Time for Presentations

With the semester is about to come to an end; mostly all lectures have ended with a few loose ends left to tighten up. And that’d better be the final presentations otherwise someone could be in a lot of trouble. In UiTM the final exam is well under way; you can see that as most of the streets and meeting places in Shah Alam are almost deserted because most of these people are nursing their splitting headache waiting for their turns to face the music in the examination hall. You can have fun some of the time ,babe, but not all the time. And this is one time that you have to prove once and for all that your existence is worth the while; prove it to your self, most importantly. But I am not gonna talk about examinations this time but the one that is less stressful---the presentations.

We use presentations as one of the assessment tools to measure how effective the learning has been for the students. In fact, it has been used so often in a lot of subjects I was worried that we would produce more ‘talkers’ than ‘doers’. The trend has started to show up as the materials for presentation have become easily available and students are getting comfortable talking and telling us what they would do rather than showing us what they have done. Most of them will get away with unfinished systems and poor presentations due to lack of proper assessment and lopsided evaluation criteria.

The most disturbing part is to sit there and listen to dull and boring presentations one right after another; almost like the same presentations over and over again. More disappointing are the ones coming from postgraduate students. The language is upside down with grammars and pronunciations are all over the place. If the language is difficult for you why can’t you spend a bit more time double check the grammar or the spelling of the words that you are going to shoot on the wall. That shows not the language disability but lack of concern for good presentation---‘pemalas’ would sum up perfectly. English is hard for me too, until this day, but I work for it and give a little bit of my time to check and edit my writing. And believe me if you work hard enough you will come to a point where you will LIKE the language. It helps you express your inner thoughts in a profound manner.

Anyway, for a good presentation your slides must contain :

1. Less texts
2. more images/graphics
3. minimal blink-blink

and when you do the talking please remember that : NEVER to read your slides. Anybody can read the slides so if you just stand there and start reading the slides you will put your audience into the most agonizing state of mind, not too long they will start talking and make their own presentation at the back. What you can do is to EXPLAIN the slide; face the audience and talk to them. OOOOooo that’s so hard, I can’t say things in English……well then PREPARE before you come and DO your HOMEWORK! That is the only way, no short cuts to learning/success. In case you haven’t figure it out yet. Good Luck!