Not presenting, but teaching (or how I learned to stop worrying about which platform to use)

I don’t know about you, but I feel I’ve always used PowerPoint fairly innovatively. Way back in 1997 I remember surprising a class of executives with a PPT consisting only of full slide images overlaid with minimal text – a style which is of course now ‘PPT de jour’.  Unfortunately, as we all know, familiarity breeds contempt, so when Prezi came along, after 10 solid years with PPT, it was little wonder that I initially seized upon it like an excited schoolboy…

• A huge canvas – oooh
• A path rather than linear slides – ahhhh
• Rotation – oooh
• YouTube insertion – ahhh

Well you get the idea with that…  So, anyway, I was quickly sold on almost exclusively creating and presenting prezis. And didn’t they go down well?! For one thing,  I felt that I was having to do less work (after I’d spent the time figuring out how it worked) as the prezis seemed to be prompting more intrigued and engaged audiences and a higher appreciation of my presentations. Yes there were one or two people who complained of feeling queasy but they were very much in the minority, the majority of feedback was along the lines of “Awesome presentation!” and “What software are you using? I’ve gotta get me some of that!” I should explain that I chiefly present to MBAs.

However, a few weeks ago I found myself in a bit of a position. I’d been ill, away at a two-day course, and had a ridiculously full email inbox and simply didn’t have the time to create a prezi for a presentation to the MBA class the very next day on research methods.

The Holy Grail, yesterday.

The presentation was a big deal to me as it was one of those ‘Holy Grail sessions’ , so called by me as it was embedded into the curriculum and also involved:

• a faculty member being present giving their seal of approval
• compulsory attendance
• and, at the end of the presentation, the launch of a week-long information skills project that I’d had the freedom to devise myself

It doesn’t get much better than that does it? Well in fact it did as I had a rather wonderful extra resource on hand – the multi-talented Ange Fiztpatrick just before the end of her time as my maternity deputy (if you ever get the chance to work with Ange seize on it with both hands – she’s bloody amazing!)  I was planning that we would teach the session together. But as I’ve said, there was no time to create a prezi, so… I had no choice but to reluctantly fall back on PPT, using the tried and tested ‘full screen images with two or three words of text model’.  Between us we planned the session from scratch, sourced appropriate images and put it all together in a couple of hours or so. We felt criminally underprepared but had no choice but to go with it and sat together in my office to have a runthrough. Right from the word ‘go’ the presentation just zinged. Despite the fact that we were both tired (and my voice was steadily getting worse) we were really bringing the information alive, playing off each other, bringing in quips and asides and at the end of it we were frankly pretty confident about how it would go.

'The Loife' demonstrating stool technique

The following day we arrived for the lecture clutching stools that we’d just filched from the Computing Lab and proceeded to set-up for the session. We had decided to perch on stools, not because we wanted to look like a boyband ready to stand up at the key-change, but because when we ran through the presentation in my office it had been more like a sedentary, almost cosy, fireside chat and we didn’t want to mess with what had felt like a winning formula. Anyway, the next 50 minutes in Lecture Theatre 3 stands without a doubt as one of the most relaxed, hilarious, interactive and rewarding moments of my career thus far. It was like the scales had fallen from my eyes. This was teaching rather than presenting. And to my surprise the PPT helped with that, and not because of the fact that it was PPT but because we were using it as more of a backdrop. The focus instead was on the teaching and the conversation with the audience. I knew of course that this was the theory but had never experienced it so clearly in practice, perhaps because I’d always had too much time to prepare before and had subconsciously chosen not to be so brave.

The multi-talented Ange with her business journal of choice (photo © Rachel Marsh)

There’s no two ways about it, Ange and I were pretty euphoric after the session, we had been more loudly applauded than we could ever have anticipated, there were smiles all round, the faculty member was thrilled and many students came up to us before we left just to say a personal ‘thank you’. One of them even told us that it was one of the best lectures they’d attended on the MBA so far!

Why am I telling you this? Well not because I want to make it clear how fab Ange and I are as presenters, but because like the kid from South Park, we learned something that day: to concentrate more on the delivery, the conversation, the connection, the humour, and much, much less on which platform was the best to use and how to make it do clever things.

The fact that the session could have worked equally as well with a prezi was perfectly highlighted by the fact that one of the students came up to me at the end and said “I love the presentation software you use when you teach us. What is it?” My reply was: “Errr, that was PowerPoint, but before now I’ve been presenting to you with Prezi.” Student: “Oh, right, well, that was a great lecture anyway.” You see the platform hadn’t mattered at all.

Advertising space

Suddenly I’m a little less embarrassed and a little more proud of my physical library, or, more properly, Information Centre.

For those of you that know the lengths I go to in order to avoid showing the physical library to new members of the business school you will realise this is quite a reversal. It’s not that the physical space we have is SO awful, more that its just not what I want it to be. To my mind it screams ‘cosy’, ‘books’ and perhaps worst of all ‘pine’. Most problematically it doesn’t reflect or enhance the overall service we offer and instead detracts from it by emphasising traditional library values and components. What I think is needed is a benefactor with fairly deep pockets to pay for me to make the major changes needed – a complete re-fit of the ground floor with less space-heavy shelving, more study desks and comfy seating.

Up until the last few weeks the continued absence of Mr Deep Pockets had made me more negative about the space we have to work with, especially as the the wait has seemed more and more destined to be a long one. However, two simple and relatively inexpensive changes have turned out to make a world of difference.

Change Number 1: Removal of the display case at the entrance.
Change Number 2: Installation of plasma screens running adverts 24/7 in and outside of the Info Centre.

The first change made the entrance more welcoming by virtue of allowing longer (and therefore better) sight-lines into our space, including sight of PCs rather than just books. It also allows more freedom of choice for the users as they can now decide where to go after they arrive rather than being herded by the once awkwardly placed security gates towards the Issue Desk. Finally it just feels more spacious and there’s more light. Light is good.

Change number two saw the installation, just yesterday, of plasma screens to optimise usage of both our resources and services. And wow have they made a difference, in fact “Wow” is precisely the vocal reaction they’ve been evoking. For one thing they’re a nice size and look quite sexy (there I said it, frankly amazed it took me this long to use the word), for another the PPT adverts that run on them are colourful, image-heavy and eye-catching. Yes they’re PPT but I still feel it has its place and this is very definitely it.

We had a great and fruitful discussion about content a few weeks ago and concluded that the possibilities were pretty endless. The adverts could – and do – promote databases, ebooks, stats, business quotes, our twitter, our fb, our Library Thing, our Delicious, our service points, our willingness to help, why they should go beyond Google, the fact that the FT and Economist and WSJ are all available in full-text, and well, us as helpful librarians. In fact we have the feeling that we’ve only just scratched the surface in terms of what we can do. As Ange said to me yesterday: “the only limiting factor is our imagination”.  Come to think about it, that quote is taken out of context, but it works here so it’s staying. The other limiting factor is of course: time. We need time to create the slides, as we plan to create 10 decks of 20+ slides , so that we can have a new deck every day for two weeks. That’s quite a bit of work and one of the reasons why the whole team are contributing.

That one of the plasmas is by our entrance by a lift to all 6 floors of the business school is a deliberate strategic marketing decision. This also informed decisions on content. It made it important that the slides were clearly delineated as ours and that they gave clear direction to anyone who was not a regular library user. Watching the slides run by in the Info Centre was quite different to watching them run by while in the business school foyer. They have to make complete sense in both locations and after some minor edits I think they now do.

The plasma at the Issue Desk improves the physical space no end as it has continuity with the outside screen and impresses upon the user that the space is about information and data not just about books and, er… it looks sexy. Did I use that word already?

So what of reaction? Well apart from the “Wow’s” they’ve already provoked a number of conversations with students and faculty that wouldn’t have taken place otherwise (including a great discussion with a marketing lecturer about our market databases – which were on screen as we talked) and they’re just the exchanges that have occured because I was  stood at the exterior screen for a few short minutes. I sense there’s a much wider buzz across the building and this is just Day One. The current and first slide deck is below:

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Unfortunately the buzz hasn’t been all good. It has been fed back to me that support staff are wondering about the cost of these screens in austerity times. Well I can tell them is that it amounts to less than 1% of my annual database budget, so as money spent on optimising database usage I’d count that as money very well spent. There’s also been confusion as to why we’ve put up these screens at all. I mean after all we just stamp books and shelve them don’t we? Which has once again reminded me not to underestimate the continued lack of understanding as to what it is we do. A depressing reality.

Like the kids in South Park “I learnt something today”: relatively inexpensive changes can make a huge impact and increase our visbility. And impact and visibility are right at the top of my strategic agenda, an agenda which is even more important if there are people out there who can’t for the life of them understand why we put up these screens  in the first place.

Slide-y Share-y Thing

So Thing 11 then – Slideshare. Well quite frankly why wouldn’t you use it? This is definitely one of those tools where the functionality and value is pretty much self-evident. If you need to share a Powerpoint presentation with your colleagues or students or need to find a presentation on a specific topic then Slideshare is for you.

The only reservation I have with with sharing my PPTs via Slideshare is the fact that my presentations tend to be image-heavy with very little explanatory text so I wonder just how useful they might be to others. When it comes to students this doesn’t concern me as I don’t really want them to duck out of my teaching sessions and think they can just catch up with the slides afterwards. Besides I consider it good practice to use PPT slides for visual interest for my audience rather than as a means of recording everything I’m going to say. Having said that, I often think I should add a bit more text to help them make a bit more sense after the fact.  A good example is the following slide from a presentation I gave to MBAs last year:

This slide complemented an anecdote about how far our support has extended in the past when assisting MBA students with their entrepreneurial projects: on one occasion as far as providing a posh voiceover for a audio advert for Cambridge Blue cheese, something which would be impossible to guess if viewing the slides in isolation.

 In my opinion, the following presentation, recently shared on Slideshare, strikes a perfect balance of image, text and message. Go see!

Your library brand and the student experience

View more presentations from Jo Alcock.