Presenting Effective Presentations with Visual Aids

Planning and Organizing Your Material

When you have determined the characteristics of your audience, then you are ready to plan and organize your material. The tips listed below will assist you in tailoring your approach accordingly. Keep in mind that the use of visual aids will help to produce effective one-way or two-way communication. Many factors are involved in choosing these visual aids, and the type of interaction you want to develop with the audience will influence your choice.

Planning Your Material

• Do not wait to prepare your presentation while on you way to the training session. You cannot do your best at presenting or persuading by "winging it."
• At a minimum, prepare an outline of goals, major issues to be discussed, and information to be presented to support main themes.
• Limit content to your major point and no more than five key supporting points.
• Analyze your audience. Prepare your content considering such things as whether they are likely to be friendly or unfriendly, lay or technical in their background, and whether they want only to listen or to respond and contribute.
• Select appropriate visual aids and a presentation style that will be effective in the physical setting for your training session.

Organizing Your Material

When organizing your material, consider an "old chestnut" of public speaking - "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em; tell 'em; and tell 'em what you told 'em." This recommendation:

• Recognizes the importance of reinforcement in adult learning
• Completes the communication for the listener
• Informs people who arrive late of what they missed
• Recognizes the importance of organization, highlighting, and summarizing main points for the audience
• Serves to clarify main themes for the audience at the end of the presentation

Using Visual Aids

Visual aids help your presentation make things happen. Visual aids help you reach your objectives by providing emphasis to whatever is being said. Clear pictures multiply the audience's level of understanding of the material presented, and they should be used to reinforce your message, clarify points, and create excitement.

Visual aids involve your audience and require a change from one activity to another: from hearing to seeing. When you use visual aids, their use tends to encourage gestures and movement on your part. This extra movement reinforces the control that you, the speaker, need over the presentation. The use of visual aids, then, are mutually beneficial to the audience and you.

Visual aids add impact and interest to a presentation. They enable you to appeal to more than one sense at the same time, thereby increasing the audience's understanding and retention level. With pictures, the concepts or ideas you present are no longer simply words - but words plus images. The chart below cites the effectiveness of visual aids on audience retention.


FLIP CHARTS, OVERHEAD TRANSPARENCIES, POSTER, AUDIO-SLIDE SHOW, VIDEO TAPE.