Mediators: Richard Emmanuel Eastes, Matteo Merzagora (Traces)

Dates: 7, 8, 9 March 2012

The main focus will be on oral presentation to a scientific audience. Targeted to PhD students it is aimed at providing them with tools and techniques to deliver efficient presentations.

As in all TRACES courses, the seminar will have a very practical approach: more than 2/3 of the time will be spent in practical exercises.
A special attention will be given to horizontal communication, that is, organized exchanges among participants in order to share the individual knowledge and transform it in a shared knowledge.

Details of the program:

- Introductions: the role of communication in the production of scientific knowledge. Communication is not just the end-point in the work of a scientist: it is determinant in all phases of a research activity. A brief overview of the research field of science and technology student will also be presented.

- Understanding the audience: the quality of communication needs to be measured in the ears, eyes and brains of the recipient, and not on those of the emitter of the message. Understanding the motivations and expectations of our audience is a key to successful communication.

- Understanding our aims: what do we want to obtain from our presentation? To explain, to convince, to impress, to provoke, ... several coexisting objectives can characterize a scientific communication.

- Learning mechanisms: how do we interpret a message? How do we transform it in a valuable information, and ultimately on learning. The contribution of cognitive science in understanding "learning" will be outlined. Presentation postures: what can actors teach us on the way we place ourselves in front of an audience? How do different postures generate different types of interaction with our audiences?

- Observing: a toolkit to learn to observe other people presentations, in order to copy successful practices and avoid classical mistakes. A number of filmed presentations will be analyzed in an individual and collective exercise. This will include the key element of the course: learning how to learn to communicate successfully.

- Visual supports: a toolkit to correctly use power point presentations and other visual supports. Different visual supports (blackboard, ppt, texts, films, pictures, objects,...) will be compared, the pros and cons of each will be identified within a collective exercise.

- Narrative structure: a toolkit to build captivating and tight scripts that enrich the impact of the communication.

- Answering questions: a toolkit to be better prepared to manage the Q&A part of a presentation.

- Feedback: at the end of each day a very short feedback will be asked to the participants, in order to adapt the course on the run, and maximize the satisfaction of the participants.