Week 10 · Lecture outline

Week 10 — Lecture Outline · Presentation Aids / Visual Support

Public Speaking · COMM 1 Fall 2026 · Prof. Marchetti Fictional sample

Course: Public Speaking — Fundamentals of Oral Communication (COMM 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Marchetti
Objective covered: Objective 6 — Design and use presentation aids that clarify a message, enhance audience retention, and support (rather than replace) the speaker.
SLOs touched: A (compose & deliver — integrating aids into a speech segment) · B (critical analysis — evaluating aid design and use)
Meeting pattern: 2 sessions × 75 min = 150 min. Segment minutes total ~150; scale to your own pattern.

Week at a Glance


The week's big question	"How do I design and use a visual aid so that it genuinely helps my audience — rather than replacing me or distracting them?"
By the end of the week, students can…	(1) name the four functions of presentation aids (clarity, retention, interest, credibility); (2) match each graph/aid type to its best use (pie = proportions; line = trend; bar = comparisons; diagram = how it works; map = spatial); (3) apply the core design principles (one idea, large type, high contrast, minimal text, the 6×6 heuristic); (4) integrate an aid with the reveal-reference-return sequence, talking to the audience not the screen, and have a backup plan.
Key vocabulary	functions of aids (clarity, retention, interest, credibility); types (objects/models, photographs, charts, graphs — line/bar/pie, diagrams, maps, video/audio, handouts, slideware); design principles (simplicity, one-idea-per-slide, large readable font, high contrast, minimal text, consistent style, the 6×6 heuristic); integration cues (reveal → reference → return); death by PowerPoint; backup plan
Materials	slides (Deck 10), the week's readings + video links, one approved chatbot (Gemini / Claude / ChatGPT) for the AI-critique moment, a phone camera for the Workshop
Timing note	8 segments, ~150 min total. Session 1 = Segments 1–4 (~75 min). Session 2 = Segments 5–8 (~75 min).

Segment 1 — Hook & the Week's Question (10 min) · Session 1 opens

Hook. Open with a quick scene — no slides: "Close your eyes for a second. Picture a speaker at a podium. On the screen behind them: twelve bullet points, eight-point type, every sentence a full paragraph. The speaker turns their back to you and reads every single word. How long before you mentally leave the room?" (Pause.) "That experience has a name: death by PowerPoint. And it has a cure."

Name the week. "This week's question: How do you use a visual so that it genuinely helps your audience — instead of replacing you or burying them in text? The answer is not no slides. The answer is slides that serve the speech."

Meta-moment. Point at the Deck 10 slide currently on screen. "Notice this slide: one idea, white text, dark background, eight words. That is what we are building toward. Not an accident — a choice made by someone who knows the principles."

Why it matters now. "You have an informative speech coming up next week and a persuasive speech the week after. The aids you design for those speeches will either amplify your credibility and help your audience retain your message — or they will compete with you for the audience's attention. Let's make sure it's the first one."

Segment 2 — Functions of Presentation Aids (15 min)

Plain language first. A presentation aid is anything a speaker uses — beyond their voice and body — to help the audience understand, remember, or engage with the message. Not a substitute for the speech. Not a teleprompter. A support tool.

The four functions (put each on a slide bullet, then discuss):

Clarity. Some things are genuinely hard to picture from words alone: the structure of a cell, the route of a historical migration, the proportions of a budget. A well-chosen diagram or graph makes the complex comprehensible at a glance.
Retention. The dual-channel principle: when people both hear information and see a relevant visual simultaneously, they tend to retain it better than when they only hear it. The aid gives the audience a second angle on the same idea.
Interest. A single striking photograph or a clean, well-labeled chart breaks the monotony of continuous speech. Used sparingly, aids maintain attention in a way pure narration cannot.
Credibility. A well-designed, professional-looking visual tells the audience that the speaker prepared. Poorly designed aids — crowded, low-contrast, clearly slapped together — undercut the speaker's ethos before a word is spoken.

Interaction: "Which of the four do you think matters most? Vote." Take a quick show of hands, note the distribution, and observe: "All four are real — and they all fail if the aid violates the design principles, which are coming next."

Memory hook: "Aids clarify, retain, interest, and build your credibility — but only if they're designed to serve the audience, not the speaker's notes."

Segment 3 — Types of Presentation Aids (20 min)

Set up the matching principle. "Each type of aid has a job it does better than any other. Choosing the wrong type doesn't just miss the opportunity — it can actively misrepresent your data."

Walk through the types:

Objects and models. A physical object (an example product, a tool, a plant specimen) or a scale model (a 3D representation of a structure). Best when the audience needs to understand scale, texture, or the physical relationship between parts. Logistical warnings: can the whole room see it? Is it safe to handle? Will it distract if left out?

Photographs and images. A photograph of the place, thing, or phenomenon you are describing. High impact; puts the audience "there." Rule: one image that serves the speech's specific point — not a generic stock photo inserted to fill space.

Graphs — the matching item:
- Pie chart: use when showing proportions or parts of a whole. Example: what share of a campus's energy use each building category accounts for.
- Line graph: use when showing a trend or change over time. Example: how the campus recycling rate shifted over five years.
- Bar graph: use when comparing quantities or amounts across distinct categories. Example: comparing recycling rates across five different campuses in one year.

(Drill this triple. The quiz will match graph type to best use; the lecture should make the logic so clear that the match is obvious.)

Diagrams. Use when showing how something works, how something is structured, or the sequence of steps in a process. A diagram of how a bill becomes a law. A flowchart of a manufacturing process. The stages of a cycle.

Maps. Use when the point is spatial or geographic — where something is, how two locations relate, geographic patterns in data.

Other types (brief):
- Video/audio clips: high-engagement but require strong technical setup; keep them short (30–60 seconds maximum) and cue them precisely.
- Handouts: useful reference material — but split attention during delivery. Best distributed at the end unless the audience needs to follow along in real time.
- The speaker as aid: a demonstration (how to tie a knot, how to do a stretching exercise) can be more effective than any slide.

Interaction — quick classify (~3 min): read three data descriptions; students call out the graph type: (a) the proportion of a college budget spent on instruction, facilities, and administration; (b) the change in average global temperature since 1900; (c) the number of students enrolled in each of five academic departments. (Answers: a = pie; b = line; c = bar.)

Segment 4 — Design Principles: The Core Rules (17 min) · Session 1 closes (~75)

Plain language first. Good slide design is not about making things look "nice." It is about making the audience's job easy. Every design principle exists to reduce cognitive load on the audience and let the speaker's message come through.

The core rules (teach each, then show the violation):

One idea per slide. When you put three ideas on one slide, you fragment the audience's attention across all three. Design for one point per slide; advance the deck when you advance the idea.
Large, readable type. A rule of thumb for classrooms: no body text smaller than 24 points; headers at 36 or larger. If someone in the back row cannot read it, it does not belong on the slide.
High contrast. Dark text on a light background, or light (white) text on a dark (navy/indigo/black) background. Medium-contrast color combinations wash out under room lights and become inaccessible for audience members with low vision.
Minimal text. Put keywords and labels on the slide; put the teaching in your mouth. If the audience can read the slide and understand your whole message without hearing you, you have replaced yourself with a document.
Consistent style. Use the same font, the same color scheme, and the same layout logic across all slides. Visual inconsistency makes a deck look unfinished and forces the audience to re-orient at each slide rather than focusing on the content.
Quality images. A low-resolution, blurry, or obviously clip-art image undercuts credibility. If an image is not worth using at full quality, don't use it.

The 6×6 heuristic. Approximately six lines of text per slide, approximately six words per line. This is a practical guideline, not a hard law — but when you find yourself writing a tenth bullet point in full sentences, the 6×6 is telling you something has gone wrong. The question is always: does this text belong on the slide, or does it belong in the speaker's mouth?

Worked model (describe the bad and the good version):

Described bad slide: Title — "The Benefits of Sleep." Nine bullet points, each a complete sentence, covering the cognitive benefits, the physical benefits, the emotional benefits, the research base, and the recommendations, all in 12-point type. The speaker reads them all.

Described good version: Same topic. Slide 1 — title "Why Sleep Matters" with a single line: "Memory, mood, and repair — all happen here." Slide 2 — a bar graph (described: three bars showing average test-performance scores across three groups — adequate sleep, slight sleep deficit, severe sleep deficit). Slide 3 — "The target: 7–9 hours." Three slides, three ideas, three points made clearly. The speaker carries the rest.

Misconception + cure:
- ❌ "A detailed slide shows that I researched and prepared."
✅ Cure: Preparation shows in your command of the topic and the quality of your evidence. The slide's job is to help the audience, not to prove you worked hard. A clean slide that makes one idea vivid shows more craft than a crowded one that exhausts the audience.

Segment 5 — Integration: How to Use an Aid (20 min) · Session 2 opens

Hook back in: "Alright — we know what types exist and how to design them. Now the piece most people skip: how do you actually use an aid in a live speech without losing the audience?"

The three integration cues — teach as a sequence:

Reveal: bring the aid up at the moment you are ready to discuss it. Do not leave a slide on screen before you are discussing it — it splits the audience's attention. Build in a blank or title slide to occupy the screen between major points if needed.
Reference: make the connection explicit. Do not assume the audience will draw the connection on their own. Say: "As you can see here," "this bar shows," "notice the spike in 2022," "the highlighted region is where our topic lives." One or two specific lines.
Return: turn back to the audience. Your eye contact and your relationship with the room are more important than the screen. The aid is a moment in the speech, not the destination.

The number-one misuse: reading the slides.
"Turn to the screen and read every bullet. What just happened?" Walk through the failure mode: the eye contact breaks (the transactional loop of the communication process shuts down); the audience reads faster than you speak and tunes out; the speaker's behavior signals lack of preparation. The fix is not to write less on the slides — it is to put only keywords and labels on the slide and let the speaker carry the substance.

Additional integration rules:
- Never walk between the projector and the screen — you block the visual and look unprepared.
- Practice with the aids before the speech: know which slide comes next, know the keyboard shortcut to advance, know how to return to a slide if needed.
- Give yourself time to cue the aid before speaking about it — don't start talking about the graph while it is still loading.

Have a backup plan (always):
"What do you do when the laptop won't connect?" This is not a hypothetical — it happens constantly. Have a printed outline or description of each visual. Know how to deliver the speech without the aids. The speaker who confidently says, "My slides aren't coming up — no problem, let me describe what you'd be seeing" earns more credibility than the one who spends three minutes debugging the projector in front of the audience.

Memory hook: "Reveal it. Reference it. Return to your audience. The slide is a moment — you are the speech."

Segment 6 — The Model Speech Moment: Bad Slide vs. Good Slide (18 min)

The signature worked example. Walk through this contrast verbally, describing both slides in text (keeping it auto-gradable and universally transferable):

Bad slide (described): A student is giving a three-minute informative speech on campus food waste. Her slide reads:
- Title: "Campus Food Waste: An Overview"
- Bullet 1: "The average college student generates approximately one pound of food waste per day in campus dining."
- Bullet 2: "Food waste accounts for a significant percentage of total campus solid waste."
- Bullet 3: "Several strategies have been shown to reduce food waste in campus dining facilities."
- Bullet 4: "One effective approach is tray-less dining, which has been adopted by many universities."
- Bullet 5: "Another approach involves student education campaigns."
- (Four more bullets follow in the same vein, all in 11-point type.)
The student faces the screen and reads all nine bullets, pausing only to click to the next slide.

Why it fails: nine ideas, not one; tiny text unreadable from the back; the speaker has replaced herself with a document; no one is listening.

Good version (described): The same speech, redesigned. Slide 1: Title slide, "Why Your Dining Hall Matters." Slide 2: A bar graph (described — three bars showing estimated food waste per student per year at three campus types: residential, commuter, hybrid). Speaker: "We generate far more than most people expect — and where you eat matters." Slide 3: Title "Two Changes That Work," with two words: "Tray-free. Education." Speaker explains the two strategies in spoken words. Three slides, three focused moments, the speaker always in front.

Integration demo (describe it out loud): "Watch the integration cue. I advance to the bar graph — that's the REVEAL. I say 'as this graph shows, residential campuses average the highest waste' — that's the REFERENCE. Then I turn back to you and say 'here's why that matters for our campus' — that's the RETURN. The slide was a moment. I was the speech."

Why this model matters for the quiz and the Workshop: the matching item (graph type → best use) and the Workshop's critique-and-fix drill are both asking the same skill — recognize when a choice serves the audience and when it does not.

Segment 7 — Technology & the AI-Critique Moment (14 min)

Technology workflow for this week:

The Speech Workshop has two technology steps:
1. Design step: describe two slides in text following this week's principles (or sketch them). You do not need slideware to complete this — a description is fine.
2. Delivery step: record a 60-second segment using one of your described slides (or an actual slide if you build one), and deliver it without reading from the screen.

AI-critique moment (teach the three failure modes for this week):

Ask your approved chatbot: "Help me design a slide for a speech about campus food waste." Then analyze its response against this week's principles.

Common failure modes to catch:
1. Over-crowded output: the chatbot produces seven bullet points in full sentences — violates one idea per slide, violates the 6×6 heuristic.
2. Wrong graph type: the chatbot suggests a pie chart for data that is actually a trend over time — a matching error.
3. Hollow design praise: "This slide looks professional and visually appealing" — without connecting any design choice to communication goals. Push it: "Why does that specific choice help the audience?"
4. Fabricated statistics on the slide: if the chatbot suggests putting a specific statistic on the slide, ask for the source. It may have invented the number. If you cannot verify the number at an authoritative source, do not put it on the slide — that is fabrication.

Segment 8 — Callback, Scope Flag & Hand-off (13 min) · Session 2 closes (~75)

Callback:
"Everything this week lives in one sentence: the aid serves the audience. If it clarifies, retains, interests, or builds credibility — it is earning its place. If it is a crowded document that the speaker reads aloud — it is hurting the speech. Type, design, and integration are the three levers."

Tease next week:
"Week 11 is the informative speech — your first full-length graded speech of the second half of the term. Everything we have built (organization, supporting material, oral citations, language, delivery modes, and now visual aids) comes together in one speech. The best informative speakers make complex ideas feel simple and memorable — and now you have the full toolkit."

Hand-off:
- Lecture Tutorial 10 (AI tutor, share-link submission) — functions, types, design principles.
- Quiz 10 — graph-type matching and design principles; auto-gradable items only.
- Discussion 10 — "Do slides help or hurt public speaking?" (arguable, both sides).
- Assignment 10 — design and justify two slides; match graph types to data; critique and fix a described slide.
- Speech Workshop 10 — the design drill: design two slides, critique a described bad slide, record 60 sec using an aid without reading it.

Instructor FAQ — Common Stumbles

Student says / does	Quick cure
Uses a pie chart for trend data.	The matching rule: pie = proportions of a whole; line = change over time. Ask: "Is this about how much at one time, or how it changed?"
Puts eight bullet points on one slide.	One idea per slide. Ask: "Which of these eight is the one thing you need the audience to remember?" Cut to that.
Reads the slide aloud while facing the screen.	Reveal → Reference → Return. The slide gets one sentence; the speaker gets the rest. Practice the integration cue.
"More slides = more effort = better grade."	The craft is simplicity, not volume. A speaker with five clean slides who integrates them well is stronger than one with thirty crowded slides who reads them all.
Uses a line graph to show comparison across categories.	Line graphs are for trends over time; bar graphs are for comparing categories. Ask: "Is there a time axis, or are these independent categories?"
No backup plan.	Tech fails constantly. Can you describe each visual verbally? Could you deliver the speech without any aids? That test is how you know you are prepared.

Scope flag

This outline stays within Objective 6 (designing and using presentation aids). The principles taught here (one idea, large type, high contrast, minimal text, correct graph type, the integration cue) are drawn from the standard public-speaking literature on visual support. No specific statistic or research finding is asserted without being labeled as an illustrative example — the design principles are taught as practical guidelines, not empirically-claimed "laws," to avoid misattribution. The slide design language (6×6 heuristic) is a widely-circulated presentation guideline — stated factually as a practical rule of thumb, not attributed to a specific proprietary framework.

~ Prof. Marchetti's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com