Tuesday, 30 November 2010

Pecha Kucha and Presentations

Pecha Kucha, or ペチャクチャin the original Japanese, is a presentation style which places limitations on the presenter which they must overcome in order to give a good presentation. The rules of Pecha Kucha are simple, each presenter has to give a presentation consisting of 20 slides, each of which will be displayed for just 20 seconds. This means the presenter has to complete their presentation in 6 minutes 40 seconds.

Pecha Kucha events take place all over the world (if you are interested check out the website http://www.pecha-kucha.org/ ) and are often used as an opportunity for designers or people in creative industries to show their work, but it is not just limited to creative areas. Notable British celebrities like comedian Johnny Vegas, actress Joanna Lumley and journalist Jon Snow have taken part in Pecha Kucha nights.



University presentations usually won’t be in Pecha Kucha style (although sometimes they are, your tutor will tell you what they expect), but you can still use Pecha Kucha to help with your work. The essence of Pecha Kucha is brevity and directness, you must say what you need to say in a very short amount of time. How does this help with presentations at university? It’s quite easy when writing a presentation for your lecturer and/or class to panic and try to include everything you know about the topic, whether it is necessary or not. This can result in slides packed with too much information and scripts containing far more words than you can say in your allotted time. The results are sprawling presentations which lack focus.

Whilst writing your presentation try and adapt it to fit into a Pecha Kucha style. 20 slides, each on screen for 20 seconds. 6 minutes 40 seconds. Can you get your presentation to fit into this time? Is 20 seconds long enough to read your slides?

Working to tight limits like this will help you focus. A slide that cannot be read in a 20 second Pecha Kucha slot will not work in a general presentation either, crowded slides which take a long time to read will cause the audience to stop reading and maybe even lose interest completely if there are a lot of them. Slides are there to aid your talk, not overload the audience with information. Pecha Kucha’s limited time on each slide shows up perfectly how overcrowded slides can fail.


From http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/.

The time limit will also help your speech. The purpose of the limited time to speak is not to encourage the speaker to talk faster, but to use fewer words. It is very easy in all assignments to ‘waffle’, to say things over and over in slightly different ways, to go off on tangents, and to use too many words in an attempt to make your piece sound more ‘academic’. When you only have 6 minutes 40 seconds to say everything you need to say, you will find you will need to concentrate on what you want to say, to say it as simply and effectively as possible. Precise, direct language is the best sort to use in presentations. Flowery, convoluted or irrelevant language will only hinder your audience’s understanding of your presentation.

These lessons, all of which can be learnt by writing a Pecha Kucha presentation, will help make your presentation better. You can also get together with some coursemates to have a Pecha Kucha event where you all give your Pecha Kucha presentations. They can give you feedback on your presentation and you can practice talking in front of a crowd. As the presentation is only 6 minutes 40 seconds long it will seem less daunting than a 10 or 20 minute talk, and should help you overcome any nerves you might have.

Matt Might's 'Illustrated Guide To A PhD'

Matt Might (http://matt.might.net) produced a nice little guide to PhD studies to give his students a sense of perspective.

Here's Matt's version and here's the UK English 'translation' which applies Matt's diagrams to our own education system.

Spidergrams

Having trouble organising your ideas? Spidergrams or spider diagrams are an efficient and useful tool for putting your ideas down on paper and planning assignments, creating a web of ideas and phrases which you can use to plan what you will say and when.

For instance, if you want to decide where to go on holiday you can use a spidergram.


Click to expand

How to make a spidergram


A spidergram is meant to fit on a relatively small space. Try to use one piece of paper, two if absolutely necessary. You are trying to present your ideas in a compact form, save the in depth detail for the assignment itself. However you should not make your spidergram too small either, space it out so you can read each branch of the web, and see what it is connected to. It can get confusing if you cannot see which points link to each other, or cannot read a point

Start with the subject. Place it in the middle of the diagram (in this case the question of where to go on holiday). It is a good idea to indicate which is the central ‘bubble’ – maybe highlight it or use a different shape/lettering/etc. From here all your ideas will flow, and they are connected to the central subject.

Each branch of the web represents a different main point. Around the central point write your secondary points. If there are further points to be made have them branching off from the secondary ideas. In the example above the secondary points are examples of countries the writer is considering going to on holiday. The branches coming off the points marked “Spain” and “Thailand” are thoughts which the writer has related specifically to those countries.

Each point needs to contain just enough information to tell you what the point is about. Summarise what you want to say. Too many words and the spidergram won’t be useful as there will be too many words on it. Smaller branches are used as examples to support the ideas and points in bigger branches.

When doing a spidergram for your assignments make sure that you know where any information you use comes from. You could have small branches coming off each example to note where it came from, or you can include the reference location in the text on each branch. Do whatever makes most sense for you.



Click to expand

In summary:
- Use a whole piece of paper - leave yourself lots of space for you ideas.
- Put the subject/question in the centre.
- Put each main point on a new branch - the examples and related thoughts will form branches coming off each main point.
- Summarise - don't write too much.
- Make sure you know where you got all your points and examples from, you don't want to have to search through all your notes to find lost information.
- Leave space to add notes later, you might forget to add a piece of information when you make the spidergram and you don't want to end up having to redraw the whole thing just to add a new idea or example.

Thursday, 11 November 2010

Referencing Extra #1 - Radio Shows & Podcasts

The first step to successful referencing is to read our Study Basics guide to the Harvard Referencing System. However due to space we were not able to include every single possible source you might reference for an assignment. This is the first in a series of posts covering some of those sources which aren't in the Study Basics guide. If there are any other sources you are unsure how to reference please leave a comment below or email us at studyskills@salford.ac.uk.

Referencing Radio Programmes



Referencing a radio programme can take several forms. It is important to give as much information as possible so the reader can find the exact quote. There are several different styles for referencing a radio show, below is the one we recommend but if your lecturer wants you to reference it differently please use their recommended style.

The author should be the person who says the lines you are referencing, not the person whose radio show it is (if the show is eponymous or has a regular presenter). Use the following format:

Author name (year) ‘Name of Programme’, Radio station. Date of broadcast. Time of broadcast.

For example this could appear as:

Peacock, L. (2009) ‘Today’, BBC Radio 4. 15 May 2009. 6.00hrs.

The speaker was called L. Peacock. This is not the name of the regular presenters of Today, it is the name of the guest who spoke on the subject we are interested in. We have also formatted the time in the 24 hour clock, although if you like you could say “6am” as long as you are consistent throughout the piece.

However this reference isn’t as helpful as it could be. It doesn’t say when in the programme the quotation was said. It also leaves it up to the tutor to find the programme if they want to check. This is a limitation tutors are familiar with, but check with them first if it is ok for you to reference material in this way.

Some radio programmes find their way online in the form of “Listen again” features, or podcasts. If you were to hear the above radio programme on a “Listen again” (played using the website’s internal media player and not available to download and play through another device such as an mp3 player) feature then you will have to state this in your reference:

Author name (year) ‘Name of Programme’, Radio station. Date of broadcast. Time of broadcast (exact time). Website address [date accessed].

Referencing an online version of a radio show requires more information, but it also allows you to be more accurate – you can rewind the programme and note the exact time of the material you are using, but you must still include the original broadcast time. Some shows might be broadcast twice a day so always be specific about which edition you have listened to. Additionally, when including the time of the relevant material make sure to indicate how long the show is (in this case of the example below you are listening at the end of the first half hour of a three hour show). If you listen in this way you must include the website address and the date you accessed it, as you would with any website reference. You must also make sure you indicate that you have used an online listening service. In our example we listened to a Radio 4 programme but we used the BBC iPlayer to listen to it, not a radio. Make sure both these pieces of information are included, instead of BBC Radio 4 as the radio station put BBC iPlayer: Radio 4.

Peacock, L. (2009) ‘Today’, BBC iPlayer: BBC Radio 4. 15 May 2009. 6.00hrs (27.50-29.20/3:00:00). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ [accessed 17 May 2010].

Some radio programmes are available as a podcast, a file which you can download from the programme’s website or a podcast store, and listen to on an mp3 player or other media player. If you listen to the material in this format you must reference this in a similar manner to the “Listen again” version above, but make it clear you listened to a podcast.

Peacock, L. (2009) ‘Today’, BBC Radio 4, BBC Podcasts. 15 May 2009. 6.00hrs (27.50-29.20/3:00:00). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ [accessed 17 May 2010].

Tuesday, 9 November 2010

Flashcards

Here at Study Skills we appreciate how hard it can be to start revising for exams. Even after you have dragged yourself away from all the distractions around you and settled down to your work, it can be intimidating to see a pile of paper covered in notes or a dense textbook full of words words words. What is the answer?

Small is beautiful.

Information looks less scary when it arrives in several small packages rather than one big one. And this can be achieved when revising by using flashcards. Flashcards are very helpful and easy both to use and to create. All you need to do is break down whatever you need to revise into small parts and put each part onto a separate flashcard.



For example if you were a midwife studying the stages of pregnancy you could create flashcards detailing each stage and your role within it, or if you are an English student studying Jane Eyre you could break the book down into a flashcard for each chapter, or a flashcard for each theme within the book.

Making the flashcards will require you to think about the subject, decide what information to put on each card, rephrasing it to fit in some cases, and this is excellent revision work in itself – you are thinking about your notes and reading, rather than just mindlessly copying it out. This aids memory as you are actively engaging with the material rather than just acting like a human photocopier.

Organising your flashcards

Of course flashcards need to be organised carefully, otherwise you’ll have a room full of seemingly unconnected pieces of paper, or a computer hard drive full of small files scattered across numerous folders. If you are using paper flashcards get yourself a file to store the flashcards in – you can even buy specific flashcard boxes. Use different coloured paper, or big labels to indicate different modules or subjects. Use different boxes. Do whatever it takes but stay on top of your flashcards, they can easily run out of control and it’s entirely up to you to show your organisational skills to keep them in a usable order.

A similar rule applies to using electronic flashcards, keep track of them using folders and don’t let them overwhelm you. Also, if they are important or you spend a long time working on them it is wise to make a back up set – your computer could crash and you could lose all your carefully assembled flashcards.

If you want to have your flashcards on your computer you might want to consider using a flashcard website. Flashcard website have advantages over regular paper or word file flashcards as they can be stored online and used on any computer, they don’t take up as much space as paper, and some website offer some interesting and even fun opportunities for your flashcards.

Take Quizlet.



Quizlet is a nice, well designed website which allows you to make flashcard sets, search the flashcard sets made by others, and turn the flashcards you make/find into quizzes. To create a flashcard you simply write a “term” and a “definition” to go with it. You can use this to connect names, technical terms, theories or even pictures to their definitions. Take a look at the links below to see some flashcard sets which are already on the website.

European capital cities.
State flags of American states.

Basic function graphs.

Each set has a link to a set of quizzes and online games you can play with the flashcards which may help you learn the terms faster.

There are other flashcard websites out there, Quizlet might not be for everyone, so take a look and see what there is and what suits your learning style the best. If you see any websites you think are particularly good please leave a comment or email us at studyskills@salford.ac.uk and we’ll take a look.

Tuesday, 2 November 2010

Writing a Literature Review workshop - 29th November

Have you got a literature review due for your course? Want help with how to write one? We still have a limited number of places left on our Writing A Literature Review workshop, on Monday 29th November, 14.00-16.00 in Peel 103.


Want to make sure your literature review is the best it could be? Sign up here http://www.careers.salford.ac.uk/page/litreview