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Presenting Information

Though most teachers also want their students to "use" information (i.e. analyze it, apply it, evaluate it, think about it or with it), the presentation of information to students is still a major part of most college teaching and learning. These presentations can take place as the primary purpose of class-time activity, as one component of class-time activity, as preparation for it, or as a supplement or complement to it. Successful presentation of information depends primarily upon two key elements: clarity and organization.

The most common form of information presentation in the classroom is the lecture, words spoken by the teacher, listened to by the students, and then recorded as notes. Many methods and tools for presenting illustrative or visual material that complements the lecture format have evolved over the last decades. These methods and tools provide some new opportunities for more effective, efficient information presentation by helping teachers to attend to the clarity and organization of information presented.

Technology can help.

New technologies, incorporating images, graphics, sound, and movement, have emerged that can be useful in explaining or even demonstrating processes, ideas, and phenomena. Software has been developed that can make it easier for teachers to find, access and present such information to students during or after class. Many teachers are now also using presentation technologies to provide stimulus material for students to critically analyze or evaluate during class time.

Planning the Presentation.
There are a number of presentation software packages available. PowerPoint is perhaps the most common. Such presentation software programs encourage a sequential, linear approach to presenting information. In that sense, working with these programs can help to create a linear or progressive structure to the information provided, making it less likely that important information will be left out or disregarded. The relative ease with which graphics and pictures can be incorporated can also encourage a presenter to plan in terms of visualizing information, or illustrating ideas or concepts, which can lead to better clarity.

Some of the more complex presentation software programs can also be used to create tutorials, demonstrations or simulations on-line or on CD-ROM. Almost every interactive teaching strategy has at least some information presentation associated with it.

Creating the Presentation.
Presentation software programs can make creating presentations fairly easy. Usually a set of attractive background graphics and text templates are available to choose from and once you choose one you simply insert the text, graphics, and images you want to present. That creates a digital “slide show” which you can digitally project, upload to a web site, or make into slides or transparencies. Advanced users of such software can create custom transitions and animations, add web links and video to their presentations.

Illustrating the Presentation.
In a presentation you can use graphics and images that you create yourself with a variety of graphics programs; you can search the internet for images and copy them into your presentation; you can find them in clip art and image libraries, or you can scan them from photos, texts, and 35 mm. slides.

Integrating Resources into the Presentation.
Video and/or audio clips can be readily incorporated into presentations using presentation software programs. Many of these programs will also enable you to link to a web site from one of your slides, then return to the slide and continue the presentation.

Making the Presentation.
Presentation software programs can create digital slide shows for display from both PC and Mac platforms. Most include a “save as” option that allows you to package your presentation for use on other computers, whether or not those computers have the software with which you created the presentation. Many programs also allow you to easily make handouts and notes associated with the presentation if you would like to provide them to students.

Distributing the Presentation.
Many presentation software programs enable you to upload the presentation in its entirety onto a web site where students can access it. Some teachers do this with each “lecture” that they give in class, placing a copy of it on their web site for student review. Other teachers have students review presentations before class, so they are ready to engage in more interactive learning activities during class time. Presentations can also be stored on CD-ROMs, DVDs, or ZIP discs. Presentations created with extensive video and graphics resources are often most efficiently distributed with these media due to their increased size and speed requirements.

Outside of class, teachers often make information about ideas, objects and processes available to students, information that complements or supplements classroom instruction. Textbooks, reserve readings, and periodicals are time-honored means of providing students with out-of-class information access, but readily available technologies provide some new dimensions and alternatives for delivering this kind of information to students. The course web site is perhaps the most valuable of these, with its ability to serve as a repository for text, images, audio and video clips. E-reserves in the library is another example, where text, images and other resources are made available to students from library servers. CD-ROMs and DVDs can also be used to present information to students.

Glossary of Related Terms.

Acrobat (Adobe)
Authoring (Multimedia Authoring)
Blackboard
Classroom and lab scheduling
Classroom hotline
Computer labs
Course management software
Digital images
Digital video
Dreamweaver (Macromedia)
File transfer and upload
Flash (Macromedia)
Graphics software
Library instructional services
Multimedia
Office (Microsoft)
PDF
PowerPoint (Microsoft)
Presentation software
Scanning
Streaming Media
Student academic support services
Web page software
Web sites

next section: Facilitating Group Work

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