Here’s a really (and I mean really) simple tip for helping with your PowerPoint presentations. Take the damned words out! Leave only the barest of essentials.
Why? Because it increases your audience’s ability to do two things. Firstly, their ability to remember what you’ve told them goes up (28%) and their ability to apply this goes up even more (79%) – that’s accoriding to research by Richard Mayer, who published his work with the Cambridge University Press. Sounds good to me.
The idea, of course, is that when you take away the word on the screen and say them out loud, you’re stimulating your audience in two ways. If you leave loads of words on the screen, your audience will just read them (eyes take priority over ears) and you’ll find what you’re saying is ignored; it doesn’t matter anyway ‘cos if you’ve got loads of text on the screen you’d just be duplicating it anyway! :)
In short, if you want your audience to remember and understand what you’ve got to say, you should be telling people in your presentation, with the PowerPoint in support, not writing it out for them – don’t put the guts of what you’ve got to say on the screen.
Can’t argue with the science!
