Library Workshop: Talking About Your Research

This is an explanatory piece about an activity which we will incorporate into the class, but students can also use on their own, at home. When faced with a block of text in need of revision, having a few key tools to make these updates or turn it into a presentation may be very helpful.

“When we talk with colleagues in anticipation of attending a talk, we say "I'm looking forward to hearing her talk. I hear that she has collected an impressive dataset on wombat nose lengths." We don't say "I'm looking forward to reading all the material in her slides. I am especially eager to trust implicitly her over-simplified data slides." “
This author presents his opinion on how to give a compelling talk.

This piece, A Conversation with Alan Alda: Communicating Science, discusses Alda’s basic philosophy of science communication. He essentially tells us to trust our knowledge and our thinking, noting the importance of improvisational skills and curiosity. Alda frames his interviews as conversations, saying “A conversation is an interaction in which something emerges.” While beginning speakers may need more preparation to sound coherent, the idea positions skillbuilding and practice as important. Importantly, great research and great interpretation are the foundations of a great presentation, and Alda seems to take this as a given: you will produce good work, and you will then talk about it with ease.

This is a late 1990s video about using “theater techniques” in teaching. If you can get past the slightly dated styles, there are some potentially useful ideas in here about using one’s energy to capture and hold attention. However, they don’t mention that this can be quite exhausting for some people, or how to mitigate that.

Research Matters at Brown is a program which gathers graduate students doing research in any discipline into a small cohort and, through a brief and intense peer-support process, helps each student produce a 5-minute public-facing talk.The link takes you to videos of all of the past talks, so you can explore and choose a few to analyze. The speakers all have varied strengths, but what they share is having to speak about discipline-specific work to a cross-disciplinary audience.

Ted Talks can be a bit of a mixed bag, in terms of content, but there is no question that they have a method which works, and that there are gems in here. This Ted talk by Latif Nasser is a great example of the use of narrative to talk about research.

Speaking of Ted Talks, here is one by Dr. Oliver Sacks. The late Dr. Sacks was a neurologist, writer and bodybuilder who overcame a variety of challenges to become a well-respected speaker. He is known for his caring presentation of case studies.

BIMS Bites: Harmful Algal Blooms comes from a series created by the organization Black in Marine Science which takes a marine science-related subject and breaks it down in about 5 minutes.

Exploring Autism Through Stem Cell Technology at Brown University, Brown Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry Sofia Lizarraga
This short video showcases visuals and very accessible language.

Radiolab podcast is probably the “gold standard” in popular science communication. There is an overwhelming sense of curiosity, and a collaborative nature. While you may not get into using a huge library of audio additives, listening to this podcast is a great way to understand the use of narrative tools in demonstrating complex subjects.

This is a classic example of a meaningless presentation that sounds convincing because of the technical language and confident delivery.

A resource for analyzing your own style developed by MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing

An introduction to techniques and strategies for inclusive science communication produced by the University of Rhode Island.

A guide to communication tools compiled by Boston University.