Syllabus-Speaking in Science

Instructor: Dr. G. A. Lozano
 

Course Description

Aims: To examine the principles of public speaking in science, to put these principles to practice in a relaxed atmosphere of peers, to receive feedback, and to improve our ability to speak in public. Two particular formats will be emphasized: the conference presentation and the class lecture.

     Topics covered shall include: defining your audience, handling nerves, use and misuse of technology, room arrangement, eye contact, preparation, body language, use of the podium, “hums and ahs”, graph presentation, tables, figures, statistics, introducing a speaker, dealing with questions, etc. It is mostly common sense, just organized into baby steps.

     This is a course about speaking, so unlike most classes, the instructor will NOT be the one doing most of the talking. The course will start with a few lectures but afterwards, or interspersed with the lectures, students will be expected to give several oral presentations of progressively increasing length and complexity. One of these lectures shall be on some aspect of their thesis work and another on something not related to their thesis work. These baby steps will start with a 30 second self-introduction to your classmates and will culminate with a public symposium in which you will have 15-20 minutes to present your research.

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Schedule: TBA. ​Yes, you are expected to attend, even when you are not the one presenting.  We need an audience. Yes, you are supposed to show up on time.    We shall meet in several rooms so you get used to different types of venues.

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Course Credits: TBA. Not my concern really. I just want to help you give a better talk.

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Grading: Yes, unfortunately, grades will be assigned. This is real course, and it is technically possible to fail, but unlikely if you just show up to class. I think we decided that it is just a pass/fail kind of course. 

 

Some reading material 

Turk, C. 1985. Effective speaking. Taylor and Francis, London.

Carnegie, D. 1990. The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking.: Pocket

Useful Websites

Twenty-five years of PowerPoint.- A BBC article celebrating the 25 anniversary and dreading the decline in the quality of presentations over the same time span. Cause and effect or coincidence?

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Six Minutes.- A public speaking and presentations skills web site.

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Gapminder.- Some of the best use of graphics, and modern presentation technology.

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TED.- They used to have extremely good talks by notable people, but the quality has definitely declined over time. One of the main problems is that the format does not include a question period, so some people have abused the format to talk crazy stuff knowing that they will not be challenged.

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Course Site.- I will post stuff here as we go along.