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In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
Is the convention for job talks to use slides, either instead of or in addition to a handout? Really hoping the answer is no, as I hate slides, but I've heard this from enough people that I wanted to check…
I'm not sure. Do any readers have any helpful insights to share?
I doubt there is a convention. You do you. Present in whatever way best enables you to engage your audience while also being sufficiently rigorous.
I think this is sub-field specific. Generally, at least in Europe, powerpoint is expected, at least among philosophers of science. I recently saw a young scholar do a presentation with a handout, and though she did fine, she did not use the handout effectively. That is, she failed to refer the audience to key passages on the handout. So we were left moving between listening to her and searching around the handout. That sort of thing does not happen with powerpoint (generally).
I would not do a large lecture for students without slides. I think a really good powerpoint presentation shows that you will be a good lecturer whereas you can’t demonstrate this with a handout, so you lose out on a forked attack
I believe that one or the other is fine, but both are too much.
You can do either (but you should definitely do at least one!) I prefer slides AND handout (the slides have more info, the handout is streamlined to be able to look back and ahead to the most important details). But I think this is both more field specific AND still enough in flux that you can do whatever presentational style works for you. I’ve been on hiring committees that have been delighted to hire folks who have done either of these things.
Just a stats, not normative comment. I’ve been at a department that had a large number of job talks. I think they almost all had slides, sometimes with a handout too. The occasional exception would be a very history history person with only a handout.
The advice I’ve received:
– Handouts are good in the sense that people can take notes on them.
– Slides are good as long as they just highlight key points and provide visual aid.
– Online talks typically expect slides.
– If one is to use both, they should be isomorphic.
– Printed slides are poor handouts.
– The worst talks typically consist in reading papers or slides.
– There are exceptions to the above, but extremely rare.
I think the others who have posted here make good points, but I want to vouch for OP’s hatred of slides. I also hate slides–I hate making them, and as a listener I generally find it more difficult to follow a presenter who uses good slides well than a presenter who uses a good handout well (though a lot of variables matter here). With a handout, I can go back and refer to a presenter’s definition of a thing, and I can scribble questions in margins. With a powerpoint, I’m at the mercy of the presenter’s pace, and Q&A tends to become an exercise in requesting the speaker to “go back to that slide where you say xyz…,” etc. Of course, using a handout well is a skill, but I think it’s a skill worth having and exercising. Anyway, these are my two cents.
I would causation against using both slides and a handout. I can’t see how it could possibly contribute to clear and organized communication. And it could definitely hurt. The audience has to keep track of 1) your speech, 2) your slides, 3) and your handout, which is a lot. It’s even worse if you don’t make the slides isomorphic with the handout.
I would absolutely vote for a candidate who used both slides and a handout if the handout was isomorphic to the slides in an interesting way. This would Trump concerns about research productivity, about teaching capability, about collegiality.
Maybe reverse ordering? Maybe the text corresponding to each slide grows in typeface size? Or is in a different language? Maybe the text for each slide is the negation of the slide’s content?
PLEASE STOP USING THE MOST BORING AND UNORIGINAL ISOMORPHISMS!
I think the standard in the US these days is Pp, probably plus a handout.
There’s a real danger here. If OP is not good at making or using slides for talks, doing a PowerPoint presentation could mess them up. Bad slides are much worse than no slides, and a bad slide presentation may be the worst kind of presentation. Perhaps the best move is to present in the way that makes you perform best, with the least distraction and awkwardness. This is not the time to be innovating.
The job talk absolutely should not be the first time you present that material. Hopefully the practice audience you recruit will give you honest feedback.
This is adapted from a post on teaching I made here in 2022:
I use slides, but I keep in mind the concepts from a great little book called Presentation Zen. One of its key points is that there are three separate functions of PowerPoint: Visual aid for the audience, speaker notes, and notes for the audience. Keep those separate. In other words, make three separate things (if you want them all), don’t mash them together into one slide deck.
That book recommends one image and no more than six words per slide. That’s an ideal that doesn’t fit philosophy well and which I have never been able to achieve, but you get the idea: Simplify. Don’t load your slides with text. Slides are free: There is no need to economize. Use large, clear fonts so the old folks with bad eyes in the audience (i.e., the selection committee) can read your slides easily. Be aware of color choices, especially avoiding red and green text since those are the most common color blindnesses. (I prefer white text on a black background with yellow text for emphasis, since this works well no matter the lighting conditions in the room.) Notes you give the audience should NOT just be the “handouts” that Pp generates in the Print menu.
BTW, one of the best Pp tricks is that during a presentation you can hit the period key and black out the screen so the audience can focus on you, a discussion, etc., instead of on the slides.
I agree with most of the above advice. In my experience, it depends some on what area you’re in. The last time we had a history hire, for example, only 1 of the 4 used slides, and the other 3 were handout only. They were all good. If your have particular detailed passages you’re discussing, I think handout is the way to go.
If you’re going to be showing art (aesthetics talk) or perhaps data (experimental philosophy or phil science, perhaps), then slides make good sense.
It can also depend on the size of your audience (slides better when audience is larger).
I’ve also seen good talks that are “board” (chalk- or white-) only. But to do this well requires a lot of practice.
the most important thing – practice, practice, practice!
except in philosophy of science searches, the majority of candidates for searches in my department over the past five-six years have used handouts only. I prefer handouts. There is definitely nothing wrong with handouts. I would say the only time you need slides is maybe in Europe if the above is true, and in an HPS or very science-focused department.
Also, for the record, it is absolutely not true that you can’t deliver an excellent lecture to a large number of students with a handout instead of slides. I, and many of my colleagues, do so regularly.
IMO slides are a crutch and should be avoided unless you really need a crutch. Nothing speaks more to your abilities as an excellent lecturer than delivering a fluid, engaging, easy-to-follow-along talk with no more notes than the two-sided handout everyone in the room has.
Relatedly, I think amma is completely wrong about large lectures and slides. In my experience, the best lecturers don’t use slides, because they don’t need to use slides. Slides are an easy way to produce an acceptably OK talk—that’s about it.
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