Creating Visual Stories That Resonate

These are my live blogged notes from the webinar Training Online: Creating Visual Stories That Resonate by Nancy Duarte. My side comments are in italics. Any errors, typos, and incomplete thoughts are mine, not Nancy’s. Check out Cammy Bean’s notes too.

She started with her personal story, told mostly with old photos on the slides and very little text

Story: likeable hero, encounters roadblocks, emerges transformed

Why are so many presentations bad? We use presentations to create reports–dense “slide-uments”

When you need to persuade, use a story

Every story should have a beginning, middle, and end, with a turning point to move between sections

The presenter is not the hero of the story: the audience is the hero. They are the ones who have the power and must decide to take action. You are the mentor (she showed Yoda on Luke’s back while talking about mentors)

Joseph Campbell story structure

• Ordinary world
• Call to adventure
• Refusal of call
• Meeting with the mentor–this is a turning point

Freytag’s dramatic story structure; has a shape.

She wondered if great presentations had a shape like this

• What is
• What could be (the gap between this and what is is the “call to adventure”)
• Keep going back and forth between these two

An image of this shape is found in this summary of Duarte’s book

This shape can be used as an analysis tool She analyzed a 90-minute speech by Steve Jobs, who kept the audience riveted, laughing or clapping about every 30 seconds.

Jobs was passionate about his product and constantly marveled at it during the speech

STAR moment: Something They’ll Always Remember

Same kind of analysis for the I Have a Dream speech. Lots of pauses, more like poetry than a traditional speech. King had a rhythm to his speech.  Color coded analysis for the words: repetition; metaphor, visual words; familiar songs, scripture, literature; political references. He moved back and forth between what is and what could be at the phrase level at “I have a dream”; makes more excitement. Familiar references touch something that already resonates within the audience.

The stakes are higher now. It used to be that you could get away with crappy presentations because everyone else is crappy too. Now, there are books and best practices, and TED presentations set the bar higher. Twitter also sets the bar higher; the audience no longer has to suffer alone. They have a back channel and can revolt against a presenter. The audience can say cruel things. (example tweets from the disastrous #heweb09 keynote). Back channel can be good too; people may move to a good presentation they hear about on a back channel at a conference.

Don’t stay trapped in the roadblocks section of your own story. Push through and emerge transformed.

We need to find what we are passionate about to change the world.

Question: What do you do when you’re not fighting for human rights or a product that can’t be marveled at like the iphone?

Answer: some people really need to have passion and some don’t. Everyone needs to be passionate about something, but it may not be work related. People won’t invest in their communication skills if they aren’t passionate.

Question: How much time do we need to invest in our communication?

Answer: If you are given something you need to present in 3 days, it’s probably not high stakes. Categorize what is really important and what isn’t, and fight for the ones that are important. When you are launching your new 5-year vision, or making a big sale, you need to put a lot of time in.

Question: Going back to your “present in person” idea from the beginning, what about globally dispersed teams that don’t meet in person?

Answer: Plan and prepare. She stood up in front of pictures of people to practice so she would talk more like face to face in this online format. Your biggest competitor with virtual presentations is their inbox; if you aren’t more interesting than their inbox, they’ll be reading email. Think about getting their attention back. Break it into very small “Halloween candy size” bites to keep them engaged.

Question: You mentioned investing time in improving communications. What are ways people can invest in their skills?

Answer: Be a consumer of good information. You also need to practice it. They have workshops, other people do too–toastmasters

Question: Is there a time limit on keeping interest?

Answer: Depends on the speaker. Some can hold it for much longer. Emotionally charged content can engage people for longer.

Question: Who is your favorite storyteller?

Answer: Several favorites: Cheryl Sandberg (COO Facebook) is one

Question: Are there differences between people in how interested they are in stories? Are women more interested in stories than men?

Answer: Women may have a higher capacity for emotional content. There are stories as little anecdotes, overall themes, or story structure. You need to know your audience. Emotionally charged content may not work with biochemists. Everyone is human though, and everyone responds to story if it applies.

Question: How many slides should you use?

Answer: It depends. Keep one idea on a slide. If you have 5 ideas on a slide, the audience will read ahead and think you are slow. Slide count doesn’t really affect presentation length; if you click fast, you may have a lot of slides. This was about 75 slides for about 35 minutes of presentation.

Question: What do you do with SMEs who want to include everything in their presentation? How do you help them chunk content into smaller bits?

Answer: Slides are free. It’s not like you’re printing and more slides is more money to print. Sometimes a slide does need more information. They usually do printouts for dense information so they walk away with it rather than trying to cram it on a slide. Put a picture of the handout on the screen and tell people to look at the handout instead of looking at dense text on a slide.

Question: What is the greatest lesson you have learned from a webinar that didn’t go well?

Answer: Technology glitches. She had 25 people in the room, 200 online. It was distracting. She didn’t do a technical walkthrough first. Energy is really hard when you are the speaker and everyone else is muted. You have to keep your own energy very high.

Question: Back to the sailing analogy: how do we use the wind resistance idea to catch the audience’s attention?

Answer: The best way is to grab a few coworkers or the potential audience members. Let them think about ways people might resist. Get people who are comfortable being honest about resistance and reactions.

Question: How do your in person presentations differ from what you do in a webinar?

Answer: She really feeds on audience energy, but she tries to not have much gap. She describes things more visually when presenting online to make up for physical presence.

Question: How do you build this in written materials? Can we use this storytelling in emails or other communication?

Answer: Yes, this can work in other forms of persuasion. Her book resonate follows this form on every page, and then the book follows the form.

Question: Best practices for hybrid live/virtual audiences?

Answer: Make sure the technology works. Acknowledge that people who are calling in are humans too to make them not feel like they are outside looking in.

Revisiting Learning Styles

As part of David Kelly’s Learning Styles Awareness Day, I’m revisiting the idea of learning styles. I admit that when I was taught learning styles in my education program, I didn’t question it. It made intuitive sense, and I’d never heard a real criticism of the theory. When I started digging into the research though, I realized that the research support for learning styles is pretty flimsy.

If I think back to the way learning styles were taught to me though, it was never applied the way that the theory is “officially” supposed to work. The most common idea is that people have some sort of style, and if you match that style they will learn better. That’s what Will Thalheimer’s still-unanswered research challenge asks for: something where individuals receive training matched to their style. If you’re a visual learner, you would only receive learning via visual methods; if you’re an auditory learner, you’d listen to everything you learn, etc.

That was never how it was applied in the classroom though. For K-12 classroom applications, learning styles were really about providing multiple methods of learning for everyone in the class. In a physical classroom, you didn’t have the option of individualizing everything, so you tended to look for ways to hit the visual and auditory at the same time or for multiple activities to reinforce the same content.

As a music teacher, that might mean something like teaching rhythms through multiple channels. I’d start by having students listen to me chant and clap a rhythm (auditory), then have them echo that rhythm back (auditory and kinesthetic). After several minutes of echoing rhythms with a specific type of pattern, I’d draw a rhythm on the chalkboard (yes, actual chalk) and connect how it looks to how it sounds (visual and auditory). Then we’d practice reading some rhythms with similar patterns, with them looking, chanting, and clapping all together.

If I was teaching music today, I’d do that same kind of lesson, just not because of learning styles. That’s all based on the Kodály method, which does have research support (at least as far as I know; I haven’t dug into it since I rarely teach music anymore). But the idea of approaching concepts from multiple angles with different methods and media still makes sense. It isn’t because I’m matching to a particular style; it’s because I’m helping everyone learn through multiple channels. This might be what Tom Stafford from Mind Hacks is getting at when he says “Having thought about learning styles helps teachers improve their teaching and also helps increase their confidence and motivation.” I really wish he provided a citation for the idea that thinking about learning styles helps teachers improve their teaching though; I’d like to know whether that’s just his opinion or something with data to support it.

So what does this mean for me as an instructional designer today, rather than a K-12 music and band teacher? As an instructional designer, I basically ignore learning styles. I do think about presenting information with both visuals and audio, but that’s more based on cognitive load theory than learning styles. I’m also working to do better at visual presentation with graphics and not just words, because that is supported by research. As Judy Unrein noted “…humans are such overwhelmingly visual creatures that if we simply catered better to that one sense, we could improve the vast majority of our designs.”

Judy’s idea of focusing on interaction preferences is an interesting one. People do have different preferences, and those preferences can change based on the context (and the type of content, I would add). Giving learners some control over how they interact with the training does seem beneficial. If we don’t lock down the navigation, they can choose which parts they really need. In spite of the research, I personally find audio in e-learning to be generally obnoxious, so if I can turn it off and read the captions instead, I almost always will do that instead. I can read much faster that you can read to me, thank you very much, so I’m annoyed if you don’t give me the option of reading.

What about you? Is there anything in learning styles that you find useful in your own practice, or is it something you’ve abandoned in favor of other ideas?

Image credit: rhythm by billaday

Five Years of Blogging

Five years ago today, I published my first two posts on this blog. As I noted in my first post, five years ago I was developing a course on social media tools for K-12 teachers called Building Collaborative Online Environments. I didn’t feel that I could really encourage teachers to use these tools with digging in to use them myself. Will Richardson was the SME for that course, and I’m very grateful for his influence in starting me on this path.

This is my 820th post—not very many in five years, actually, especially when you consider how many of those are bookmarks posts. In 2010, I slowed down in posting quite a bit; I only posted 36 times total in the entire year. I have done better in 2011, with 52 posts, but one of my goals for 2012 is to blog more regularly. I can see the effect of infrequent posting in my stats. Monthly views plateaued for most of 2009 and 2010, but started increasing again in 2011 as I posted more often.

When I started this, I had no idea how much I would learn through blogging and how many wonderful people I would get to know. I’m a better instructional designer today because I’ve been blogging for five years. This blog forces me to reflect on what I’m doing and learning on an ongoing basis. I’m not sure I would have been confident enough to quit my job and become an independent consultant if I didn’t know I have a network of terrific people built through this blog and other tools. Thank you for reading, commenting, blogging, and sharing. I’m looking forward to continuing to learn with you all for the next five years.

Image: ‘Five Years‘

Top Ten Tools for Learning 2011

This is the fifth year that Jane Hart has been collecting lists of top tools for learning. The list will be finalized on November 13, but you can see the ongoing results in this list. I have contributed my lists in 2007, 2008, and 2009. You can contribute your top tools too.

As in 2009, I’m going to divide my list into personal learning and course development.

Personal Learning

Google Reader is still my main tool for personal learning. I just checked my stats, and I currently have 320 subscriptions and have read over 8000 items in the last 30 days, and over 300,000 items since February 2009.

WordPress.com is my blogging platform of choice and a great tool for personal reflection.

Diigo is my social bookmarking option. I also back up bookmarks to Delicious, but especially after the disastrous transition to AVOS (a third of my bookmarks didn’t survive the migration), I’m so glad I don’t rely on Delicious as a primary tool. Diigo’s highlighting option has always differentiated it from Delicious for me, and my weekly bookmarks posts are automatically generated by Diigo.

Google Search has never been on my list before, but it really should have been. Google is one of the first places I go when I need to learn something specific. I use Google Scholar search, blog search, or other advanced options as needed.

LinkedIn is increasingly a place I find useful conversations and resources, especially in the groups.

Course Development

Microsoft Word isn’t exactly the most glamorous tool here, but it is a tool I use regularly for design documents, storyboards, and other projects for clients.

Google Docs is where I keep track of my time spent on projects, create quick drafts, and other tasks.

Captivate is my tool of choice for simulations and interactive learning.

Moodle is the LMS I use most currently. I’m so thankful for the active Moodle community and the wealth of knowledge available in the forums, community documentation, and other sources.

Jing is the best free tool for screenshots I’ve ever used. It’s immensely helpful for creating technical documentation, job aids, and the like, as well as for documenting issues when reviewing courses.

Image Credit: 10-10-10 by woodleywonderworks

10 Minutes of Motivation Research

Daniel Pink shared this animated whiteboard video explaining some of the research and ideas from his book Drive.

Pink’s ideas have been applied to learning by others, but the basic idea is that for all but the simplest tasks, people aren’t motivated well by big monetary rewards. What rewards people is autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

This, of course, has implications for instructional design. When we create lockstep learning, we are removing autonomy. When we create learning experiences where the content is distanced from context and seems irrelevant to learners, we don’t take advantage of the motivation of purpose. Learning itself is a form of mastery, but we disguise it sometimes.

The research Pink shares in his book reinforces the idea of lifelong learning. We keep learning even when we aren’t being paid because learning itself is intrinsically motivating. The bigger question is how do we support that lifelong learning, providing people with the tools and coaching to be self-directed learners?