Whew, with the conclusion of the
presentation and the submission of the proposal, this module is 98% completed! It
is therefore appropriate to start my second last blog post with a review of the
presentation.
Preparation for presentation
In hindsight, using the ideas of
Ethos, Pathos and Logos to formulate the presentation would have made it more
convincing. Instead, while crafting my speech, I was thinking from two
perspectives.
- Looking
at the proposal from the audience’s point of view which meant addressing
their areas of concern in order to convince them.
- Looking
at the presentation from the team’s perspective where our main message was
that the proposal was meant for a bike-share pilot test which seeks to
complement the existing shuttle bus system.
Therefore, our presentation ended up
being more technical (Logos) and lacked the emotional touch (Pathos) to connect
with the audience. For improvements, I think it may have been possible to beef
up the emotional aspect by including a video clip showing the congestion
problem during peak hours or to include interview clips with students
expressing their frustrations with the shuttle bus services.
The Q&A was my biggest worry. Looking
back, the team had unwittingly been preparing for the Q&A session right
from the start of this project. Along the way, we had so many arguments over
the details of the project that many of the questions raised had already been
discussed. In addition, the survey had been a very useful platform to gather
feedback. Many of the concerns brought up by the respondents were similarly
raised during the Q&A session.
Slide wares
Initially, I had my apprehension of
using a pure white background for the slides. However, it seems that sometimes,
simplicity does indeed prove to be elegant.
Actual presentation
As always, Murphy’s Law applies to
everything. The sound system which had been working perfectly well beforehand failed
on us. This proved once again the importance of testing out the technical system
of the venue before the commencement of the actual presentation.
Reviewing the presentation, using a
clicker for slide transitions would have allowed us to move around more freely
during the presentation instead of being constrained to being beside the
laptop.
In terms of delivery, my perpetual
worry has always been the speed of my speech which I deem to be too fast.
Luckily, there has been no negative feedback thus far for this presentation. Hopefully,
I did not use too many erms as utterances at the end of my sentences. In my
opinion, usage of such utterances is annoying. Overall, I think my performance was pretty
normal but I think I could have tried to enunciate my words more clearly as I
tend to slur my words at times when I cannot recall my script
In conclusion, I am thankful for
having Val, WP and KS as my team mates and kudos to them for being able to
tolerate the excessive amount of nonsense I contribute during the project
discussions.
I felt it was great on your part to have crafted your presentation from the perspective of the target audience. Placing yourself in the shoes of the other party is important in all forms of communication and even more so for an oral presentation. What the team perceives as appropriate may not be welcome by the audience, and only through this “role-playing” can we truly identify the inadequacies of our own presentation.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with the point that a clicker could have been used to achieve a more professional presentation. On this note, we could have checked out how to use the clicker provided in the classroom beforehand (similar to your point on prior checking of the sound system).
Hello JY,
ReplyDeleteThe overall slides was fine. The pictures in the slides were relevant. I could also heard the music from the clip well so i do not get the technical glitch that you had mentioned. :S
I feel that your team handled the Q and A session well. But then, from my perspective, it seems that your team has pre-assigned each person with tackling a certain type of question. It does seems to me that such a style has limited the chances of one or two group members to perform during the Q and A session.
As for your presentation, I feel that your performance for your peer teaching presentation was better than that for your project presentation. Maybe it was due to the fact that your were more lively during the peer teaching presentation which the conduct of the formal project presentation forbids you to. Your delivery was loud and coherent. The pace was also fine. It's been a while since your presentation so I couldn't recall whether you have any problem with utterances so I shall not comment on it.
As for the clicker issue, the clicker for the classroom wasn't synchronized with the computer system properly. Maybe your group could have resorted to a wireless mouse to circumvent the problem? The mouse could also be placed in a comfortable position to the presenter so that he/she doesn't have to move around too much the navigate the slides.
Hope NUS adopts your proposal, :D
Jie Yang
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThanks for your feedback Jie Yang.
DeleteIt is unfortunate that it appeared to you that our team pre-assigned each person to answer certain type of questions. I can assure you that it has never been the case. Instead, during the Q&A session, we were trying to spread the number of questions answered equally among the four of us. That explains why we were constantly looking at each other to encourage one another to respond. That is also the reason behind the team following a general pattern in answering questions where KS answered the first question, Val answered the second, I responded to the third question while WP provided the answer for the fourth question.
Comparing the peer teaching lesson to the presentation, it is indeed true that I toned down my liveliness during the presentation due to the different nature of the two settings. I felt that the presentation required a more serious tone since we were seeking to persuade and convince the audience. Peer teaching on the other hand was a knowledge sharing session where it seems appropriate to package the exchange of knowledge with humour. Adopting the same peer teaching persona for the presentation would have made the presentation look flippant.
For the technical glitch, I think I did not explain clearly. The sound was audible during the actual presentation because we were using WP's laptop to broadcast the video. The classroom's sound system failed on us when we were testing it earlier which prompted the switch to using WP's laptop.
Hey Jun Yuan, it was great to be able to work with you! You really injected alot of life to the team eh heheh. I agree with you on how we kept sweating the details. I felt it was very necessary to make sure we all knew what we were talking about, but it was also a good thing you kept us grounded with our positioning; the pilot as the first step, and the bike share as a complement to the ISB. I think that really helped us stay focused on the scope of our content coverage.
ReplyDeleteI think you and Val had a tough job of presenting the solution, especially since our "audience" were the people who were potentially going to implement it and they'd examine it under the microscope. I felt your presentation of our proposed solution was very meticulously crafted and made easy to understand from their point of view. It also addressed many of their concerns within such a short time, which was essential for this presentation, since it was about how we could convince people we had a working solution.
Really picked up quite alot from you!
shings
Hello JY!
ReplyDeleteI agree that reviewing the ideas of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos to help formulate the presentation would have made it more effective and persuasive. While preparing for the presentation, we were too focused on just making sure that our audience understood our idea that we neglected these other important aspects.
Also, I agree that using a clicker or a wireless mouse, just as Jie Yang suggested, would have been much better than awkwardly leaning forward after each slide to press the (correct)button to transit to the next slide.
Lastly, I felt that you were did a great job on the presentation. Pace was just right, speech was clear, and expressions were comfortably candid - but not too candid! Also, I think that being able to think critically and on your feet is one of your strong points, and it really helped you (and us) in the Q&A session!
Kudos to all your valuable contributions to the team! :D
Val