The Biggest Mistake in Presentations and How You Can Avoid Them

After 90 minutes of listening to her lecture,

I walked out of her Marketing class feeling  
no smarter than when I first walked in.

Have you ever had such a Professor? 
One who made an interesting subject so boring
that she made you feel like she'd torn a hole through
the space-time continuum and stopped time?

For me, it's my Marketing professor, Professor Wrong.
And in case you missed the highly popular first article
about Professor Wrong, check it out here. It contains
the Public Speaking Sins that you should avoid

if you want to avoid being as hated as Professor

Wrong.

Today, while half-dozing through Professor

Wrong's lecture, I realized that many other

innocent people were suffering from the

same teaching mistakes that Professor Wrong

was committing. To avoid boring your audiences,

be sure to avoid this one Presentation Skills Mistake

that most other presenters make:

The Biggest Mistake in Presentations?

• No Audience Involvement

Professor Wrong suffers a severe sickness called

'Answering Your Own Questions'. And today, the

sickness was at it's most severe stage. To get an

idea of how brutal this sickness is, imagine that

you were sitting in Professor Wrong's 10.30 a.m.

Marketing class. About 10 minutes into the class,

you would have heard her ask the following question:

"What are the different types of knowledge structures?"

You would have then seen her click to the next slide

on her Powerpoint presentation which magically

revealed the three different types of knowledge

structures. Take a quick look at the magical slide

(below) and decide for yourself how interested you'd

be in this lecture after 30 such slides:

After Professor Wrong asked the question, you

would have then heard Professor Wrong proceed

to answer her own question. Ten minutes later,

you'd hear her ask another question about the

factors affecting knowledge structure, immediately

after which she'd proceed to give you the three

different factors. And you'd just sit there, wondering

whether listening to a Professor's Q&A monologue

was what education was all about.

• Public Speaking Sin: No Audience Involvement

A question is a great way to arouse curiosity in

the listeners. In Professor Wrong's case, her

question caused me to rack my brains and try

and come up with a suitable solution.

Unfortunately, Professor Wrong wasn't

interested in listening to our answers.

Immediately after she asked her questions,

she proceeded to move on to providing the

possible answers. The questions were simply

a transition so that she could move onto the

next slide.

Here's the problem with this:

While rhetorical questions certainly have

their place in speeches, educators should try

and use questions for audience involvement.

Questions should be used to allow learners to

use their brains and discover the answers for

themselves, rather than simply listening

to the Professor hand out the solutions on

a Powerpoint presentation.

• Public Speaking Tip: If You Ask a Question, Listen to the Answers

If you're a teacher or workshop-leader whose

job is to educate, then use questions to allow

the audience to discover the answers

by themselves! In other words, if you ask a question,

be prepared to listen to the answers. Not doing so can

cause you to be seen as rude and obnoxious. The purpose

of education is to allow learners to expand their critical

thinking skills and discover the answers themselves.

Questions are a great way to do just that.

After this article was written, I came across the following
research study that emphasises the effect of audience
involvement in learning.


Pascarella and Terenzini (1991, p98) report that student involvement
or engagement (active learning) be used since a substantial body of
evidence suggests that the greater the learner's involvement in the 
learning process, then the greater the level of content acquisition. 
Also note that this involvement can be as simple as note taking,
discussions, or answering questions.

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