Why Are Lecturers Bad Presenters?

If the image to the left doesn't strike fear into you, then you've either spent far too much time at university or you've never seen a decent presentation.

54 words on a single slide, 32-point font, no images, and just leaving the slide open in the application rather than actually displaying it full-screen. For 20 minutes.

This is a typical example of what happens when poor skills are combined with poor tools. Excellent skills can often compensate for poor tools (or vice versa), but the lack of both is disastrous. In this case, Powerpoint (the application used) has not provided the presenter with any clues that the slide may be just a *tad* poorly conceived.

If you're slide is just a copy of the handout notes, then what's the point of displaying it? Why not just talk? Or why not take advantage of the medium and show something that engages the audience in the topic?

(For the record, this lecturer was very well spoken, intelligent, verbally engaging, and had been teaching for over 20 years.)

If you still can't spot the problem then I'd hazard a guess that you've never actually seen a good presentation, and I urge you to go watch just what presentations are capable of (that's one of my favourites). When you're done there, go poke around a few of the excellent presentations that can be found on the web sites of people that know more about these things than I do.

Don't fall into the same trap that many academic types do, and assume that a "teaching" presentation is so far removed from a "normal" presentation. Whether you're in a boardroom or a classroom, you're still expecting to learn.

It's a shame that presentations skills aren't required learning for university lecturers. I've had dozens of lecturers over the course of my academic career, most of them intelligent, well spoken, enthusiastic, and many were even quite witty.

But none of them knew how to give a decent presentation.