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Introduction

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Welcome to Talk the talk. This course will provide you with the language and strategies to deliver talks with a difference. It will boost your confidence and turn public speaking into a valuable experience.

First, watch the following video, in which Marshal Anderson introduces the course.

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Marshal Anderson

Welcome to Talk the talk. I'm Marshal Anderson. In my years as an English tutor at The Open University, and also as an occasional standup comedian, I've learned a great deal about what it means to be able to present an idea to an audience in a way that's both effective and persuasive. Most people struggle with public speaking and believe they will never be good at it. It can be scary but this course will help boost your confidence. We're going to break down the elements of a good presentation.

Let's get started, and watch some experienced speakers, think about how their talks are structured and what makes them work.

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Marshal Anderson will be your guide through the course. An Open University Associate Lecturer and occasional stand-up comedian, Marshal has years of experience presenting himself both online and offline. He’ll introduce each week, reminding you of what you’ve learned and mentioning the highlights of the week ahead.

Each week’s work is designed to take about three hours. This includes engaging with the course material online and working on your own talk – but if you want to develop your oral presentation skills you may well spend longer than this. Even just a short introduction can take a while to get right.

Before you start, The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations of the course. Your input will help to further improve the online learning experience. If you’d like to help, and if you haven’t done so already, please fill in this optional survey.

1.1 Leaving an impression

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Martin Bean

There is fantastic face-to-face learning, and there is lousy face-to-face learning or teaching. There is fantastic online distance education, and there is lousy online distance education. What should our goal be as we all consider opening ourselves up in digital spaces? Quite simply, as it always should have been. It has to be about great teaching. But if those students have never known a world without digital being part of their life, then shame on us if we think we can sit still, put our head in the sands and deliver a teaching experience for them that not only doesn't map to the world that they live in, doesn't map to the jobs and prosperity we wish for them and their families for the generations ahead.

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Quite convincing, isn’t he? But how exactly does he do it? Would you like to be able to talk like Martin Bean, former Vice-Chancellor of The Open University?

Over the next few weeks you will discover the ingredients needed to give effective presentations that leave a lasting impression on your audience. You will watch and analyse presentations, and you will prepare and give one yourself. Are you up for it?

1.1.1 Why are you here?

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Figure _unit1.1.1 Figure 1

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Why have you signed up for Talk the talk? What do you hope to get out of it?

Consider these questions:

In what situation might you want to give a talk?
What sort of content might you present?
Is there a specific aspect of your oral presentation skills you would like to develop?

1.1.2 What are talks for?

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Talks are used to inform, instruct, inspire, persuade and much more. Consider a speech or presentation you have witnessed and see if you can come up with examples of different talks that have had different purposes.

How were the purposes of these talks made clear to you?
What elements of those talks made them successful?
Can you identify what contributed to the failure of less effective talks?

TED Talks have built quite a reputation for finding good speakers on important subjects, so it’s a good place to look for examples of well-constructed and delivered talks. If you visit TED’s browse page you will see that talks have been classified to some extent by purpose; use the drop-down menu labelled ‘Rating’ and you will see categories like fascinating, jaw-dropping and ingenious.

Think about any rules you may have come up with to identify different kinds of talk and how they succeed or fail.

1.1.3 Example talk 1: Bill Davenhall

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Bill Davenhall

Can geographic information make you healthy? In 2001 I got hit by a train. My train was a heart attack. I found myself in a hospital in an intensive-care ward, recuperating from emergency surgery.

And I suddenly realised something: that I was completely in the dark. I started asking my questions, "Well, why me?" "Why now?" "Why here?" "Could my doctor have warned me?" So, what I want to do here in the few minutes I have with you is really talk about what is the formula for life and good health. Genetics, lifestyle and environment. That's going to sort of contain our risks, and if we manage those risks we're going to live a good life and a good healthy life. Well, I understand the genetics and lifestyle part. And you know why I understand that? Because my physicians constantly ask me questions about this.

Have you ever had to fill out those long, legal-size forms in your doctor's office? I mean, if you're lucky enough you get to do it more than once, right? Do it over and over again. And they ask you questions about your lifestyle and your family history, your medication history, your surgical history, your allergy history ... did I forget any history? But this part of the equation I didn't really get, and I don't think my physicians really get this part of the equation. What does that mean, my environment? Well, it can mean a lot of things. This is my life. These are my life places. We all have these.

While I'm talking I'd like you to also be thinking about: How many places have you lived? Just think about that, you know, wander through your life thinking about this. And you realise that you spend it in a variety of different places. You spend it at rest and you spend it at work. And if you're like me, you're in an airplane a good portion of your time travelling some place. So, it's not really simple when somebody asks you, "Where do you live, where do you work, and where do you spend all your time? And where do you expose yourselves to risks that maybe perhaps you don't even see?"

Well, when I have done this on myself, I always come to the conclusion that I spend about 75 per cent of my time relatively in a small number of places. And I don't wander far from that place for a majority of my time, even though I'm an extensive global trekker. Now, I'm going to take you on a little journey here. I started off in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I don't know if anybody might hail from north-eastern Pennsylvania, but this is where I spent my first 19 years with my little young lungs. You know, breathing high concentrations here of sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and methane gas, in unequal quantities - 19 years of this.

And if you've been in that part of the country, this is what those piles of burning, smouldering coal waste look like. So then I decided to leave that part of the world, and I was going to go to the mid-west. OK, so I ended up in Louisville, Kentucky. Well, I decided to be neighbours to a place called Rubbertown. They manufacture plastics. They use large quantities of chloroprene and benzene. Okay, I spent 25 years, in my middle-age lungs now, breathing various concentrations of that. And on a clear day it always looked like this, so you never saw it. It was insidious and it was really happening.

And then I decided I had to get really smart, I would take this job in the West Coast. And I moved to Redlands California. Very nice, and there my older, senior lungs, as I like to call them, I filled with particulate matter, carbon dioxide and very high doses of ozone. Okay? Almost like the highest in the nation. Alright, this is what it looks like on a good day. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. So, what's wrong with this picture? Well, the picture is, there is a huge gap here.

The one thing that never happens in my doctor's office. They never ask me about my place history. No doctor, can I remember, ever asking me, "Where have you lived?" They haven't asked me what kind of the quality of the drinking water that I put in my mouth or the food that I ingest into my stomach. They really don't do that. It's missing. Look at the kind of data that's available. This data's from all over the world - countries spend billions of dollars investing in this kind of research. Now, I've circled the places where I've been. Well, by design, if I wanted to have a heart attack I'd been in the right places. Right?

So, how many people are in the white? How many people in the room have spent the majority of their life in the white space? Anybody? Boy you're lucky. How many have spent it in the red places? Oh, not so lucky. There are thousands of these kinds of maps that are displayed in atlases all over the world. They give us some sense of what's going to be our train wreck. But none of that's in my medical record. And it's not in yours either. So, here's my friend Paul. He's a colleague. He allowed his cell phone to be tracked every two hours, 24/7, 365 days out of the year for the last two years, everywhere he went.

And you can see he's been to a few places around the United States. And this is where he has spent most of his time. If you really studied that you might have some clues as to what Paul likes to do. Anybody got any clues? Ski. Right. We can zoom in here, and we suddenly see that now we see where Paul has really spent a majority of his time. And all of those black dots are all of the toxic release inventories that are monitored by the EPA. Did you know that data existed? For every community in the United States, you could have your own personalised map of that. So, our cell phones can now build a place history.

This is how Paul did it. He did it with his iPhone. This might be what we end up with. This is what the physician would have in front of him and her when we enter that exam room instead of just the pink slip that said I paid at the counter. Right? This could be my little assessment. And he looks at that and he says, "Whoa Bill, I suggest that maybe you not decide, just because you're out here in beautiful California, and it's warm every day, that you get out and run at six o'clock at night. I'd suggest that that's a bad idea Bill, because of this report." What I'd like to leave you for are two prescriptions.

Okay, number one is, we must teach physicians about the value of geographical information. It's called geomedicine. There are about a half a dozen programmes in the world right now that are focused on this. And they're in the early stages of development. These programmes need to be supported, and we need to teach our future doctors of the world the importance of some of the information I've shared here with you today. The second thing we need to do is while we're spending billions and billions of dollars all over the world building an electronic health record, we make sure we put a place history inside that medical record.

It not only will be important for the physician; it will be important for the researchers that now will have huge samples to draw upon. But it will also be useful for us. I could have made the decision, if I had this information, not to move to the ozone capital of the United States, couldn't I? I could make that decision. Or I could negotiate with my employer to make that decision in the best interest of myself and my company.

With that, I would like to just say that Jack Lord said this almost 10 years ago. Just look at that for a minute. That was what the conclusion of the Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare was about, was saying that we can explain the geographic variations that occur in disease, in illness, in wellness, and how our healthcare system actually operates. That was what he was talking about on that quote. And I would say he got it right almost a decade ago. So, I'd very much like to see us begin to really seize this as an opportunity to get this into our medical records.

So with that, I'll leave you that in my particular view of health: Geography always matters. And I believe that geographic information can make both you and me very healthy. Thank you.

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In this video, Bill Davenhall, a health and human services expert, presents his ideas about the way in which our location (where we live and work) affects our health.

As you watch this video, make notes about the elements which make it effective. Think about:

the structure of the talk
the kind of language he uses
the words he chooses
his body language
the tone, pitch and volume of his voice
the speed at which he speaks
his level of preparation
the images he has selected
his belief in what he is saying.

Of course, there may be some parts of his talk that you think are weaker and could be improved; note those down too.

1.1.4 Building a talk

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Using your notes from the previous section, try and answer these questions:

How did Bill Davenhall signal which part of his talk he was in?
How did he make the transition from one part of his talk to the next?

1.1.5 What will your talk be about?

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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One of the main outcomes of Talk the talk is that you should create your own 5-minute talk.

You will start the process now, by deciding what you are going to talk about. This can be about anything at all that interests you and it can be for any purpose.

You may want to:

explain a process
argue for a cause
wake people up to a particular thing that interests you

Decide now what that will be and what effect you want your talk to have.

1.1.6 Search

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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You should have decided on the subject and purpose of the talk you’re going to give.

Explore the TED website (or any other online resource, such as Pathé speeches on YouTube for historical speeches from the Pathé news archive) and find at least one talk that gives you some ideas on how to proceed.

For instance, if you were going to talk about the economic effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, you might identify talks about things that impact economies. What you probably would not do is look for any talks on, say, predicting tsunamis. Straight away you can see that the chosen examples need to be more closely linked to the structure or kind of outcome the talk requires.

1.2 Making a good impression

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Marshal Anderson

Like a movie, book or song, a good talk will grab the listeners' attention from the very start and hold onto it. Having learnt about the elements of a good presentation, how do you inform the audience who you are, what you'll be talking about, and why should they listen to you? Will you start with a joke? Your job title? A story? Just what is it that people need to know right from the beginning? What might they already know?

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The introduction to your presentation will often be the most important part. You need to draw in your audience and get their attention.

1.2.1 Getting their attention

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Think back to how Bill Davenhall started his TED talk earlier this week. He used a very dramatic narrative device (as he compared his heart attack to a train crash), but what was the effect of this on his audience?

At this point, it’s important to be critical, which is not the same as simply criticising. Think of the story he told and ask yourself:

Is that the sort of information you would want to hear from a complete stranger?
Bill comes across as a very authoritative figure; but what exactly gives him that authority?
Do you think he tailored it directly to the TED audience?
How else might Bill have started his talk?

1.2.2 What makes a good introduction?

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Everyone will have different opinions on what makes a good introduction.

Building on your thoughts from the previous section, write a short guide on what you think makes for the best opening for a talk.

Remember:

There aren’t any hard and fast rules for introductions.
What might suit one speaker’s presentation style may not work for everyone.
You might want to think about Bill Davenhall’s talk or the one you will present yourself to give some focus.

1.2.3 From text to speech

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Figure _unit1.2.3 Figure 8

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You will have seen how an introduction is affected by the way it is delivered, but now it’s your turn to experiment with introductions:

Go back to the TED browse page and find another talk that interests you, but don’t play the video immediately.
Open the transcript and silently read the introduction.
Read it out loud.
Try reading it again but vary your tone, speed or pitch to see how it affects the effectiveness of the presentation.
You might also like to think about the kind of body language you’d expect to be used.

Now play the video. How does it differ from your expectations? Can you see why the speaker had a different approach from yours? Do you think that a text – a script for a talk – can be written in such a way that it is ‘obvious’ how it should be delivered?

Before you start sketching out your introduction in the next section, let us summarise what you have been learning about introductions:

It is usual to introduce yourself when you give a presentation, perhaps by saying who you are and what your interest in the topic of your talk is.
You can encourage people to be interested in what you are going to say by ‘hooking’ them in – ask a question, pose a problem to get your audience thinking, or tell a short personal story.
Use a phrase to state your purpose when starting a presentation, such as ‘I’m going to report on’, ‘I’m going to take a look at’, or ‘I’m going to discuss’.

1.2.4 Start work on your talk

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Earlier this week you decided on a subject for your talk. Now you need to start assembling ideas for your talk.

Your talk should eventually be between 3 and 5 minutes long, so you probably don’t want to spend any more than a minute of that time on the introduction.

Using what you have learned in the course so far, think about your talk, the subject and the audience you are aiming it at. Will you need to introduce yourself? What sort of strategy will you use to get the talk going?

You don’t need to write a script for your introduction. The most important thing is to make notes on what your introduction is going to contain and how you will link your ideas together.

Spend some time now practising what you want to say in your introduction, out loud.

1.3 Week 1 quiz

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Open the quiz in a new window or tab and come back here when you’re done.

Week 1 quiz

1.4 Week 1 summary

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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So, this week you’ve had a chance to look into the world of professional speakers, and examined Bill Davenhall’s talk on human health.

You’ve also chosen a topic for your own talk and practised reading it aloud.

You’ve also looked at grabbing your audience’s attention and experimented with ways of delivering a talk. Next week you’ll start preparing the content for the rest of your talk.

Further resources

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Pathé speeches - YouTube has many speeches and presentations available. ‘Pathé speeches’ is a good resource of historical speeches from the Pathé news archive.

Note taking - It may be a long time since you worked with notes. By developing your note taking techniques you can make sure that the time you spend on taking notes is really worthwhile.

TEDMED 2009: Bill Davenhall - Your Health Depends on Where You Live

Introduction

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Marshal Anderson

So far in this course, you've looked at what makes a good talk work. Hopefully, what you've learned so far gave you some confidence in your abilities. This week, we're looking at ways in which you can help listeners stay with you as you deliver a talk. People listening to you live can't pause to reflect. They can't glance back or replay, so they need to know where you are, and what it is you're talking about at each point. This may seem obvious but it isn't always that easy to achieve.

Good speakers use signposting phrases, both to prepare people for what's coming up and to remind them of what's already been said. We'll be looking at those phrases in detail and you'll learn how to identify them and use them. And of course, you'll want to work on your own talk and apply what you've learned to that.

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This week, you will look at how to conclude your talk, as well as the middle part, which will make up the bulk of your talk. You’ll also look at how to connect the parts of your talk together with linking words and phrases.

2.1 Guiding listeners through the main part of your talk

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Figure _unit2.1.1 Figure 1

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With written text, it is usually easy for the reader to refer back to things from earlier in the text.

In a talk, however, what has been said only exists in the memories of the listeners, so you have to take much more care in making sure it is clear where you are in terms of what has gone before. You need to use a lot of signposts that point both back and forward in your talk to keep listeners with you.

Look again at Bill Davenhall’s talk and observe how he uses linking phrases to make it clear how one part of his talk relates to another.

Rewatch the three short segments from the middle part of Bill’s talk listed below and read the relevant parts of the transcript.

Which parts of these do you think are designed to link the paragraph with the earlier parts of the talk? Note down the key words or phrases and see if you can identify what common elements there are. If you can think of similar words or phrases, note those down too. These will all be useful as you develop your own talk.

From 2:04 to 2:19 on the timer

This is my life. These are my life places. We all have these. While I'm talking I'd like you to also be thinking about: How many places have you lived? Just think about that – you know, wander through your life thinking about this – and you realise that you spend it in a variety of different places. You spend it at rest and you spend it at work, and if you’re like me, you’re in an airplane a good portion of your time travelling some place.

From 2:52 to 3:21 on the timer

Now I’m going to take you on a little journey here. I started off in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I don't know if anybody might hail from north-eastern Pennsylvania. But this is where I spent my first 19 years with my little young lungs. You know, breathing high concentrations here of sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and methane gas, in unequal quantities – 19 years of this. And if you’ve been in that part of the country, this is what those piles of burning, smouldering coal waste look like.

From 3:21 to 3:53 on the timer

So then I decided to leave that part of the world, and I was going to go to the mid-west. Okay? So I ended up in Louisville, Kentucky. Well, I decided to be neighbours to a place called Rubbertown. They manufacture plastics. They use large quantities chloroprene and benzene. Okay, I spent 25 years, in my middle-age lungs now, breathing various concentrations of that. And on a clear day it always looked like this, so you never saw it. It was insidious, and it was really happening.

Now that you’ve seen how Bill guides his audience through the main part of his talk, start preparing the middle part of your own talk.

2.2 Multiple connections

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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In a written text, the title and the introduction can give you a clue as to what the theme of the piece is going to be. Each sentence in the piece will support this theme, and make a point.

In oral presentations, it is also important to think about connecting information by supporting themes with points, and by telling your audience what is coming next.

As you will have noted in the previous section, Bill Davenhall uses a variety of strategies to do this – mostly narrative but also including the use of questions. Bill Davenhall used the phrases, ‘Just think about that…’, ‘Now I’m going to take you on a journey…’, and ‘So then I decided to…’ to keep the listeners on track.

Below is a list of phrases that you could use in your presentations to move from one point to the next one:

‘Let me turn now to…’
‘Let’s move on to…’
‘Turning to…’
‘Next…’
‘Now let’s look at…’
‘I’d now like to…’.

You might like to keep these phrases in mind and try to use them in your talk.

To summarise, in a talk you must use additional links to help the listener keep track of the content and feel a sense of progression through your presentation.

Try writing two sentences and joining them together with linking words or phrases. The second sentence could be:

an opposite idea (on the other hand, on the contrary, however, but…)
a consequence (consequently, as a result…)
a cause (because…)

Do you think the linking phrase you have chosen is effective? Is there a more effective phrase you could use?

2.3 Reaching the end

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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When you reach the end of a written assignment, you summarise what you have said in the rest of the text and draw your main points together. Do you think you have to do the same in the conclusion to an oral presentation?

Observe how Bill Davenhall concludes his talk (from 9:07 to 9:20 on the timer). He says:

So with that, I’ll leave you that in my particular view of health, geography always matters. And I believe that geographic information can make both you and me very healthy. Thank you.

Note that this is probably shorter than a conclusion you would write in an assignment. In the talk that you are preparing your conclusion shouldn’t last more than a minute.

In his talk, Bill is clearly making a case and wants something to happen in the future, but he doesn’t end his talk particularly passionately. It’s worth considering the point of view of your audience – Bill’s audience aren’t in a position to actually go out and make something happen. He’s not asking them to ‘man the barricades!’ or ‘bring ‘em back, dead or alive!’ It is more likely that he is trying to plant a seed that he hopes will grow later.

So, what sort of language might you use to signal the end of your talk? Here are some suggestions:

‘Let’s recap, …’
‘I’d like to sum up now…’
‘Let me summarise briefly…’
‘Allow me to remind you of some of the key points…’
‘If I can just summarise the main points…’.

These all work in a fairly formal context, but you don’t need to stick to them; you might add humour, drama or passion and that will depend on the purpose of your conclusion.

Consider your talk, and make notes about how you want it to end. Just what is it you want your audience to be thinking and feeling when you finish? How will you achieve it? What sort of language will you use? You should refer back to these notes when you prepare your talk.

2.4 Covering all bases

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Now you can have a go at preparing for your talk.

Activity _unit2.4.1 Activity 1

The list of headings below is designed to help you prepare for giving a talk. Each main heading is linked to some questions designed to guide you in the process of preparation. Match the headings to the relevant group of questions.

Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it

2.5 Example talk 2: Jennifer Golbeck

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Watch Jennifer Golbeck’s talk, ‘The curly fry conundrum: Why social media “likes” say more than you might think’. Pay particular attention to:

the introduction (language, topic, how she relates to audience, etc…)
the middle of part of the talk (where does it start, where does it end)
the conclusion (what it includes, how it ends)
the linking phrases you hear throughout the talk
the tone, style, body language, visuals used.

Consider:

Why is (or isn’t) her talk effective?
What are you able to take away from her talk to prepare your own?

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Jennifer Golbeck

If you remember that first decade of the web, it was really a static place. You could go online, you could look at pages, and they were put up either by organisations who had teams to do it or by individuals who were really tech-savvy for the time. And with the rise of social media and social networks in the early 2000s, the web was completely changed to a place where now the vast majority of content we interact with is put up by average users, either in YouTube videos or blog posts or product reviews or social media postings. And it's also become a much more interactive place, where people are interacting with others, they're commenting, they're sharing, they're not just reading.

So Facebook is not the only place you can do this, but it's the biggest, and it serves to illustrate the numbers. Facebook has 1.2 billion users per month. So half the Earth's Internet population is using Facebook. They are a site, along with others, that has allowed people to create an online persona with very little technical skill, and people responded by putting huge amounts of personal data online. So the result is that we have behavioural, preference, demographic data for hundreds of millions of people, which is unprecedented in history.

And as a computer scientist, what this means is that I've been able to build models that can predict all sorts of hidden attributes for all of you that you don't even know you're sharing information about. As scientists, we use that to help the way people interact online, but there's less altruistic applications, and there's a problem in that users don't really understand these techniques and how they work, and even if they did, they don't have a lot of control over it.

So what I want to talk to you about today is some of these things that we're able to do, and then give us some ideas of how we might go forward to move some control back into the hands of users. So this is Target, the company. I didn't just put that logo on this poor, pregnant woman's belly. You may have seen this anecdote that was printed in Forbes magazine where Target sent a flyer to this 15-year-old girl with advertisements and coupons for baby bottles and diapers and cribs two weeks before she told her parents that she was pregnant. Yeah, the dad was really upset.

He said, "How did Target figure out that this high school girl was pregnant before she told her parents?" It turns out that they have the purchase history for hundreds of thousands of customers and they compute what they call a pregnancy score, which is not just whether or not a woman's pregnant, but what her due date is. And they compute that not by looking at the obvious things, like, she's buying a crib or baby clothes, but things like, she bought more vitamins than she normally had, or she bought a handbag that's big enough to hold diapers.

And by themselves, those purchases don't seem like they might reveal a lot, but it's a pattern of behaviour that, when you take it in the context of thousands of other people, starts to actually reveal some insights. So that's the kind of thing that we do when we're predicting stuff about you on social media. We're looking for little patterns of behaviour that, when you detect them among millions of people, lets us find out all kinds of things.

So in my lab and with colleagues, we've developed mechanisms where we can quite accurately predict things like your political preference, your personality score, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, intelligence, along with things like how much you trust the people you know and how strong those relationships are. We can do all of this really well. And again, it doesn't come from what you might think of as obvious information. So my favourite example is from this study that was published this year in the Proceedings of the National Academies. If you Google this, you'll find it. It's four pages, easy to read.

And they looked at just people's Facebook likes, so just the things you like on Facebook, and used that to predict all these attributes, along with some other ones. And in their paper they listed the five likes that were most indicative of high intelligence. And among those was liking a page for curly fries.

Curly fries are delicious, but liking them does not necessarily mean that you're smarter than the average person. So how is it that one of the strongest indicators of your intelligence is liking this page when the content is totally irrelevant to the attribute that's being predicted? And it turns out that we have to look at a whole bunch of underlying theories to see why we're able to do this. One of them is a sociological theory called homophily, which basically says people are friends with people like them. So if you're smart, you tend to be friends with smart people, and if you're young, you tend to be friends with young people, and this is well established for hundreds of years.

We also know a lot about how information spreads through networks. It turns out things like viral videos or Facebook likes or other information spreads in exactly the same way that diseases spread through social networks. So this is something we've studied for a long time. We have good models of it. And so you can put those things together and start seeing why things like this happen. So if I were to give you a hypothesis, it would be that a smart guy started this page, or maybe one of the first people who liked it would have scored high on that test.

And they liked it, and their friends saw it, and by homophily, we know that he probably had smart friends, and so it spread to them, and some of them liked it, and they had smart friends, and so it spread to them, and so it propagated through the network to a host of smart people, so that by the end, the action of liking the curly fries page is indicative of high intelligence, not because of the content, but because the actual action of liking reflects back the common attributes of other people who have done it. So this is pretty complicated stuff, right?

It's a hard thing to sit down and explain to an average user, and even if you do, what can the average user do about it? How do you know that you've liked something that indicates a trait for you that's totally irrelevant to the content of what you've liked? There's a lot of power that users don't have to control how this data is used. And I see that as a real problem going forward. So I think there's a couple paths that we want to look at if we want to give users some control over how this data is used, because it's not always going to be used for their benefit.

An example I often give is that, if I ever get bored being a professor, I'm going to go start a company that predicts all of these attributes and things like how well you work in teams and if you're a drug user, if you're an alcoholic. We know how to predict all that. And I'm going to sell reports to H.R. companies and big businesses that want to hire you. We totally can do that now. I could start that business tomorrow, and you would have absolutely no control over me using your data like that. That seems to me to be a problem. So one of the paths we can go down is the policy and law path.

And in some respects, I think that that would be most effective, but the problem is we'd actually have to do it. Observing our political process in action makes me think it's highly unlikely that we're going to get a bunch of representatives to sit down, learn about this, and then enact sweeping changes to intellectual property law in the U.S. so users control their data. We could go the policy route, where social media companies say, you know what? You own your data. You have total control over how it's used. The problem is that the revenue models for most social media companies rely on sharing or exploiting users' data in some way.

It's sometimes said of Facebook that the users aren't the customer, they're the product. And so how do you get a company to cede control of their main asset back to the users? It's possible, but I don't think it's something that we're going to see change quickly. So I think the other path that we can go down that's going to be more effective is one of more science. It's doing science that allowed us to develop all these mechanisms for computing this personal data in the first place. And it's actually very similar research that we'd have to do if we want to develop mechanisms that can say to a user, "Here's the risk of that action you just took."

By liking that Facebook page, or by sharing this piece of personal information, you've now improved my ability to predict whether or not you're using drugs or whether or not you get along well in the workplace. And that, I think, can affect whether or not people want to share something, keep it private, or just keep it offline altogether. We can also look at things like allowing people to encrypt data that they upload, so it's kind of invisible and worthless to sites like Facebook or third party services that access it, but that select users who the person who posted it want to see it have access to see it.

This is all super exciting research from an intellectual perspective, and so scientists are going to be willing to do it. So that gives us an advantage over the law side. One of the problems that people bring up when I talk about this is, they say, you know, if people start keeping all this data private, all those methods that you've been developing to predict their traits are going to fail. And I say, absolutely, and for me, that's success, because as a scientist, my goal is not to infer information about users, it's to improve the way people interact online.

And sometimes that involves inferring things about them, but if users don't want me to use that data, I think they should have the right to do that. I want users to be informed and consenting users of the tools that we develop. And so I think encouraging this kind of science and supporting researchers who want to cede some of that control back to users and away from the social media companies means that going forward, as these tools evolve and advance, means that we're going to have an educated and empowered user base, and I think all of us can agree that that's a pretty ideal way to go forward. Thank you.

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2.6 Week 2 quiz

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Open the quiz in a new window or tab and come back here when you’re done.

Week 2 quiz

2.7 Week 2 summary

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Figure _unit2.7.1 Figure 5

Long description

After your work on the introduction to your talk last week, you’ve spent this week looking at and preparing the middle part and conclusion of your talk.

You should spend the rest of your time this week continuing to work on your talk.

Next week, your focus will shift from what you say to how you say it, as you consider your delivery, body language and audience.

Further resources

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

TED x MidAtlantic 2013: Jennifer Golbeck - The curly fry conundrum: Why social media ‘likes’ say more than you might think.

Introduction

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Transcript

Marshal Anderson

So far in this course we've focused on language. That is, the words chosen and arranged to convey the message. But a good talk is much more than that, just as watching a play is a very different experience from reading the script. The speed, volume and emotion with which the words are delivered all contribute to the message. The speaker's gestures, facial expressions, movements and appearance all play a part. This week you're going to study some examples of this. You'll also be considering the context of a talk. Depending on what your talk is about, the way you deliver it, and who you deliver it to, you might need to take different approaches.

So anticipate making some changes to your talk as you learn more about the various ways of conveying your message.

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Giving a talk is about more than simply the words which come out of your mouth. This week, you will be studying how you say things, and how you can use non-verbal communication to support the points you are making.

You will also spend some time this week considering your audience. Who are they? How will you keep them engaged in your talk?

3.1 Talking with your body

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Watch ‘In praise of slowness’ by Carl Honoré. Carl is shown from a lot of different angles. Sometimes you can see his whole body, while at other times there’s a close-up of his head and shoulders. Take this chance to look very closely at how Carl moves. How does he use his body to express himself? How does he use his face to signal how he feels about something? Try and listen to how his voice sounds rather than just what he says.

Can you see a link between the way Carl moves in the talk generally and his movement when he makes specific points? Note that this isn’t being held up as a perfect performance; you may feel that there are aspects of his behaviour that don’t support his points.

English has a huge number of words that describe what someone is doing when they speak; they might beg, cajole, encourage, enthuse, enthral, captivate, harangue or a multitude of others. Do these words create mind pictures? For example, do they suggest not only the voice but the whole body, with facial expressions, movements of the arms and so on? Although there is much disagreement about what proportion of communication is non-verbal, there seems little doubt that movement contributes something.

As you watch the video, concentrate on how Carl looks and moves, his tone and his voice. Make notes on the following aspects of what you see:

use of notes (if any)
eye contact with the audience
voice quality - speed of delivery, pausing, volume and pitch
posture
hand movements.

Did you think aspects of Carl’s non-verbal communication helped him put his point across, or did you think it got in the way?

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Carl Honore

What I'd like to start off with is an observation, which is that if I've learned anything over the last year, it's that the supreme irony of publishing a book about slowness is that you have to go around promoting it really fast. I seem to spend most of my time these days zipping from city to city, studio to studio, interview to interview, serving up the book in really tiny bite-size chunks. Because everyone these days wants to know how to slow down, but they want to know how to slow down really quickly. So...

So I did a spot on CNN the other day where I actually spent more time in makeup than I did talking on air. And I think that -- that's not really surprising though, is it? Because that's kind of the world that we live in now, a world stuck in fast-forward. A world obsessed with speed, with doing everything faster, with cramming more and more into less and less time. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock. To borrow a phrase from Carrie Fisher, which is in my bio there; I'll just toss it out again -- "These days even instant gratification takes too long."

And if you think about how we do try to make things better, what do we do? No, we speed them up, don't we? So we used to dial; now we speed dial. We used to read; now we speed read. We used to walk; now we speed walk. And of course, we used to date and now we speed date. And even things that are by their very nature slow -- we try and speed them up too. So I was in New York recently, and I walked past a gym that had an advertisement in the window for a new course, a new evening course. And it was for, you guessed it, speed yoga.

So this -- the perfect solution for time-starved professionals who want to, you know, salute the sun, but only want to give over about 20 minutes to it. I mean, these are sort of the extreme examples, and they're amusing and good to laugh at. But there's a very serious point, and I think that in the headlong dash of daily life, we often lose sight of the damage that this roadrunner form of living does to us. We're so marinated in the culture of speed that we almost fail to notice the toll it takes on every aspect of our lives -- on our health, our diet, our work, our relationships, the environment and our community.

And sometimes it takes a wake-up call, doesn't it, to alert us to the fact that we're hurrying through our lives, instead of actually living them; that we're living the fast life, instead of the good life. And I think for many people, that wake-up call takes the form of an illness. You know, a burnout, or eventually the body says, "I can't take it anymore," and throws in the towel. Or maybe a relationship goes up in smoke because we haven't had the time, or the patience, or the tranquility, to be with the other person, to listen to them.

And my wake-up call came when I started reading bedtime stories to my son, and I found that at the end of day, I would go into his room and I just couldn't slow down -- you know, I'd be speed reading "The Cat In The Hat." I'd be -- you know, I'd be skipping lines here, paragraphs there, sometimes a whole page, and of course, my little boy knew the book inside out, so we would quarrel. And what should have been the most relaxing, the most intimate, the most tender moment of the day, when a dad sits down to read to his son, became instead this kind of gladiatorial battle of wills, a clash between my speed and his slowness.

And this went on for some time, until I caught myself scanning a newspaper article with timesaving tips for fast people. And one of them made reference to a series of books called "The One-Minute Bedtime Story." And I wince saying those words now, but my first reaction at the time was very different. My first reflex was to say, "Hallelujah -- what a great idea! This is exactly what I'm looking for to speed up bedtime even more." But thankfully, a light bulb went on over my head, and my next reaction was very different, and I took a step back, and I thought, "Whoa -- you know, has it really come to this?

Am I really in such a hurry that I'm prepared to fob off my son with a soundbite at the end of the day?" And I put away the newspaper -- and I was getting on a plane -- and I sat there, and I did something I hadn't done for a long time -- which is I did nothing. I just thought, and I thought long and hard. And by the time I got off that plane, I'd decided I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to investigate this whole roadrunner culture, and what it was doing to me and to everyone else. And I had two questions in my head. The first was, how did we get so fast?

And the second is, is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? Now, if you think about how our world got so accelerated, the usual suspects rear their heads. You think of, you know, urbanisation, consumerism, the workplace, technology. But I think if you cut through those forces, you get to what might be the deeper driver, the nub of the question, which is how we think about time itself. In other cultures, time is cyclical. It's seen as moving in great, unhurried circles. It's always renewing and refreshing itself. Whereas in the West, time is linear. It's a finite resource; it's always draining away. You either use it, or lose it. "Time is money," as Benjamin Franklin said.

And I think what that does to us psychologically is it creates an equation. Time is scarce, so what do we do? Well -- well, we speed up, don't we? We try and do more and more with less and less time. We turn every moment of every day into a race to the finish line -- a finish line, incidentally, that we never reach, but a finish line nonetheless. And I guess that the question is, is it possible to break free from that mindset? And thankfully, the answer is yes, because what I discovered, when I began looking around, that there is a global backlash against this culture that tells us that faster is always better, and that busier is best.

Right across the world, people are doing the unthinkable: they're slowing down, and finding that, although conventional wisdom tells you that if you slow down, you're road kill, the opposite turns out to be true: that by slowing down at the right moments, people find that they do everything better. They eat better; they make love better; they exercise better; they work better; they live better. And, in this kind of cauldron of moments and places and acts of deceleration, lie what a lot of people now refer to as the "International Slow Movement." Now if you'll permit me a small act of hypocrisy, I'll just give you a very quick overview of what's going on inside the Slow Movement.

If you think of food, many of you will have heard of the Slow Food movement. Started in Italy, but has spread across the world, and now has 100,000 members in 50 countries. And it's driven by a very simple and sensible message, which is that we get more pleasure and more health from our food when we cultivate, cook and consume it at a reasonable pace. I think also the explosion of the organic farming movement, and the renaissance of farmers' markets, are other illustrations of the fact that people are desperate to get away from eating and cooking and cultivating their food on an industrial timetable. They want to get back to slower rhythms.

And out of the Slow Food movement has grown something called the Slow Cities movement, which has started in Italy, but has spread right across Europe and beyond. And in this, towns begin to rethink how they organise the urban landscape, so that people are encouraged to slow down and smell the roses and connect with one another. So they might curb traffic, or put in a park bench, or some green space. And in some ways, these changes add up to more than the sum of their parts, because I think when a Slow City becomes officially a Slow City, it's kind of like a philosophical declaration.

It's saying to the rest of world, and to the people in that town, that we believe that in the 21st century, slowness has a role to play. In medicine, I think a lot of people are deeply disillusioned with the kind of quick-fix mentality you find in conventional medicine. And millions of them around the world are turning to complementary and alternative forms of medicine, which tend to tap into sort of slower, gentler, more holistic forms of healing. Now, obviously the jury is out on many of these complementary therapies, and I personally doubt that the coffee enema will ever, you know, gain mainstream approval. But other treatments such as acupuncture and massage, and even just relaxation, clearly have some kind of benefit.

And blue-chip medical colleges everywhere are starting to study these things to find out how they work, and what we might learn from them. Sex. There's an awful lot of fast sex around, isn't there? I was coming to -- well -- no pun intended there. I was making my way, let's say, slowly to Oxford, and I went through a news agent, and I saw a magazine, a men's magazine, and it said on the front, "How to bring your partner to orgasm in 30 seconds." So, you know, even sex is on a stopwatch these days.

Now, you know, I like a quickie as much as the next person, but I think that there's an awful lot to be gained from slow sex -- from slowing down in the bedroom. You know, you tap into that -- those deeper, sort of, psychological, emotional, spiritual currents, and you get a better orgasm with the build-up. You can get more bang for your buck, let's say. I mean, the Pointer Sisters said it most eloquently, didn't they, when they sang the praises of "a lover with a slow hand."

Now, we all laughed at Sting a few years ago when he went Tantric, but you fast-forward a few years, and now you find couples of all ages flocking to workshops, or maybe just on their own in their own bedrooms, finding ways to put on the brakes and have better sex. And of course, in Italy where -- I mean, Italians always seem to know where to find their pleasure -- they've launched an official Slow Sex movement. The workplace. Right across much of the world -- North America being a notable exception -- working hours have been coming down.

And Europe is an example of that, and people finding that their quality of life improves as they're working less, and also that their hourly productivity goes up. Now, clearly there are problems with the 35-hour workweek in France -- too much, too soon, too rigid. But other countries in Europe, notably the Nordic countries, are showing that it's possible to have a kick-ass economy without being a workaholic. And Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland now rank among the top six most competitive nations on Earth, and they work the kind of hours that would make the average American weep with envy.

And if you go beyond sort of the country level, down at the micro-company level, more and more companies now are realizing that they need to allow their staff either to work fewer hours or just to unplug -- to take a lunch break, or to go sit in a quiet room, to switch off their Blackberrys and laptops -- you at the back -- mobile phones, during the work day or on the weekend, so that they have time to recharge and for the brain to slide into that kind of creative mode of thought. It's not just, though, these days, adults who overwork, though, is it? It's children, too.

I'm 37, and my childhood ended in the mid-'80s, and I look at kids now, and I'm just amazed by the way they race around with more homework, more tutoring, more extra-curriculars than we would ever have conceived of a generation ago. And some of the most heartrending emails that I get on my website are actually from adolescents hovering on the edge of burn-out, pleading with me to write to their parents, to help them slow down, to help them get off this full-throttle treadmill.

But thankfully, there is a backlash there in parenting as well, and you're finding that, you know, towns in the United States are now banding together and banning extra-curriculars on a particular day of the month, so that people can, you know, decompress and have some family time, and slow down. Homework is another thing. There are homework bans springing up all over the developed world in schools which had been piling on the homework for years, and now they're discovering that less can be more.

So there was a case up in Scotland recently where a fee-paying, high-achieving private school banned homework for everyone under the age of 13, and the high-achieving parents freaked out and said, "What are you -- you know, our kids will fall" -- the headmaster said, "No, no, your children need to slow down at the end of the day." And just this last month, the exam results came in, and in math, science, marks went up 20 percent on average last year. And I think what's very revealing is that the elite universities, who are often cited as the reason that people drive their kids and hothouse them so much, are starting to notice the caliber of students coming to them is falling.

These kids have wonderful marks; they have CVs jammed with extra-curriculars, to the point that would make your eyes water. But they lack spark; they lack the ability to think creatively and think outside -- they don't know how to dream. And so what these Ivy League schools, and Oxford and Cambridge and so on, are starting to send a message to parents and students that they need to put on the brakes a little bit.

And in Harvard, for instance, they send out a letter to undergraduates -- freshmen -- telling them that they'll get more out of life, and more out of Harvard, if they put on the brakes, if they do less, but give time to things, the time that things need, to enjoy them, to savour them. And even if they sometimes do nothing at all. And that letter is called -- very revealing, I think -- "Slow Down!" -- with an exclamation mark on the end.

So wherever you look, the message, it seems to me, is the same: that less is very often more, that slower is very often better. But that said, of course, it's not that easy to slow down, is it? I mean, you heard that I got a speeding ticket while I was researching my book on the benefits of slowness, and that's true, but that's not all of it. I was actually en route to a dinner held by Slow Food at the time. And if that's not shaming enough, I got that ticket in Italy. And if any of you have ever driven on an Italian highway, you'll have a pretty good idea of how fast I was going.

But why is it so hard to slow down? I think there are various reasons. One is that speed is fun, you know, speed is sexy. It's all that adrenaline rush. It's hard to give it up. I think there's a kind of metaphysical dimension -- that speed becomes a way of walling ourselves off from the bigger, deeper questions. We fill our head with distraction, with busyness, so that we don't have to ask, am I well? Am I happy? Are my children growing up right? Are politicians making good decisions on my behalf?

Another reason -- although I think, perhaps, the most powerful reason -- why we find it hard to slow down is the cultural taboo that we've erected against slowing down. "Slow" is a dirty word in our culture. It's a byword for "lazy," "slacker," for being somebody who gives up. You know, "he's a bit slow." It's actually synonymous with being stupid. I guess what the Slow Movement -- the purpose of the Slow Movement, or its main goal, really, is to tackle that taboo, and to say that yes, sometimes slow is not the answer, that there is such a thing as "bad slow."

You know, I got stuck on the M25, which is a ring road around London, recently, and spent three- and-a-half hours there. And I can tell you, that's really bad slow. But the new idea, the sort of revolutionary idea, of the Slow Movement, is that there is such a thing as "good slow," too. And good slow is, you know, taking the time to eat a meal with your family, with the TV switched off. Or taking the time to look at a problem from all angles in the office to make the best decision at work. Or even simply just taking the time to slow down and savour your life.

Now, one of the things that I found most uplifting about all of this stuff that's happened around the book since it came out, is the reaction to it. And I knew that when my book on slowness came out, it would be welcomed by the New Age brigade, but it's also been taken up, with great gusto, by the corporate world -- you know, business press, but also big companies and leadership organisations. Because people at the top of the chain, people like you, I think, are starting to realise that there's too much speed in the system, there's too much busyness, and it's time to find, or get back to that lost art of shifting gears.

Another encouraging sign, I think, is that it's not just in the developed world that this idea's been taken up. In the developing world, in countries that are on the verge of making that leap into first world status -- China, Brazil, Thailand, Poland, and so on -- these countries have embraced the idea of the Slow Movement, many people in them, and there's a debate going on in their media, on the streets. Because I think they're looking at the West, and they're saying, "Well, we like that aspect of what you've got, but we're not so sure about that." So all of that said, is it, I guess, is it possible? That's really the main question before us today.

Is it possible to slow down? And I'm happy to be able to say to you that the answer is a resounding yes. And I present myself as Exhibit A, a kind of reformed and rehabilitated speed-aholic. I still love speed. You know, I live in London, and I work as a journalist, and I enjoy the buzz and the busyness, and the adrenaline rush that comes from both of those things. I play squash and ice hockey, two very fast sports, and I wouldn't give them up for the world. But I've also, over the last year or so, got in touch with my inner tortoise.

And what that means is that I no longer overload myself gratuitously. My default mode is no longer to be a rush-aholic. I no longer hear time's winged chariot drawing near, or at least not as much as I did before. I can actually hear it now, because I see my time is ticking off. And the upshot of all of that is that I actually feel a lot happier, healthier, more productive than I ever have. I feel like I'm living my life rather than actually just racing through it. And perhaps, the most important measure of the success of this is that I feel that my relationships are a lot deeper, richer, stronger.

And for me, I guess, the litmus test for whether this would work, and what it would mean, was always going to be bedtime stories, because that's sort of where the journey began. And there too the news is rosy. You know, at the end of the day, I go into my son's room. I don't wear a watch. I switch off my computer, so I can't hear the email pinging into the basket, and I just slow down to his pace and we read. And because children have their own tempo and internal clock, they don't do quality time, where you schedule 10 minutes for them to open up to you. They need you to move at their rhythm.

I find that 10 minutes into a story, you know, my son will suddenly say, "You know, something happened in the playground today that really bothered me." And we'll go off and have a conversation on that. And I now find that bedtime stories used to be a box on my to-do list, something that I dreaded, because it was so slow and I had to get through it quickly. It's become my reward at the end of the day, something I really cherish.

And I have a kind of Hollywood ending to my talk this afternoon, which goes a little bit like this: a few months ago, I was getting ready to go on another book tour, and I had my bags packed. I was downstairs by the front door, and I was waiting for a taxi, and my son came down the stairs and he'd made a card for me. And he was carrying it. He'd gone and stapled two cards, very like these, together, and put a sticker of his favourite character, Tintin, on the front. And he said to me, or he handed this to me, and I read it, and it said, "To Daddy, love Benjamin." And I thought, "Aw, that's really sweet".

Is that a good luck on the book tour card?" And he said, "No, no, no, Daddy -- this is a card for being the best story reader in the world." And I thought, "Yeah, you know, this slowing down thing really does work." Thank you very much.

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If you want to examine these ideas in more depth you could watch part of this talk again with the sound off, or listen without watching. Or you could do the same with a different talk: watch first without the sound, then listen, and see how well you were able to get the gist of what was being said.

3.2 What are your audiences?

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Figure _unit3.3.1 Figure 1

Long description

All audiences are made up of a mix of ages, genders and cultures. Below are all the aspects you need to be aware of when you make a public address.

Use of language

Depending on who you are talking to, you will have to adjust the language and level of register you are using (a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or social setting). It is unlikely that an audience made of children will understand many metaphors, similes or other figures of complex speech. You may also find that an audience made up of non-native English speakers might struggle with the comprehension of idiomatic expressions or humour. So whatever figures of speech, register or style you decide to use, you need to be sure that a good proportion of the audience understands them.

Age

The age of an audience dictates the developmental pitch of a talk. Different age groups will have different levels of understanding, different abilities to process ideas and different concentration spans. However, there are other, more subtle differences to be taken into account in preparing a talk: experiences members of the audience have had, events they have lived through and their cultural reference points.

Gender

Gender differences vary widely from country to country, among political and religious communities and within different age groups. At the most basic level, no talk should make assumptions about life experiences, biases or preferences on the basis of gender.

Culture

A speaker needs to take into account possible cultural norms of an audience. What is the respectful and appropriate approach to a particular country or region’s culture? If a speaker tends to be very physically demonstrative for example, will an audience sit up and take notice or will they just be embarrassed?

Religion

Closely linked to culture, religion might dictate the very subjects a speaker may or may not speak about if they wish to avoid causing offence. Some kinds of language may be unacceptable, some words or images forbidden. It’s very important to know these things before giving a talk.

Affiliation

A talk on the environment addressed to a group of science graduates will be different from one given to the interested public, or to oil executives or politicians. Similarly, a political leaning in an audience will affect the way content is delivered. A talk needs to keep people interested even if they don’t agree with the message.

Occupation

This may be the very factor that brings an audience together, in which case there’s less need to worry about the ‘who are they?’ question. In every case, however, some knowledge of an audience’s work background can affect the way a talk is delivered.

3.3 Tailoring to your audience

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Figure _unit3.4.1 Figure 2

Long description

During the preparation time for your talk, you will need to spend some time researching your audience. You will need to gather basic facts about the people you are going to address. Essentially, who they are and why they are coming to listen to your talk.

You will also need to reflect on the aspects discussed in the previous section. You need to ask yourself how you will make yourself understood and you need to spend some time thinking about the level of your pitch, making sure it’s not too simplistic or too difficult.

Think about the aspects covered in the previous section (use of language, age, gender, culture, religion, affiliation and occupation) and ask yourself which are causing you the most concerns. How are you going to tackle these aspects in your talk?

3.4 Interacting with your audience

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Figure _unit3.5.1 Figure 3

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In the previous sections you’ve looked at the age, cultural background and gender of your audience. You also need to consider their expectations and how to keep them engaged in your talk.

Engage the audience

One feature of effective presentations is that they are interesting and they engage the audience. A skilled speaker can attract people’s attention and make a subject appealing by demonstrating its relevance to them, by structuring their talk clearly and, where appropriate, by using visual and audio aids effectively.

Create an impact

Skilled speakers can also create an impact through the quality of their voice, the use of body language and the creation of a sense of connection, or rapport, with their audience.

Know your audience

If you can, it is important to find out about audience expectations and their reasons for coming to your talk. In doing so, you will be prepared for unexpected questions and preconceived ideas some of your listeners might have. It’s also important to have some ideas of an audience’s motivation and the extent to which their attendance is voluntary. This will dramatically affect the way you should deliver the talk, as well as the level of audience engagement and the likelihood of meaningful questions at the end.

Audiences may already know you and this can lead to expectations – both high and low. An audience may also come with ideas about you based on information they’ve picked up prior to your talk. A speaker needs to think about strategies that will meet positive expectations and counter negative ones. Whatever your image, whether you come across as a New Age guru, a suited corporate manager or an eccentric academic, beware of straying beyond your own fundamental personality or you may appear false, manipulative or insincere.

Know the setting

The size of the audience will dictate to some extent the level of intimacy that can be produced. A small crowd might allow for a lot of flexibility, while a large crowd might require a speaker to be formal and stay on track. With experience, you can get a feeling from an audience of any size but what may change is the ability to interact, with questions such as, ‘raise your hand if…’, or similar.

The type of occasion and where it takes place will dictate the level of formality and the angle from which a speaker approaches a subject. A speech given in the evening may require a different energy from one given first thing in the morning. Some occasions may be solemn, others up-beat.

Finally, a speaker needs to look at the room itself. How comfortable are the chairs? How good is the lighting? Does it feel too hot or too cold? These are important factors when it comes to judging how long an audience will be comfortable for. It is also very important to check the equipment in the room and make sure that you have all the necessary audio and visual materials to deliver your talk.

3.5 Applying what you’ve learned

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Figure _unit3.6.1 Figure 4

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Watch Carl Honoré’s talk again, keeping in mind the factors you’ve looked at this week.

How could you alter his approach to a few of those factors? Would these changes cause his talk to work better?

3.6 Week 3 quiz

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Open the quiz in a new window or tab and come back here when you’re done.

Week 3 quiz

3.7 Week 3 summary

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Figure _unit3.8.1 Figure 5

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This week you’ve examined how you will say things and thought about what your body language says about you as a speaker.

You’ve also considered the audience that you’re presenting to. Who are they? What factors do you need to be wary of when delivering your talk?

Further resources

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

TEDGlobal 2005: Carl Honore - in praise of slowness

Introduction

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Marshal Anderson

Over the past month you'll have been thinking about the content of your talk, who you will be aiming it at, and what it is you want to achieve. You've also been working on the introductions, signposting and delivery. This week you'll finally be putting it all together, After the course is complete, you'll be able to take this talk away with you and see how much you've achieved.

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This week, you will finally put your talk together. Over the previous weeks, you’ve worked on the introduction, middle and end of your talk, as well as the non-verbal elements of giving a talk.

4.1 Finish your draft

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This is where you pull together all that you’ve learned so far and create your talk.

So how do you set about it? Let’s cover some practicalities.

The duration of your talk should be between 3 and 5 minutes.

You already have the basis for your introduction from Week 2, although you may well want to rework this material in the light of what you’ve learned since you recorded it.

You don’t need to write your talk word for word. Many people find that writing every word breaks their flow and makes the speech sound overly formal. Discover a technique that works for you, whether it’s jotting down key words or fragments of sentences or capturing every word.

Think about what you’ve learned in the course and then finish preparing your first draft. Draft and redraft. Don’t expect to start and finish in one go. Remember that you’re experimenting here in order to evolve an approach that suits you.

As you create your talk, remind yourself what you’ve learned in earlier weeks of the course. You might also find it helpful to use the following questions as a checklist.

What’s the subject of your talk? What’s its main message?
Who are your audience? Level of understanding? Any cultural considerations?
Will you need to introduce yourself?
What sort of device will you use to get the talk going? How will you create an impact?
How will you establish credibility and get the audience’s attention? How will you make and keep a connection?
What are the main points of the talk?
How will you link the main points?
Do you feel comfortable with your choice of words?
What message will you leave the audience with?
How will you bring the talk to a close?

Develop your talk to a level where you feel comfortable that it’s reasonably polished. Don’t over-work it. Call a halt while you’re still enjoyably engaged with the subject, the shape of your narrative and the unfolding of its various parts.

4.2 Enhancing your talk

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Marshal Anderson

It's our final week, so well done for getting here. You can be pleased with what you've achieved. You're also going to explore some of the tools that you can use to help deliver talks that you are planning in the future.

Finally, you'll review your experience of Talk the Talk. What were your expectations when you started? How have they changed? To what extent have they been met?

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In this section of the course you will look at some ways of enhancing your talk.

4.2.1 Making effective use of visuals

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Figure _unit4.2.1 Figure 2

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Many of the talks you’ve experienced will probably have been accompanied by some sort of images projected alongside the speaker.

You may use visuals to:

clarify something that would take a long time or be too complicated to explain in just words
reinforce your key messages
show graphically where you are in your talk.

You will also, no doubt, have experienced ‘death by PowerPoint’ – a speaker reading aloud slides full of small-print text, when you could have read it yourself in much less time or taken home a printed copy instead.

Some speakers find it reassuring to follow a pre-prepared script, while others find it easier to talk more freely, using notes or cue cards as prompts. Visual or audio cues, such as graphs, charts, pictures and video or sound clips, can provide structure and variety to a presentation. However, the use of technology requires practice to be effective.

Now watch Bill Davenhall’s video again and consider the following points:

Does he use visuals for his entire talk?
When does he use the visuals? At which points in his presentation? What are they for?
What technology does he use? Can everyone see the visuals, do you think?
What impact do his visuals have on the audience?

4.2.2 Adding visuals of your own

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In the last section, you examined why you would want to use visuals to support your talk, and looked at how Bill Davenhall used them in his TED talk. You should now consider how you would use visuals to support your talk.

When creating visuals to accompany a talk, you should consider the following:

Visuals are there for the same reason you are: to get your point across. If they don’t contribute to communicating your message, then you can probably afford to remove them.
Using special effects (dissolves, animations, slow reveals) or clip art can be tempting, but overuse will be distracting or tiring for the audience.
Consider where you will present. Does the venue support the technology you want to use? Do you need internet access? Can you practise in the venue beforehand?
There is no law that says a presentation must start with a logo and the title of your talk, nor that it must end with a picture of a sunset!

4.2.3 Tips for an effective talk

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Figure _unit4.2.3 Figure 4

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As you look towards giving future talks, bear in mind these final tips to try and make your talk the best it can be!

Engage the audience

One feature of effective talks is that they are interesting and they engage the audience. A skilled speaker can attract people’s attention and make a subject appealing by demonstrating its relevance to them, by structuring their talk clearly and, where appropriate, by using visual and audio aids effectively.

Create an impact

Skilled speakers can also create an impact through the quality of their voice, the use of body language and the creation of a sense of connection, or rapport, with their audience.

Be prepared

Good advance preparation and practice are key to maintaining your confidence and coping strategies during a talk. Good presenters, whether amateur or professional, appear prepared and quietly at ease. This enables them to cope better with unexpected occurrences, such as a reduction in the time allocated to their contribution, challenges to their ideas or technical problems.

Practice makes perfect

Before giving a talk, it is a good idea to practise it a few times. This can involve giving the talk in front of a mirror, on a recording, or in front of a friend. When you practise, you can make sure that your talk is within the given time limit, and you can check that you feel comfortable saying all that you have planned. If you are unsure how to pronounce any words, check how they are pronounced and practise a few times.

Using notes and visual aids

Some speakers find it reassuring to follow a prepared script, while others find it easier to talk more freely, using notes or cue cards as prompts. Visual or audio cues, such as graphs, charts, pictures and video or sound clips, can provide structure and variety to a talk. However, the use of technology requires practice to be effective.

Expected the unexpected

Some people will find it easy to adapt their intended talk to an unexpectedly shorter or longer time frame. Others could find this unsettling. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon to omit some elements of what you planned to say, whether intentionally or not, and to insert new ones, such as examples, or perhaps a little humour.

Relax

It is normal to feel nervous at the beginning of a talk, but the ongoing feedback from other people – smiles, nodding and other indicators of their positive attention – can ease such anxiety as you progress through it. Similarly, their acknowledgement at the end, whether in the form of clapping or comments, can contribute to a sense of validation and relief.

Learn from experience

It is important to reflect on what you did well, and to learn from anything that didn’t go as intended. You could ask one or two people for specific feedback to help you with this reflective process. You may also be able to give other people support and encouragement with their talks in the same way.

4.3 What did you learn?

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You should now reflect on what you have learned from the course. When answering these questions, consider your responses from Week 1.

Why did you decide to study Talk the talk?
What is the most important thing you have learned from this course?
What is the one thing you will do differently when you next prepare for and give a talk?

4.3 Week 4 quiz

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz. Open the quiz in a new window or tab and come back here when you’re done.

Week 4 quiz

4.4 Week 4 summary

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

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Congratulations for completing this course – with the experience and skills you’ve gained over the past 4 weeks, there is no doubt that you will be much better prepared to talk the talk!

We would love to know what you thought of the course and what you plan to do next. Your feedback is anonymous but will have massive value to us in improving what we deliver. Take our Open University end-of-course survey.

Acknowledgements

The Open University — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:02:27 GMT

This free course was written by Marshal Anderson and Hélène Pulker.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

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