Assertion-Evidence Approach: Rethinking Scientific and Technical Presentations

PowerPoint's defaults are weak

The Problem. PowerPoint's defaults lead presenters to create slides that are ineffective for presentations in engineering and science. For one thing, the bullet-list default in the body leads users to write too much text. In addition, that default leads to cluttered slides because the bullet list crowds the graphics. Moreover, the space taken by the bullet lists reduces the size of graphics, leading to call-outs that are too small to read. Using the assertion-evidence approach allows you to overcome these weak defaults of PowerPoint.

The assertion-evidence approach
is effective

The What. The assertion-evidence approach calls on you to build your talks on messages, not topics. In this approach, you support those messages with visual evidence, not bulleted lists. Moreover, to explain that evidence, you fashion sentences on the spot.

The Why. Although requiring more effort, this assertion-evidence approach leads to higher understanding by the audience, as evidenced by our tests of audience comprehension. In addition, our students claim that using the assertion-evidence approach helps them project more confidence because they show ownership of the content through explaining visual evidence.

Assertion-Evidence Principles

The How. Creating slides using the assertion-evidence approach is much more challenging than just following PowerPoint's defaults. Still, this site presents a compact tutorial that includes special slide templates to allow you to overcome the weak defaults of PowerPoint.

Assertion-Evidence Tutorial