1. Visual Aids for Oral Presentations
Week 8 Day 1
Spring Quarter

2. Visual Aids for Oral Presentations
Purpose
Content
Media
Instructor:
Ask the students to do a brief discussion on Purpose, Content, Media. Ask if they know the purpose of the visual aids as part of the presentation ( to make it easier to understand, focus the audience) See if they know what media are available.
Spring Quarter

3. Visual Aids for Oral Presentations
The key words are Visual Aids - Content organization must come first
Approach
Clearly define information to present
Carefully plan & organize talk
Choose visual aids
Instructor:
The teams may not have made presentation and may not have an idea how the visual aids can help their presentation. For example, the teams will want to have a pictorial or picture of their robot as part of their presentation. What else might they choose? Some early ideas, picture of their mockup, picture or drawing of the drive train, etc.
Spring Quarter

4. Visual Aids for Oral Presentations
Why use visual aids?
BLAH
BLAH
BLAH
BLAH
Instructor:
Visual aids get the audience to use their sight as well as their hearing to absorb information. Obviously, you can talk about a rose but seeing one makes the image stick in the brain.
Spring Quarter

5. Visual Aids for Oral Presentations
Content
Words - key words
Fewer words
Illustrations
Color illustrations
Animated illustrations
Instructor:
Make sure that you emphasize that they put enough on the slide to focus on key points but don’t overwhelm the view with lots of words.
Color can help – so can animation.
Make sure that they use the animation to illustrate a particular point – like how their pickup mechanism works.
Make sure that the animation does not run over and over again.
Spring Quarter

6. Visual Aids for Oral Presentations
Desired Content
Large type
Short words
Clearly labeled graphs and graphics
Sharp, uncluttered drawings or photos
Minimum detail
Instructor:
Emphasize readability of slides, labels for graphs from their report can be too small on the big screen.
They need to make sure that pictures are clear and not blurred.
Spring Quarter

7. Visual Aids for Oral Presentations
Media Available -
PowerPoint w/ high intensity projector
Computer software
Video
Handouts and Posters
Overhead projector
Your product - robot, in this case
Try out your presentation well before the Wednesday of Week 10
Instructor:
Here is the list of media available to the teams for their presentations. You may want to talk briefly about each one. Emphasize that they must try out each one to make sure that it is clearly visible from all points in the room.
Spring Quarter

8. Visual Aids for Oral Presentations
Message
Goal: Audience to understand what you have done!!
Font Size 10 14 20 28
Instructor:
This slide just shows the problems with small fonts.
Spring Quarter

9. Colors for Text and Background
Choose foreground and background colors carefully – test with projector
This is
This is
This is
This is
This is
Instructor:
The teams can get carried away with color combinations that look good on the computer screen that are unreadable when used with the projector. This slide shows one or two good examples and several that are not good. Red on green does not show up. Have them check out some of the templates that are available in the presentation software.
Spring Quarter

10. Individual Competition on Wednesday
Testing will cease at Midnight on Tuesday
Robots must be ready to run at the beginning of the class period
Competition order will be determined randomly
Teams will have 2 minutes to be ready to run after they have been called
There will be three runs on Wednesday – the score from the best run will be recorded
Instructor:
Emphasize to the teams that the open lab closes at midnight. They should get their batteries charged overnight and the robots need to be ready to run at the beginning of the class period. There will be no testing on Wednesday. Every run is for the record.
Spring Quarter

11. Individual Competition
Three runs
Run 1 – Random order of – One of Two Switches, Cupboard or Mailbox, the Bottle from the Neighbor where the Bottle from the Neighbor is the second or third task
Run 2 – Faculty/Staff Pick order of – One of Two Switches, Cupboard or Mailbox, the Bottle from the Neighbor where the Bottle from the Neighbor is the second or third task
Run 3 – Team chooses order of – One of Two Switches, Cupboard or Mailbox, the Bottle from the Neighbor where the Bottle from the Neighbor is the second or third task
Instructor:
Read through this slide with the teams. Ask for questions and make sure that there is a clear understanding of the Individual Competition rules and procedures.
Spring Quarter