Virginia's Reflection on Presenting for the EPSRI Congress

A few days ago, I gave my presentation to summarize my experience at EPSRI over the last two weeks. I tried to present a mixture of my background and research interests, methods and content I learned, as well as some gesture analysis I did while I was there. I was grateful that we were required to give a presentation because it helped me organize my thoughts and forced me to try and explain past, present, and future research that I’m interested in. It also was an outstanding learning experience for me because it was my first presentation to a research group!

My slides:



One thing I learned from my presentation was just how carefully you have to pick your words. Since it’ so condensed, you’ve really got to make sure every line reflects exactly what you mean. One of my slides (slide 16) used the word “help” twice, which unfortunately made it sound like I was saying gesturing is a separate auxiliary entity that assists with cognition (instead of being a part of cognition). Not exactly the message I was going for while trying to support embodied cognition! Also unfortunate is the way this wording made it sound like Kerry intentionally gestured to “help” her visualize or feel. Oops.



Another thing I was thinking about was whether I should have captioned the video I showed. I struggle with whether or not to caption videos when I want people to be paying attention to gesture. I think it can make a huge difference in comprehension, but I find that when something is captioned, I’m always reading and not really watching. If I were showing a clip longer than a minute in the future, I will probably caption it and then show a non-captioned version for the second viewing. The other solution, of course, is to provide a written transcript and hand it out.

Finally, I am still working on how to not panic in public speaking situations. I don’t think I’m shy and I usually don’t have too much trouble sharing my opinion in a group discussion, but the second I’m at the front of the room at the helm of a Powerpoint, everything changes. Even in a group of people I have comfortably spoken in front of, I still am totally and utterly terrified of presenting. And unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer yet for how to work on this in the future. Take a course? Ick. People always tell me with practice it won’t be an issue, but I have my doubts. Guess I’ll have to keep thinking about that one.

Overall, presenting was a very positive experience and I was really pleased to get the opportunity to share my ideas with the research team. I also think it was great practice for giving future talks and I learned a lot about what I want to do in the future. Plus, I’m really thankful that I’ve come home with a presentation to show my advisor and anyone from home that wants to know what I was up to for two weeks (I already showed my mom)!