Presenting Courses to be Remembered

The way in which information is presented strongly influences the way in which an audience recalls the information presented.

You will normally be familiar with this in relation to principles of instruction: presentation of a clear structure to the session, good use of visual aids, etc. These principles are vital, but will be looked into in detail elsewhere within Mind Tools. This section concentrates on memory, how information is absorbed during lessons, and how information can be presented in a way that fits in with the conscious or unconscious use of memory techniques.

How information is absorbed within a presentation

• People tend to remember information most effectively that is presented at the beginning of a session and at the end. Material in the middle, particularly in a long presentation, can easily be lost.

• The longer a presentation lasts, the less benefit additional information has - the audience's concentration begins to wander and distractions creep in. More importantly, facts are fitted into memory by being organised into a structure in the mind, often unconsciously, during a period when the mind is not concentrating on the subject at hand. In a long presentation, peoples' minds become saturated with facts that they have not had an opportunity to fit into any framework. Unstructured facts may displace other unstructured facts, resulting in confusion.

• Information that is effectively related to other information within the presentation, whether by showing linkages, fitting into a structure, or repetition is better remembered that information that stands alone.

• Recall of material is often greatest not during a period of instruction, but 10 minutes after a presentation has finished: the audience will have had time to fit information into appropriate mental structures. After this, recall of facts declines rapidly, so that after a number of months only a tiny percentage of the information covered may be remembered, UNLESS information is regularly reviewed.

• Even very quick reviews of information can be extremely effective in the presentation of a topic, as they keep the overall framework into which information is to be fitted fresh and alive.

• Information is most effectively remembered when the whole mind is engaged in a presentation, not just the eyes alone or the ears alone. Complex ideas are often easier to think about and convey by linking them to familiar ones. An easily remembered or visualised structure aids recall.

Designing a presentation for maximum learning

• Use breaks effectively - by breaking frequently, you take advantage of the way in which the mind recalls information most effectively at the beginning and ends of a presentation. You can take advantage of this several times within a session, before and after each break. As a guide: presentations of less than 20 minutes in length can be ineffective as it can be difficult for the audience to grasp at the shape and rhythm of the material. Presentations of more than 50 minutes in length are usually boring and ineffective.

• Take advantage of the high initial level of assimilation and of the heightened understanding of the final facts to present some of the most importance information during these periods.

• Relate facts that should be remembered to other facts, and fit them into a framework that shows their relevance. If necessary, repeat important information.

• If the presentation is part of a series, then a brief period of time can be spent before the presentation starts reviewing the overall structure of previous presentations. This helps to refresh the audience's minds with the information on which you want to build, allowing connections to be made automatically which would otherwise be lost.

• Where possible members of the audience should be encouraged to review information in their own time. See the article on Using Reviews to Learn Effectively for further information.

• Try to engage the whole mind of your audience and as many of their senses as practicable with a variety of aids. This will keep all of their minds focussed on the learning experience rather than having unused parts of the mind 'wandering off' and generating distractions.

• Perhaps try to fit the key information to be recalled into a mnemonic structure. This will require that your audience understands and is comfortable with the use of memory techniques - otherwise your presentations may seem a little strange!

Summary