Guest blogger, Rebecca (Becko) Copenhaver, ask this question for feedback:
I'm teaching a course called Philosophical Methods, which focuses on issues of writing, presentation and basic philosophical skills and concepts. My students requested that I teach them how to make handouts for their presentations. While this is a great idea, I don't quite know how to start (it's tacit knowledge for me by now). Does anyone know of any existing resources I might use?
(Note: if anyone would like to guest blog and/or has a question or issue to post about, just email it one of the full-time bloggers.)
Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteHaving not thought about this question before, I'm not sure what sorts of challenges your students are facing. Are they concerned about what content to put on a handout? How to organize it? Visual appeal? The one thing I would say is that a handout should function as a guide to the presentation and should be relatively short. I've been at professional talks where I've received a six-page handout, which is ridiculous.
An initial thought is that much of what's said about visual aids (Google the phrase "visual aid checklist") seems also to apply to handouts.
I suppose the (or a) rule of writing that requires that you put yourself in the perspective of your audience would guide a handout as well.
ReplyDeleteAnd they want to avoid the typical Bad Powerpoint Presentation problem, viz. the presenter just reading a bunch of text off a Powerpoint. Here's some perhaps interesting stuff on that.