Guides for Presenters--C&WOnline 2006
Guide for Synchronous Presentations During the Symposium 2/18
Your presentation will occur inside the TTU MOO, an enCore Learning Environment. People will be able to crowd into your presentation room and look at slides (webpages) you have prepared and chat about them. From my own long experience doing presentations and being an audience in presentations, let me offer a few guiding principles:
Consider that your are leading a conversation rather than presenting a paper:
In some ways, it is like leading a classroom conversation where half (or more) of your students have not read the homework. You are not lecturing. You are prompting
in such a way as to stimulate conversation from those who have read the homework and those who have not. You might create or already have a paper on your subject which we could make available to participants to review before the conference in preparation for your session. But people won't have time to read this paper during the session.
For participants in a MOO discussion, it is very difficult to process extended text while the discussion is on-going:
Once the discussion starts, it is very hard for participants to "listen" to the discussion AND read a long, complicated presentation text. MOO discussions are very "kairotic" for participants; there is a feeling of being in the moment or in the flow of the discussion--and it is a fast flow. A long text thrown out at the participants to process while this flow of discussion is on-going is like slamming on your brakes in the middle of the freeway while traffic is still whizzing by. Hence, when you to present text to participants offer text that doesn't require them to stop from the flow of conversation for too long a time.
Sequence your presentation into smaller bits designed to guide the conversation:
To avoid the disorientation within participants from extended texts, I recommend that you break up your presentation into smaller "Talking Points." Each one should be designed to stimulate conversation. You might have a quote or some statement (that isn't too long) and then a question. For an hour long presentation like ours, I think you can count on from five to eight talking points. Discussions take a while to get going inside a MOO, so I recommend that you opt for fewer presentation slides that allow for more discussion.
Make your presentation fairly low-tech (no PowerPoints)
The slides you will be presenting to people during your presentation should be basic webpages. enCore displays a webpage in its viewing panel, so any webpage will display with video and other multimedia. You could get fancy. However, I urge you to consider if all participants will have the required plug-ins or connection speed to fully appreciate this multimedia. The last thing you want during your presentation is some people complaining about not being able to see your slide. Plain-jane web pages with a graphic and text is the way to go. However, more involved multimedia material might be contained in the pre-session paper you prepare for people to look at before the conference.
How the Presentation Will Go
Below is a description with some screen shots of how the presentation will look and flow:
Title Slide--Welcome |
This slide is the first one displayed. --contains the title of the presentation and your name --could contain a link to your fuller presentation/paper --could contain a brief bio |
Introduction Slide |
This slide will contain --A brief bio (could be in the title page) --Preparation for how the discussion will proceed (however you design it) --Announcement that this discussion is being recorded and information on research (we will prep that statement) --Link to conversation help page for those who may need it. --Depending on the number of people in the room, you might prompt people to introduce themselves. (This may not be practical if there are more than fifteen or twenty in a room.) |
1st Talking Point Slide--Starting the Discussion |
This slide starts your presentation. --notice that it doesn't have a lot of text... --it should contain some point or question to stimulate conversation
|
How you display slides Displaying slides will show the slide to everyone who is inside this room. You type the command and hit enter and the slide will show in the graphical side of the moo. |
You will be in control of when you want to move from slide to slide. To display a new slide you type the command: display # on web You are giving the command display, specifying which slide you want to display, and then the name of the web projector you want to display from. (All conference web projectors are named "web.") |
Conclusion Slide After your sequence of presentation slides, it is nice to have a conclusion slide that says basically thank you for coming and this is the end. |
This slide might have a reminder to folks to click the LOOK button to return to the room view. |
What to do to get ready for your presentation
The most important thing to do is get your presentation "slides" ready. These should be a series of webpages contained inside a folder. Any graphics you use with the webpages should be contained inside the folder as well (relative rather than absolute links to graphics). These presentation pages should be ready preferably by 2/6 when the conference begins. The actual Symposium is 2/18, so I suppose we could get them later than 2/6 but please not on 2/17... .
Hosting?--
This folder containing your webpages will either be hosted on your own webserver or on a C&W server. C&W is attempting to do a better job at archiving materials, so we might host these pages in the archive site so that as long as the archive is maintained these presentation pages will display. You won't have any responsibility for archiving anything. Your techbuddy will let you know what the hosting situation will be.
Coding to fit in the enCore Viewing Panel: Dreamweaver Recommended
In order for webpages to fit dynamically within the viewing panel inside enCore, you will want the pages to be set for percent rather than number of pixels (especially tables). Dreamweaver automatically creates pages in this way. I'm not sure how to hand code this characteristic for web pages. In this way, participants won't have to scroll to the right to see all of your page.
Once your webpages are ready, I will "load" them into the slide projector and you will be able to test them out.
If you are interested in seeing the sequence or presentation slides I took screen shots from, you can view them at:
http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/lirvin/MOOstuff/1stMondays/1st10-03/sld1.htm . The sequence continues with these final slide names: sd1a.htm, sd2.htm-sld7.htm
Another Option: Using the Moderated Room format
We may have many people in these presentations for an online conversation (over 15 even gets crowded so what do we do if there are 50 in a room?). Also, you may want to have more control over the presentation. You may want to provide a "channel" to do some presentation and then field questions and drown out any extra chatter from a question sent to you and your answers. If you think you might want to use this kind of format, we can have you present inside a "moderated room." Here is the guide for you to look it over: http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/lirvin/4guide/genmodroom.html
As you prep for your presentation, you will have a "tech buddy" there to assist you. Also, don't hesitate to contact me if you have a question. Lirvin@accd.edu
Thanks for being a part of the conference, and I wish you every success in your presentation.
Lennie
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