grouping
o sequencing
o appropriate dominance relationships
o emotional response (affective)
o establish visual relevance as close to audience
experience as possible
o chunking
o grouping
o sequencing
o level of detail
o word and image combinations
o layout (rule of thirds, use of occlusion, white space)
o consistency of document