Visual Aids A quick and dirty primer Visual

Visual Aids A quick and dirty primer

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

Visual Aids • Speaker Advantages – Show preparedness – Add credibility – Help reduce fright – Add confidence

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

Visual Aids • Not…

Visual Aids Not Simple

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

Visual Aids • Not Large

Visual Aids Not Large

Visual Aids

Visual Aids Not Clear

Visual Aids • Not Consistent

Visual Aids Not Consistent

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

Visual Aids • If using text – in general • Six words per line • Six lines per page

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

Visual Aids • Color is important – Yellow – Brown – Green – Blue – Red – White

Visual Aids • And so is intensity… – Green – Green

Visual Aids A is worth

Visual Aids

Visual Aids • But… …don’t over do it!

Visual Aids

Visual Aids • What about displaying data?

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

Visual Aids • The type of graph – Depends on the kind amount of data – Depends on what story you want to tell

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

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

Visual Aids • Graph Types

Visual Aids • Line Graphs – Shows changes in data over time

Visual Aids

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

Visual Aids

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

Visual Aids

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

Visual Aids

Visual Aids • 3 D 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

Visual Aids

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

Visual Aids

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

Visual Aids

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

• That goes for sound as well