At training, the presenter stood in front of PowerPoint slides with data embedded in text masquerading as sentences that were really fragments. On the first slide, the first bullet stated that with treatment A only a “small percentage” of patients achieved goal on all four target indicators. A second bullet indicated that after administration of drug X about 80% of patients reached goal on one of the four target indicators; thus, making the assertion that prognosis improves drastically with drug X. Shouldn’t the other 3 indicators be included in order to make this assertion? The third bullet on the slide skipped to another topic and the fourth bullet introduced another topic all together. The fifth bullet attempted to tie the first four bullets together with a summary statement that only pointed to a failed attempt at a conclusion in the sixth bullet. Next to the table of bullets stood a bar graph – lonely and pathetic in it’s attempt to illustrate a health trend. The graph did not relate to the six statements crammed in the table at all. Confusing? Confusing, annoying, and misleading.
Yet, this is our modern day tool for information exchange: PowerPoint or ppt if you, too, suffer from abbreviation turrets. The example above may be more illustrative of the presenter’s inability to put together a coherent presentation. However, the information contained on one slide, in fact, the first slide is indicative of poor presentation skills that significantly impacts effective communication. PowerPoint is a useful tool for presentations when used properly – sentences uncomplicated by jargon and straightforward data that stands alone for the reader to make logical deductions from one bullet to the next. And don’t forget the references when introducing unique data. Instead, the fragmented ideas and thoughts of presenters are literally replacing technical reports and passing off as original data sources.
What happens when technical reports are replaced with incomplete data? Anarchy! Ok, maybe that’s a bit extreme; but there are serious implications for misinformation that has consequences for every industry. Health and science industries are no exceptions and, perhaps not surprisingly, encourage this type of information exchange (for example, see http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB). As such, vital statistics are misrepresented and incorrectly interpreted by both the presenter and audience alike. PowerPoint presentations should be restricted to presentations – a brief synopsis of a full report that decision makers, in particular, should have access to while providing the rest of the audience references to verify the validity of the presentation content.
Trainings, lectures, and reports are essential to an organization’s vitality. Unfortunately, it appears that many organizations are taking the lazy way out of communication by offering representations of incomplete data that bias the audience. This ultimately jeopardizes the organizations’ reputation. PowerPoint in and of itself is not to blame; however, lazy reporting and sloppy presentation cannot be a substitute for communication, especially when important decisions are at stake.
Holly Tomlin
BW 706, Blog 6
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1 comment:
I agree Holly; I think this may be a case of a bad presenter, who created a bad presentation. The presentation should have a handout, which the attendees can follow. This handout should include all the information, both missing and present, to make an educated and informed decision. If the presenter did not provide a handout, is this presentation ethically wrong? Doesn't the presenter have the obligation to provide all available and relevant information to the attendees? Then, one should ask, why is that particular information missing? What is it the presenter doesn't want us to see or know?
Just like any document presented as fact, it is imperative that we research and find all the information on the subject, so we can be fully educated and be able to ask the question - what's missing.
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