Why Should Information Retention Matter To Us?

So, why is this important to Sheridan students? We are in a business program, one day we will be working, learning and teaching others in a business environment and it will be important especially when teaching to understand how people learn and retain new information. As I’ve outlined through my latest blog entries, visual aids do help in the understanding of new information.

I have learned in the workplace how much a presentation can improve with the use of good visuals and I’ve also experienced a terrible use of visuals in business presentations. Whether you have experienced business presentations or not, the concept that visual aids help in the understanding of new information is not a difficult one to grasp. If you were being presented with new information, you would want to have it verbally explained and shown to you too. Being able to see the way in which something should work, or seeing a graph of results makes it easy to understand information. Having someone tell you the company is doing much worse this year than last year is one thing, but seeing a bar graph of the two years beside each other really sends the message home. A good visual is something you remember and one that triggers other information as well.

Learning to communicate well in business is something all business students at Sheridan need to learn to be successful in business- and communicating well, involves visual communication.

The way you look as a person, the way your presentation looks, are you able to connect with your audience? Are they grasping the message you are trying to get across?

Visual Enhancement

When being presented with new information, is it easier to understand when there are visual aids in the presentation? The obvious answer is yes; new information is easier to understand when visual aids are present. But why? According to Ellen Coomber, a “communication specialist”, words alone are not enough to deal with today’s complex business problems. We live in a fast paced, visually stimulated world. Billboards, TV commercials, magazine ads, everything intended to catch our attention has strong visual communication. The products in grocery stores that catch your attention are the brightly packaged goods, the car that catches your eye on the highway is neon yellow, not beige. 

The information we remember best from a presentation is the information shown to us visually as well as verbally, not just spoken words. Photographs, charts and graphs are a quick and easy way to show information that is easily understood.

In a blog by Tarah Neujahr, she reported, “researchers at University of Lugano, Switzerland say a graphic with recognizable elements used in new ways create curiosity and stimulate interest”. Using recognizable images in your presentations allow the audience to connect with you and showing recognizable images in different ways, get people thinking. Regardless of the image, including visuals keeps the attention of the audience and even when they drift away from what you’re saying, they are still able to view related information in the visuals of your presentation. By including visuals it is much more likely that people will learn more and pay attention longer.

“The whole idea of visual aids is to enhance your presentation, not to be the purpose of it.” Use visual aids to improve a good presentation and to help your audience retain the information you are sharing. 

 
 

  

Resources:

http://www.hawaii.edu/mauispeech/html/visual_aids.html

http://www.ehow.com/about_6545740_visual-aids-business-communication.html 

http://www.webdesigncompany.net/visual-communication

Visual Aids = More Effective Information Retention

In an article posted by a fellow blogger, I came across some interesting information on communicating visually. According to Matt McKay, because individuals understand and retain information differently it is important to incorporate audio and visual components in presentations where the goal is to provide others with new information. He also posts that according to the U.S. Department of Labor OSHA Office of Training and Education, “retention of information three days after a meeting or other event is six times greater when information is presented by a visual and oral means than when information is presented by the spoken word alone.”  Crazy statistic, but I would have to say it makes perfect sense.

People get bored if they have to sit and listen to someone for a long period of time. They get bored, they get distracted and before long they’re going over in their head the list of things they have to get done at their desk before 4pm or the stuff that needs to be done at home before their vacation this weekend. Without a visual, you are relying on the idea that everyone in your audience is interested in what you’re saying. Without a visual you are trusting people to listen and learn all on their own, when in reality- that is impossible! The average adult has an attention span of 20 minutes. You can prolong that by giving them breaks with demonstrations, stories, and VISUAL AIDS! Pop up a short video, show them some pictures, graphs, diagrams, something to break up the sound of your voice and the continuous stream of information.

McKay concludes his blog post on visual aids by suggesting that people who are engaged in a presentation understand and retain information more effectively when visuals are used- I agree.

Resources:

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/audio-visual-aids-business-communication-694.html 

http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~bvz/presentation.html

Town Hall!

When I first got my job at Scotia bank, I was fairly new to the banking industry. I had worked as a teller for six months prior but I hadn’t worked alone in a cubicle, at a computer for 7.5 hours daily- ever! I went to orientation, I went to a health and safety meeting, a new employee breakfast, and eventually a “Town Hall Meeting” where the Senior Vice President of my particular area (Global Wholesale Services) told us all about our earnings, quarter and fiscal year goals, department goals and Scotia bank goals. Needless to say, after Town Hall Meeting number one, I dreaded the quarterly meeting every quarter to this very day.

The way these presentations are set up do include a visual slide show, however the person who made these slides obviously is not a visual learner. Every slide is- more words! No pictures, no colours, just a simplified version of what the speaker is saying. It’s weird, really.  I found myself wondering, who made these? And who decided these boring slides positively contribute to the already boring presentation? And most importantly, couldn’t this just be emailed to us? 

This is where I discovered the importance of visuals- Good visuals. This is where I really discovered the need to keep the audiences attention when presenting something that you think they should or need to know.

So, step back and think about your presentations before presenting… and avoid the Town Hall presentation… presentation. A little effort into visual aids goes a long way.

What Type of Learner Are You?

This is a site that has a questionnaire of 16 questions, you answer each as truthfully as possible and it tells you what type of learner you are: visual, auditory or kinesthetic. I did the test and my result was Visual Learner. This is what a visual learner is generally assumed to be like according to this site:

Visual Learners

• take numerous detailed notes
• tend to sit in the front
• are usually neat and clean
• often close their eyes to visualize or remember something
• find something to watch if they are bored
• like to see what they are learning
• benefit from illustrations and presentations that use color
• are attracted to written or spoken language rich in imagery
• prefer stimuli to be isolated from auditory and kinesthetic distraction
• find passive surroundings ideal

Here is the link, Try it out! 

http://people.usd.edu/~bwjames/tut/learning-style/index.html

Visual aids and… Business Communication?

Visual aids and… Business Communication? What is the connection? How do these two relate?

What’s wrong with just standing at the front of a room and explaining a new work process to a group? If the presentation is in English, and they all speak and understand English, then everyone should understand the information being presented and be able to apply it in the work environment, no?

First of all, let me define what exactly a visual aid is; A visual aid, for the purposes of this blog at least, is, “an instructional aid, such as a poster, scale model, or videotape, that presents information visually.“ or “an object or representation that may be used to clarify or enhance understanding of a concept or process”. Even the definitions state that visuals are helpful so- they must be!

In all seriousness, I am a visual learner. I can sit and listen quietly but having some sort of visual aid to look at does seem to help me understand new concepts with a little more ease. I intend to explore why and how visual aids help not just myself, but everyone when learning new information. 

I’ll start by exploring recent experiences in college presentations. In most classes, professors structure their lessons around a PowerPoint- a visual. Tons of information is thrown at us, explained, questioned, and then tested. Can you imagine sitting through a three-hour class with no visual part to the lesson? I can’t. A lot of the time, the teachers voice fades into the background and I really am only taking in the visual PowerPoint. And I would imagine I’m not the only one. By having a visual, there is a second learning instrument- audio and visual. The visual learners are learning, and the auditory learners are learning.

In a workplace, a presentation on new software, using a PowerPoint or overhead slides would work in the exact same way to reach the employees with new information. The only learners we are missing are the kinesthetic learners but with a little bit of knowledge retained from the speaker and the visuals, they would be able to figure it out and practice with the new software on a computer.

Using visuals helps you reach more people. And if your goal is to introduce new information and have people understand it you want to use the best techniques to accomplish that. 

Resources:

http://www.ehow.com/about_5038001_definition-visual-aids.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/visual-aid

http://webhome.idirect.com/~kehamilt/spklearn.html 

http://people.usd.edu/~bwjames/tut/learning-style/index.html