Preparing Materials for
a Persuasive Presentation
Ideally, a persuasive presentation is the result of a research project by students. Nowadays students find relevant information for the topic they are investigating on the Internet, including images. They have to learn to apply traditional research procedures, such as copying the source information along with the text or image, so they can cite it appropriately. There are also some new procedures that have to do with the sheer quantity of information instantly at our fingertips these days, such a sifting and filtering. In that context, it makes sense to ask students to keep track of the purpose for which they think images might be useful by downloading them into different folders, for instance, named for their potential uses.
Once the research has been done, and students are thinking about how to make a presentation, they need a way to plan their argument. It has to be clear to them that not all the information they discovered in their research will find its way into this presentation. Since the presentation is persuasive rather than balanced or “objective” they are either taking one side of a debate or a particular position on an issue and will thus want to cull only the information from their research that supports that perspective. They need an argument plan, a way to think through the logic of the points they wish to make. In their presentation, each slide should correspond to one of their major points in the argument - so that the storyboard for the slideshow outlines the logic of the argument.
Once the argument is clear and the media bits have been located, students need to think about design, about how to present the information on each slide to communicate their point most effectively. That means thinking about such issues as the size and quantity of text and images, the length and usefulness of sounds, and the kinds of animation or movement they might want to include. (Students also need to think about sources and credentials to make sure that they have the information they need to provide proper citations and not run the risk of plagiarism.)
Finally, students need a set of workable criteria for evaluating the quality of their own slides, of their production value as well as their content. Most teachers are quite comfortable evaluating the content of such a presentation, but have a less clear idea about how to assess its production, or the quality of its “authorship”. We have included example templates for scaffolding this process, including a research inventory to keep track of media bits, and argument plan to develop the logic, a design planner to help thinking about lay-out, and a set of assessment checklists to help with the evaluation of the product.
