Creating Quality Handouts
Articles on Handouts | Speaking Tips | December 29, 2003
Too many presenters treat handouts like an afterthought or simply forget about them altogether in the expectation that they will just get trashed anyway. When handouts are poorly designed, they will very likely be discarded. By contrast, quality handouts are used and ensure that your presentation is remembered favorably.
Why Handouts?
Our minds processes new information at different speeds depending on the medium. In general, we think at much faster speeds than we process written information. Similarly, we read at faster speeds than we process spoken information.
You may ask why bother to speak at all when people can read so much faster? The answer is that presenters convey much more than words when they speak and more readily connect emotionally with an audience than via writing. Text supports and expands ideas with details and applications. Graphics (charts, tables, diagrams, maps) complement both your presentations and handouts because they format information for rapid assimilation.
Handouts enable presenters to
- Create a positive impression before the presentation begins
- Ensure that the audience takes away the key ideas as intended
- Engage people at a deeper level as they interact with the handout
- Keep the audience's attention focused on the subject
- Satisfy the needs of visual learners
- Introduce experiential material for kinesthetic learners
- Present information at both novice and expert levels
- Simplify and navigate complex information
- Establish credibility
- Present more information than can be covered in the presentation
- Summarize and review.
Handouts enable the audience to
- Concentrate on the ideas without having to take notes
- Capture any non-verbal data accurately
- Personalize the presentation with notes of their own ideas
- Hear, see and apply the presentation
- Increase their speed of comprehension
- Retain new ideas longer
- Apply the information to specific tasks
- Find the information when they need it at a later date.
Experts tell us that people generally forget almost 90% of everything that is said to them within 24 hours. Handouts help your audience to both recall and apply the details that tend to fade away with time.
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