Title: The Doctor-Patient Relationship
Presenters: Zhisheng, Jolene, Diana(Goh Chern)
Proposed Changes: Introductory Lectures, Role Playing, Debrief Sessions
Preparation
I would not say that I was fully prepared for the presentation last friday (9th April), but I would say that given the time constraint, I did try to make the best out of the time left for me to prepare for my part of the oral presentation. Be it waiting for the bus, during the bus rides or during my study breaks, I had spent every possible free time I could spare digesting the script, imagining an audience in front of me and playing it out repeatedly in my mind. (But no, rest assured that I certainly did not start talking to an imaginary audience at the bus stop.)
Delivery
Despite the numerous, though awkward, occasions that I had memorised and replayed the script in my mind, the jitters got into me the moment I stepped into class. I was extremely worried about fumbling over my carefully planned script or even omitting some important pointers that would ruin the whole presentation. With these thoughts, I regret that I did not sound as confident as I had wanted at the initial part of the presentation. Fortunately, with the acknowledging nods that I received from the members of NUSEU, I started to regain my composure and was soon able to focus on convincing NUSEU of my team’s proposed changes instead of merely reading out my points as a matter-of-factly. On hindsight, I felt that I did not fare too badly for my presentation but could have done a better job if more time was available for further preparation.
Use of slideware/ other audiovisuals
When my team and I were preparing the slides for our presentation, we bore in mind the advice that Brad gave with regards to a professional presentation – it should involve minimal slides and more focus should be placed on the speaker. After much hard work, we managed to summarize our entire presentation into 12 slides that mainly contained diagrams or one liners. Only the 3 slides that were on our proposed changes contained slightly more words but our team had deemed this move as necessary for our audience to be able to view the complete picture of our proposed changes. All in all, I felt that our team did a great job with the slides as we had successfully achieved consistency, conciseness as well as completeness.
However, to be honest, prior to our decision on using only 12 slides, I was personally apprehensive about taking up the challenge for two reasons:
Firstly, with the limited slides we prepared, there would be fewer cues for me when I delivered the presentation. This meant that by looking at only a diagram or one or two words on the slide, I had to rely on my memory to deliver approximately half a page of my script. Thankfully though, this did not pose as big a problem as I thought it would due to the preparations I had made.
The second cause of my apprehension was the attention span of our audience –not everyone can sit through a presentation and absorb everything by merely listening. Our goal in this presentation would certainly not be fulfilled should members of NUSEU not be able to fully absorb our proposed changes and the crucial need for them. To solve this problem, our team decided to give out handouts which clearly summarized our proposed changes, before the Q&A session. The effectiveness of this move was evident from the fact that members of NUSEU were able to raise questions pertaining to specific details of our proposal.
Conclusion
This oral presentation has served as a valuable opportunity for me to gain experience on making a formal presentation and I believe that the pointers I had gathered from this experience would certainly help me in making better presentations in future.
Hi Jolene,
ReplyDeleteI must say I am quite surprised that you spent time even during bus rides mentally running through the presentation. I think you really should be applauded for that.
For your presentation, I felt that you were fine, and did not show obvious signs of nervousness. I was actually quite convinced that you were rather confident all the way through, until I read your post. I suppose you really should have more confidence in your own ability to present in front of crowds. As it is, I think you have done a good job, and that you have managed to explain the details of your team's recommendations quite clearly.
However, I do see some areas of improvement for your team in terms of the content. Firstly, the manner of your primary research did not seem to have been covered at all. As such, the audience would naturally have questions about the results from your study.
Next, the link between the results of your primary research and your recommendations were not quite clear. Therefore, as a member of a audience, I found myself questioning how and why your team have came up with your particular recommendations. I also felt that the link between your recommendations and specific communications skills were not quite clear, which I felt again weakens the argument for your recommendations.
To round up, I felt that your presentation style was pretty good, but perhaps the supporting arguments for your recommendations could have been made clearer.
Dear Jolene,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the nice and detailed round up. I love your presentation style thanks to the smile you generally have when presenting!
The biggest feedback I had for you was that I could feel it was slightly memorized. Aside from that and a few other minor font changes as compared to your changes, I loved the clear presentation of problems as well as a nicely presented 1st change slide.
Great job again!
Cheers
Rohan
Hi Jolene!
ReplyDeleteYou did a fantastic job.
I like your team’s powerpoint slides and I feel that the colour used was very appropriate with your team’s presentation style. With black evoking a general solemn feeling, it fits very well with the story that Zhi Sheng gave at the very beginning of the presentation. It also fits very well with the topic as your team have mentioned, “it’s a life which
Similar to the previous peer teaching experience, you were able to capture the audience’s attention and engage them well. I guess the wonder comes from your well paced speech and appropriate tone. However, one point which can be improved would be the completeness of your slide content. Since this is a presentation to persuade NUSEU to adopt your recommendations, I feel that the benefits should be a major component in your presentation instead of just focusing on the recommendation and the challenges in implementing them.
For your delivery, I thought you appear confident and relax presenting to the audience, I did not feel any sense of anxiety from you at all.
All in all, I would say it is a fine job done!
Good job, Jolene.
To Clement:
ReplyDeleteYes I do have to take a long ride to and from home, that’s why! Anyway, thanks for your compliments! I will continue to improve from here.
The reason why our group had not elaborated so much on our primary research, was because we had thought that this oral presentation was to be given to the same group of NUSEU members who had read our proposal, which did contain our primary research in full detail. Hence, we felt it was not really necessary to repeat our points. However, I do see your point that perhaps more elaboration (than our brief mention)could provide a better link between our research and recommendations.
To Rohan:
Thanks for your comments. I guess having to regurgitate half a page of words for every point made on the slide made it seemed like it was slightly memorized, but I had tried my best to prevent that. I will continue to work on it and strive to improve.
To Emily:
Thanks for your compliments/comments! With regards to not elaborating on other benefits, my team had decided against it because we felt that our focus would be on improving the education provided to the medical students in NUS. Therefore, our benefits would generally be more about how the curriculum changes can benefit NUS medical students, rather than on how it can benefit NUS.
Dear Jolene,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a wonderful job in your presentation. You were confident, fluent, clear and engaging. The black background of your slides makes it stand out from the rest. One thing perhaps your team may want to improve on is the primary research. I know it is difficult to get information from the professionals in the medial area. One suggestion would be to obtain information from the medical students. I believe students are usually more responsive to interviews and surveys.
Nonetheless, congratulations for your great performance.
Hi Peirong,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your compliments and suggestions. Indeed, we found it difficult to get information from the professionals in the medical field and hence had settled on getting more information from the medical students. Unfortunately, we did not elaborate on that sufficiently in our oral presentation (for reasons that I had also mentioned to Clement above). Certainly, it could have made our oral presentation even clearer.
Thanks =)