Tactics: group presentations and Q&A (Comms for GM1)

If you're a student on the University of Cambridge's Multidisciplinary Design course (GM1), this episode is for you.

Indeed, it focuses on considerations specific to the course, based on observations from previous cohorts' presentations.

This is the third of three episodes on presentations. There is a parallel set of episodes on poster presentations.

Contents

• 00:00 Group prsentations
• 01:35 Use of space
• 03:30 Q & A
• 09:14 Further resources

Link

The protocol, 'Giving a presentation', is available from the Frontinus website, here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QyT64vNnO7RXUhoWj9WBStOewtOwzv6s/view.

Credit: The music is from Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, courtesy of the US Marine Band.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

Welcome to the third episode of presentations from our Recording Series on Multidisciplinary Design. This is Dr. NG Musa, and I'm delighted to be accompanied by Mr. Anthony Haynes to speak about tactics specific to presentations for the GM1 course in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. So greeting, Mr. Anthony.

SPEAKER_00: 0:28

Greetings, NG.

SPEAKER_01: 0:30

The presentations on this course are group presentations. What considerations does that involve?

SPEAKER_00: 0:36

I think the first thing is to think about what I'm going to call the choreography, the question of who stands where or who sits where on the stage and when. And it's important to rehearse these things. So when one speaker hands over to another, If they're not rehearsed, often there's a bit of nervousness about, you know, is it you next? Who's next? And where do I stand? Do I come forward? And so on. And it all just feels a bit edgy and a bit nerdy. So it's really important there. You can do something like appoint someone to act as a compare or as a host to make that go smoothly, if you wish. But also, you can just rehearse... Something like, and now we hand over to Charlotte, who's going to explain this. And Charlotte confidently strides to the center of the space. And it doesn't look nervy at all. It looks like you're working as a team.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35

Brilliant. So what other considerations might there be for the use of space?

SPEAKER_00: 1:39

Very often when I've watched presenters on this course... people kind of pin themselves to the back wall a bit, particularly if they don't really like public speaking and they really don't want to be in front of an audience. They try and sort of distance themselves from the whole thing by standing with their backs to the back wall. And you really want to avoid that. And you want to create a sense of confidence and engagement by coming forward and using the space. And don't be afraid of moving right up to the audience and being very close to them, because then it will feel more like a conversation with them rather than addressing them from a distance. I think when there's a big space between the audience and the speaker, it creates a sense of chasm between And it's just uncomfortable for everyone. One thing you can consider as a way of using the space more effectively is to have a panel format. That's to say you have a line or a semicircle of, say, five or six chairs, whatever it is. And then what you can do is Particularly when you're fielding a Q&A, actually you can all be sitting down and you can appoint one of the group as a host and the host will field the question and say, Ben, what would you like to say about that? When it's not a Q&A, you can all be sitting there and one person at a time can get up to say their thing. But sometimes having this... sense of a panel makes people feel more comfortable and confident what a lot of people dislike is the experience of being the one person on the stage as a sort of isolated speaker so a panel layout can help to avoid that

SPEAKER_01: 3:30

Well, I think you just mentioned it on Passant a second ago, but we haven't really said much about question and answer. And I know that's a crucial concern, particularly when it's a group presentation. So what's your recommendation about handling the Q&A session?

SPEAKER_00: 3:46

Well, this is an area which I think presents a massive opportunity. People often feel very nervous about the Q&A because, of course, it's something that you can't control. But in fact, my experience, several years running, the tutor of the course, Peter Long, asked me to suggest marks, grades for each group. And he asked for two grades, one for their presentation and one for the Q&A. And what I found was I don't think I ever gave a lower mark for how they handled the Q&A in the presentation. And very often I gave them a higher mark. for the way they handled the Q&A rather than the presentation. Now, that seems to be very interesting because the implication of that would be, well, maximize the time that you've got for a Q&A. So in a previous episode, I suggested that you might prepare a talk so it finishes slightly early. And if it does finish slightly early, that time will be taken up with more Q&A. And it seems to me logically that might well help your grade. So that's the first thing I'd say is actually don't, shy away from it. What I've noticed is often someone asks a good question and the student's done a lot of work on it and that work hasn't managed to get into the presentation, but now we've got the license. Well, yeah, I can tell you all about that. Incidentally, I'm going to make a pragmatic suggestion and I'm going to leave you to decide whether you think this is ethical or not. I think you can plant a question. So you can ask, because you're all in a class together, you can ask someone who's not in your group to ask a question straight away. And what that means is you're basically extending the amount of time you've got to present because your answer is like an appendix to your presentation. But it also makes you very comfortable, you know, that you know what the first question is going to be. By the way, when you finish your presentation, Avoid saying, are there any questions? So there are two problems with that. The first is it creates a sort of nervousness about, I don't know, are there any questions? Everyone looks a bit nervous. Have you got a question? I don't know. I haven't got, you know, everyone's sort of wondering what's going to happen next. So you don't want to create that uncertainty. Also, you don't want to imply that the only thing the audience can do is ask questions. They might want to make suggestions. They might want to make comments. So rather than, Are there any questions? What would you like to discuss? Now, then when people ask questions, one of the nerve wracking things is you're standing there listening to the question and you're thinking, oh, my goodness, what can I say? And very often there's something it feels like. An infinite number of things that you could say, certainly a multitude. What do I say now? I could say this, I could say that. And that's stressful trying to process that all at the same time. So my solution to that is to couch it as a permutation problem. That's to say, when someone's asking a question, you know you've got to give an answer. But give yourself a limited number of answers, sort of a handful, half a dozen possible responses. And then all you have to do when you're listening to the question is think, well, which one is it? And you're just perming, you're just selecting an answer. So I'll give you an example. Actually, sorry, would you mind repeating the question? You know, either because you didn't hear it or you're not quite sure of it. That's fine. No one minds that. You're showing you're taking the question seriously. And also you're buying a bit of time. So that's not a bad thing to do. You could say, could we clarify the question? I'm not sure. Are you asking this or that? I'm not sure I understood. My apologies. And just ask them to restate it. Or you can say something like, yes, I agree with that. Or, no, I don't agree with that because... Or, well, yes and no. Or you can say, I don't know. For some reason, presenters are very reluctant to say this. Being a presenter means that you should know enough to be able to have a valuable presentation. It doesn't mean you have to pretend to be an infallible authority and know everything. So you are allowed to say... I don't know. And people will respect that because it's honest. And sometimes what happens is an audience member who does know will chip in and say, well, actually, so-and-so. Well, that's great. I mean, that's helping everyone. And sometimes you can simply answer by saying, thank you. Thank you for your suggestion. So what I've done there is I've got about half a dozen people And I'm just thinking it was a permutation problem. Which one am I going to plump for? And that's a much more relaxing thing than thinking, well, I could say anything.

SPEAKER_01: 8:48

Thank you. That was a very helpful and pragmatic approach, and I pray that our students will make the best of it. On that note, that brings us to the end of our episode, actually, on presentations for the GM1 course, where we took a broad approach of presentations in the first episode, followed by a focus on slides, where and how to use them effectively. And lastly, in this episode, we covered some tactics about delivering good presentations. However, there is obviously a lot more to say about presentations. So, Mr. Anthony, where can we go to find further advice and information about the topic?

SPEAKER_00: 9:22

Well, I've created a protocol called Giving a Presentation. It's designed just as a pragmatic It lists 10 actions that you can perform in order to help create an effective presentation. But it also gives some references to third-party resources to kind of open up the discussion much more to include other people's ideas. So that's online. And I will spell out the URL, but in the show notes, I'll put the link, which is probably simpler for things. The URL is... www.frontinus.org.uk. And Frontinus is all one word. It's like the word front, F-R-O-N-T, and then the word in, I-N, and then the word us, U-S. So www.frontinus.org.uk.

SPEAKER_01: 10:19

Brilliant. Thank you very much, Mr. Anthony, for sharing your precious expertise with us over the course of the few episodes. It has been a pleasure, as always, joining you and learning from

SPEAKER_00: 10:30

you. Thank you, Angie. It's been a pleasure for me too.

SPEAKER_01: 10:33

Thank you for listening and goodbye.