We know that there is more and more visual communication in the world, but I confess I was surprised when I discovered that PowerPoint presentations were being used, just on their own, as a means of spreading ideas. There is constant complaining that college grads do not know how to make slides, do presentations, and assemble a "good deck." I knew that my slides were an important tool as part of my pedagogy, but I forgot that many students also use them as a proxy. (And have you noticed how even academic books are getting shorter?) But there is a new currency of communication outside of the academy, and it is the slide deck. Written communication is still critically important in business and in life, but most writing is limited to emails and short report summaries. My slides were taking on a life of their own. I already knew PowerPoint basics (my expertise is supposed to be pedagogy): no more than six words and a single idea on a slide, vivid images that crystalize but don't distract, and people are going to want my slides as a summary for my sessions. I also often give the same class multiple times, which provides another way to improve.Īlong the way, I discovered that my slides really had to tell the story.
I have given countless dry runs to sample students and learning designers who then provided useful and detailed feedback about how I could improve my teaching. My learning outcomes, materials, activities, and teaching methods were scrutinized thoughtfully and carefully, and then I was asked (often through several iterations of the same content) to "beta-test" my classes. Yes, there will always be painful required trainings, but my experience so far (with more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies) is that when companies are paying more, they demand more quality of teaching-being an expert was not enough. The first thing I discovered was that my assumptions about bad institutional training were out of date. My work on pedagogy and inclusion in the classroom seemed to prepare me to start doing some corporate training.
When the pandemic hit, I was scheduled to visit several dozen campuses in the coming months to do teaching workshops for faculty (pedagogy can indeed improve student outcomes!) All of my face-to-face visits for 2020 were eventually canceled, although I did a lot of webinars that summer about preparing to teach online in the fall.Īs my higher education workshops thinned with the spread of COVID-19, corporate America was increasing its desire for inclusion and innovation training.
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