1. A quick and dirty primer
Visual Aids
A quick and dirty primer

2. Visual Aids Audience Advantages Add clarity Indicate what’s important
Reinforce key points
Increase interest
Reach different learning styles
Aid retention

3. Visual Aids Speaker Advantages Show preparedness Add credibility
Help reduce fright
Add confidence

4. Visual Aids
Simple
Large
Clear
Consistent
(An oil slick – get it?)

5. Visual Aids
Not…
SIMPLE

6. Visual Aids
Not Simple

7. Visual Aids
Visual Aids allow you to reach students of different learning styles because it adds a visual element to your oral presentation. This is especially important because today’s students seem to be more visual than other generations.
It helps reinforce the key information in your presentation and keeps student interest focused on the front of the room.
It allows you to give students clear prompts for their assignments, especially in-class assignments. They can always look up to refocus their attention to the assigned task.
Visual Aids can be used over and over again and can be electronically moved directly to a web site so that students can look at it again after class and as many times as they want.
It serves as Ockham’s razor by helping you structure your thoughts.
Not Simple

8. Visual Aids
Not Large

9. Visual Aids
Not Large

10. Visual Aids

11. Visual Aids
Not Clear

12. Visual Aids
Not Consistent

13. Visual Aids
Not Consistent

14. Visual Aids Use me for hard copy (with serif)
Use me for projection (sans serif)

15. Visual Aids If using text in general Six words per line
Six lines per page

16. Visual Aids DON’T USE ALL CAPS… It’s easier to read this...
…THAN THIS!

17. Visual Aids
Color is important
Yellow
Brown
Green
Blue
Red
White

18. Visual Aids
And so is intensity…
Green

19. Visual Aids is
worth A

20. Visual Aids

21. Visual Aids
But…
…don’t
over
do it!

22. Visual Aids

23. Visual Aids
What about displaying data?

25. Visual Aids Graphs Give life to data Make data more interesting
Show trends, patterns, and relationships

26. Visual Aids The type of graph Depends on the kind and amount of data
Depends on what story you want to tell

27. Visual Aids Constructing a graph
Requires using your whole brain (just like mind mapping)

28. Visual Aids Aesthetic thinking is needed to:
Insure the visual look and feel is appropriate
Analytical thinking is needed to:
Select the right graph type
Insure the graph is complete & accurate

29. Visual Aids
Graph Types

30. Visual Aids
Line Graphs
Shows changes in data over time

31. Visual Aids

32. Visual Aids Area Graph Variation on basic line graph
Shows the contribution of a set of data to the whole

33. Visual Aids

34. Visual Aids
Bar Graph
Each column represents a particular category at one point in time
Compares related data
Almost always sorted

35. Visual Aids

36. Stacked Bar Graph Variation of the bar graph
Shows contributions of sub-sections to the whole
At given point of time

37. Visual Aids

38. Visual Aids 3D Bar Graph Another variation of the bar graph
Places one row of bars in front of another
Highlights comparisons
Again, at one given point in time

39. Visual Aids

40. Visual Aids Pie Graph Compares the components of a set to each other
Shows percentage proportion of two or more values to a meaningful whole

41. Visual Aids

42. Visual Aids X-Y Graph Also called Scatterplots
Shows correlation or relationship between two different sets of data
Data often have different scales of measurement
Best fit line shows type and degree of relationship

43. Visual Aids

44. Animations “Appear” works well Allows focus on each point
Avoids audience reading ahead
But don’t get carried away

45. That goes for sound as well