|
In Chapter 9 of Oral Presentations for
Technical Communication, you will learn about
one category of presentations: informative.
Informative presentations cover a range of
possibilities, from conference presentations to
classroom talks to design or documentation reviews.
You'll study the following topics in this
chapter:
|
•
|
What are Informative Presentations?
|
|
•
|
Types of Informative Presentations in
Technical Communication
|
|
•
|
Tips for Creating Effective Informative
Presentations
|
|
•
|
Preparing Your First Informative
Presentation
|
These exercises build on the ideas addressed
in Chapter 9:
1. List five topics with which you currently
would feel comfortable giving an informative
presentation. Select one topic from each list and,
without any audience/purpose analysis or research,
create an outline for an informative presentation
for this topic. Now plan to prepare this
presentation for your class or another real
audience. After an audience/purpose analysis and
some research, notice in what ways your
presentation's structure and content changed.
Presentations and Cyberspace. Locate the
Web site for a professional organization in your
field (check with a professor or graduate student
in your department if you have difficulty locating
the site) and follow links to articles from
journals or proceedings from recent conferences.
Identify an informative article or speech and
analyze it against the tips for informative
presentations that you studied in this chapter. If
you were coaching the author or presenter, what
elements of the article or presentation would you
identify as effective, and why? As ineffective and
why? Identify specific changes the author or
speaker should make to increase the effectiveness
of the article or speech.
Presentation and Teamwork. Many
informative presentations are given
collaboratively; that is, they are given by a team
of people, not just one individual. If you work or
have gone on an internship, you probably
participated in or listened to an informative
presentation given by a team; as a student, you
probably have worked on a team project for class.
As an exercise in group-style informative
presentations, form a team of 2-3 people from your
class. Identify and discuss informative topics that
might be of interest to all of you, and choose one.
Design a group presentation on that topic,
designating specific parts of the presentation for
specific people on the team. Remember that you
still must perform an audience and purpose
analysis, and you must also be well organized and
design your presentation with care. As you work on
your group presentation, keep track of how the
group interacts. Do you feel more comfortable
designating one person as leader, or do you prefer
to work by consensus? How will you go about
dividing up the workload and the presentation
itself? What items do you agree should go into the
informative presentation, and what items is there
disagreement on? Group presentations, although
often more difficult to design, can be far more
interesting than an individual presentation. With a
group presentation, instead of the experiences and
personalities of one person, you have a combination
of the thoughts and ideas of many people.
Presentations and International
Communication. After giving the informative
presentation described at the end of this chapter,
identify a different country in which you might
make an informative presentation on the same or a
similar topic. Conduct research to define the
audience to whom you would be speaking (e.g.,
professional organization, student group at a
university, group of citizens) and to learn about
your topic within the context of that culture.
Outline the presentation as you would give it in
the other country. A word of caution: Avoid the
trap of comparing that country to the US. For
example, if your topic is the use of color in
designing corporate offices, avoid discussing color
selection according to how it differs from U.S.
trends; instead, discuss the topic from the
perspective of the country in which you would give
the presentation. After completing your outline,
list the changes you made to the content and
structure and explain why you made those changes.
Present this information to your class.
Presentations and Your Profession. Locate
a local or national chapter of an organization
related to your profession, and find a listing of
the presentation topics from this group's last
meeting. Of these topics, which would be easy for
you to present and which would be difficult?
Why?
|
