Presenting Lectures with PowerPoint

1. Presenting Lectures with PowerPoint Dan McCloy UW Linguistics Department September 2011 TA Training

2. Agenda • Before you start • Color schemes • Slide masters • Developing content • Information density • Pacing yourself • Good design • Tables, diagrams, and illustrations

3. Color Schemes • Access via the “Colors” button on the “Design” tab • Use a template slide (like the following slide) to test out your color scheme choices You can customize forever, but don’t waste your time: if a pre-built scheme is good enough, use it.

4. Color & Font Test Slide • Standard text color • sɪɾɪ̃nðə ʧɝ • Hyperlink color

5. Slide Masters • Access via the “Slide Master” button on the “View” tab • Adjust fonts, colors, footers, margins, centering, etc. • Add persistent graphic elements if desired • Some pre-built graphic backgrounds are on the “Design” tab.

6. Slide Masters (cont.) • WARNING! • if just a single slide is selected when switching to a different master (via the “Design” tab), PowerPoint will switch the ENTIRE PRESENTATION to the new master. • To switch just a single slide: insert a blank slide, select both the desired slide and the blank one, switch both to the new master, then delete the blank one.

7. Information Density • Don’t be afraid of “sparse” slides: • Give yourself room to elaborate • Telegraphic speech or complete sentences? • Telegraphic speech is faster to read, so students can focus on your lecture • Complete sentences allow slides to stand alone as review material • Choice of one or the other depends on what you want the slides to do

8. Examples: Information Density

9. Keywords are highlighted, the content is thematically cohesive, and later bullets build on earlier ones. Pressure • The air around us is a fluid (it flows). • This is not the same thing as being a liquid. • The air is under pressure from the weight of the atmosphere pushing down from above. • Objects moving through fluids create localized changes in pressure. • In a homogeneous fluid (same properties throughout), pressure changes begin at the source of movement and propagate outward spherically. Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

10. Whitespace is okay! Stick to the basics, and elaborate verbally with metaphors, analogies, examples, or information that is more in-depth. Waves • Objects moving at regular intervals of time are vibrating. • Vibrating objects cause periodic pressure changes (pressure changes that fluctuate in a repeating pattern). • Such repeating patterns are called waves. Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

11. This content could easily have fit on the previous slide, but works better as its own slide because the material is conceptually distinct. What is Sound? • Sound is the (human) perceptual response to pressure fluctuations in the atmosphere. • Technically, sound only exists in the awareness of the hearer. • Only pressure waves exist in the atmosphere. • In practice, however, we commonly talk about sound waves and sound pressure. Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

12. Pacing Yourself • In general don’t spend less than 1 minute on any slide • Anywhere from 1-5 minutes (or more) per slide is fine • Taking notes helps many students learn better, and if EVERYTHING is already on the slide, they may not take notes • Have the next day’s slides ready • If you finish early, you can fall back on a “preview” of tomorrow’s material • Better: have optional exercises, demos, data sets, or audio/video files standing by to fill in extra time

13. Pacing Yourself (continued) • Don’t feel like you need to lecture for the whole class time • Example: for a 90-minute phonetics lecture, I plan: • 30-40 minutes of new material (lecture+slides) • 20 minutes for questions & review of previous day • 20-30 minutes of audio files, analysis demos, etc • 5-10 minutes break

14. Good Design • EVERYTHING on a slide is information • Think about what information should be “foreground” and what should be “background” • Judicious use of color, line weight, size, and italics/bold can make a big difference in how easily a slide is understood.

15. What is most important on this slide? What stands out most? Consonant Place Features(This chart only shows fricatives) Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

16. What is most important on this slide? What stands out most? Consonant Place Features(This chart only shows fricatives) Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

17. The Power of Imagery • Illustrations can take a LONG time to create, but can also make hard concepts easy • Prioritize illustrations for the hardest concepts first • Avoid spending hours on illustrations at the expense of other content • Use placeholders (you can always just delete them if you run out of time) • Use animation only when it reinforces the concept

18. Some Illustration Examples

19. Note the color coding of the different landmarks Voice Onset Time (VOT) VOT Stop closure Releaseburst Onset of voicing time Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

20. Note the correspondence between images and text The Glottalic Airstream Mechanism • Glottalic Egressive Sounds (Ejectives) • Air is trapped between glottal and oral closures. • Trapped air gets compressed by raising the larynx. • When the oral closure is released, a burst of compressed air exits the oral cavity, generating the speech sound. • All ejectives are voiceless, and are transcribed with a diacritic added to the symbol for the corresponding pulmonic voiceless consonant: / pʼ tʼ kʼ / Quechua Voiceless“tongue” [qaʎu]“bridge” [ʧaka] Aspirated“shawl” [qʰaʎu]“large ant” [ʧʰaka] Ejective“tomato sauce” [qʼaʎu]“hoarse” [ʧʼaka] 1 2 3 http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/

21. ANIMATED SLIDE This slide is animated to show each language individually, then show all four at the end. The time axis is the most important element, so it is the darkest color. English /b/ English /p/ Spanish /b/ Spanish /p/ -160 -120 -80 -40 0 40 80 120 160 ms French /b/ French /p/ Thai /b/ Thai /p/ Thai /pʰ/ French /d/ Thai /d/ Thai /t/ French /t/ Thai /tʰ/ Spanish /d/ Spanish /t/ English /d/ English /t/ Cross-Linguistic Comparisons of VOT Sources: Rosner, B.S. et al. “Voice-onset times for Castilian Spanish initial stops.” Journal of Phonetics (2000) 28, 217–224. Kessinger, R.H. and Blumstein, S.E. “Effects of speaking rate on voice-onset time in Thai, French, and English.” Journal of Phonetics (1997) 25, 143–168. Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

22. ANIMATED SLIDE Here, the time and amplitude axes are less important, so they appear in a muted color. Peak-to-Peak Amplitude • The peak-to-peak amplitude is calculated by finding the difference between the highest and lowest values of the wave. amplitude (mV) 3 2 1 Amplitude = 2 mV time (ms) 1 2 3 4 5 –1 –2 –3 Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

23. ANIMATED SLIDE Note that the graph did not move between this slide and the previous one. This makes the parts that ARE different really stand out. Root Mean Square (RMS) Amplitude • The RMS is the average value of the amplitude of the wave over time. • Because part of the wave is below zero, we square each of the values first to make them all positive. • After finding the average of the squared values, we take the square root of the result. amplitude (mV) 3 2 1 Amplitude = 0.7071 mV time (ms) 1 2 3 4 5 –1 –2 –3 Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

24. ANIMATED SLIDE This slide probably could have been done without animation and been just as clear… Calculating Amplitude:Which Method is Best? • Phoneticians typically use RMS amplitude because it more closely correlates to humans’ perceived loudness of sound. • RMS is also better at distinguishing complex waves: amplitude (mV) 3 2 1 same peak-to-peak amplitude time (ms) 1 2 3 4 5 –1 –2 different RMS amplitudes –3 Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

25. Summary Slides • Summary slides are awesome! • Interim summary slides make great transition points • Summary slides are flexible in how long you spend talking about them, depending on how short on time you are

26. Example summary slide Summary • Frequency is measured in Hz (cycles per second) and is a property of waves. • Pitch is the percept of frequency, measured in Bark or Mels. • Amplitude is a measure of the magnitude of pressure fluctuations (measured in Pa or mV). • Intensity (measured in dB) is usually calculated by the root mean square method of measuring amplitude over a span of time. • Loudness is the percept of intensity, measured in sones or Phon. • Phase does not affect our perception of sound per se, but it does help us identify a sound’s directional source. Linguistics 450/550: Introduction to Phonetics Slides by Richard Wright & Dan McCloy, University of Washington

27. Summary • Save time by making some decisions up front (color scheme, slide master) • Pace yourself and keep the information density low • It’s a lecture, not a slideshow: slides are speaker support • Focus illustration efforts on the hardest concepts, and foreground important elements using color or other design elements