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Jury Says Virginia Tech Discriminated Against Female Fund Raisers

April 14, 2011, 8:53 pm

A federal-court jury in Roanoke, Va., ruled on Thursday that Virginia Tech had discriminated against two female fund raisers by paying them less than men who did the same work, The Roanoke Times reported. The jury awarded $25,000 to Shana Maron as the difference between her pay and that of a similarly situated male employee, and $15,000 to Getra Hanes. Ms. Hanes was also awarded $61,000 on a separate retaliation claim. Virginia Tech denied both the discrimination and the retaliation claims, saying its pay offers were not based on gender but on factors like relevant work experience. The university has not said whether it will appeal.

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  • kaitlinwalsh

    I have one minor PPT tip that I wish more people would use: if you press the letter B on your keyboard, it makes the screen go black. (And pressing it again brings the screen back.) This is good if you want to set up the presentation in advance and wait until a certain point to start it, or to hide it quickly when you are finished (or in the middle of a long discussion) so that people won’t be distracted by it. I taught presenters how to use this trick at a small conference once, and it seemed to improve their confidence when they could press a single button to turn the presentation on/off, rather than the usual “Let me just wait for this to warm up” deal.

  • ajgulyas

    One thing that I’ve done (not nearly enough, but I’m working on it) is to use my presentations in classes not just as a tool to deliver information, but to provide set moments for review and/or discussion. My goal is to develop slides that contain information (images, statistics, maps) that serve as a focal point for discussion. Some colleagues also build review question slides into their presentations to sort of wake up students and refocus their attention.

    Over the years, I’ve steadily hacked away at the amount of text on my lecture slides. And while I’d like to get away from lecture completely, it is often hard to get away from in broad survey courses. Hopefully, as I integrate more review/reflection/discussion tools into the presentation, students will be more engaged and less passive.

  • kphagen

    My favorite PPT tip is that your PowerPoint presentation will be more effective when it’s not trying to serve two purposes–presentation and handout. Design your PPT slides to be visually effective, then supplement them with a handout containing additional information.

  • kmbrplmr

    I used to put fairly complete slides up, now instead of putting all the information on the slide, I put the heading of the topic to be discussed and then bullet points (empty) for each item I want to cover. This lets the student know they need to pay attention and there will be, for example, three points on this topic they need to listen for. I see much more notetaking happening. I try not to use gratuitous clipart or pictures, but often there are relevant pictures which add to the point I’m trying to make and so I include wherever appropriate.

  • laur2582

    Because I teach art history, I use powerpoint only for the image itself that I am teaching, along with the relevant data: artist, title, date, location of the building, size of the work (sometimes) etc. This way I don’t have to spell anything. After that, I use the white board to write other points as I lecture, and can discuss the images more freely. I have been astonished, therefore, at the incredibly turgid way that I have seen people use this tool. It is frankly unnecessary in most cases. And why print out the presentation as a handout, just because you CAN? No, I think that the slides themselves can be used much more creatively, or to show information that can’t be conveyed any other way, or perhaps in the way that the old overhead projector slides were used.

  • marklarson

    Another strategy for learning “how-to…” = Suggest searching for (Google, for ex.) “Power Point + how not to”… — especially if you need a laugh.

    One of my favorites = “Life After Death by Powerpoint 2010″

    SlideShare also has some good how-to sources.

  • rossemmett

    I no longer use PowerPoint very often. I use Prezi. Takes longer to create, but A Prezi is much more effective at the presentation of material that is hierarchically organized. Prezi gives you what is essentially a zoomable white board that you can arrange material on. As the article says, a little creativity can go a long way.

  • http://about.me/jbj Jason B. Jones

    Prezi’s popular among our writers, too, I think. Ethan wrote about it a while back.

    There are a couple of other Prezi-related posts coming soon, as well!

  • velvis

    The best tip for PPT is to use Prezi – it’s more visually dynamic and even if there is only text on the screen the modification of the path makes it seem far more entertaining than it is.

  • dvacchi

    The problem with Prezi is that it can make you dizzy to watch – it is most effective for short presentations with relatively long breaks between slides – it’s a good concept, but is not completely refined yet – once they cure the dizziness aspect, it may supersede PowerPoint, but remember PowerPoint has been around for 18-19 years and it is Microsoft -I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft to buy Prezi and close it down!

  • dvacchi

    You can make motion happen in PowerPoint as well

  • 11333651

    Another way to enhance interactivity with PowerPoint is to use hyperlinks to navigate. Rather than organizing content in a strictly linear progression, you can begin a presentation with, say, an intro slide with six, eight, a dozen or more different topics and have each topic serve as a link to other slides in the deck. Each topic can link to a subset of slides organized in sequence that elaborates on the topic, with the last slide in the sequence containing a hyperlink back to the title slide. Arranging the topics in a table and allowing the audience to pick the order of topics makes the presentation have something of the look and feel of the game “Jeopardy”; it engages the audience more effectively than simply working through all content in a linear manner. Plus, if your content exceeds the available time, allowing the audience to choose ensures you target the topics they find most interesting.

    As an example…
    If you were to give a talk on “Planning a Picnic,” slide 1 could have “Planning a Picnic” as a title with topics “Drinks,” “Snacks,” “Sandwiches,” “Locations,” “Games,” and “Ant Repellant” appear as a bulleted list of topics. Clicking on “Drinks” would take you to slide 2; slides 2-6 would depict different drink options. Clicking on “Snacks” would take you to slide 7, with subsequent slides depicting snack options, etc. On thte last slide of each topic sequence (e.g., slide 6 for drinks) you would include a hyperlink back to the table of contents (in this example, a small cartoon of a picnic basket would be a good choice) so that you return to the TOC when you click on the basket.

    This takes a bit more planning and vetting than a linear presentation, but it’s much more engaging for the audience and speaker.

  • gzappia4

    nice job! learned a lot and will share with students.

  • rentedname

    Read the book PresentationZen. It provides great guidance on design and delivery of PPT presentations. I rely on it whenever possible. Also, thanks to the other comments: all excellent on this topic! And thanks to Jason Jones for the article; great topic, and I’d like to see more of this sort (i.e., how to do our work more effectively).

  • francesca2

    I like kaitlinwalsh’s tip. I give PowerPoint tips to my students and staff members. One additional tip is that if your room is quite dark, instead of pressing the letter B (for black), press the W (for white). It works the same way, only your screen and room stays lighter, instead of being very dark. I explain it is like a toggle switch. Press it once and your screen goes white. Press it again and it will take you back to the place where you were before you pressed it. Also, for those who put files on their desktop for the ease of accessing them for a presentation, if you have a windows keyboard, press the window key (generally located two keys from the right side of your spacebar) and the letter D (for down). It will put down all your open programs so you will now be at your desktop. Press the Windows key with the letter D again, and all the programs you had up will open up to where they were before you pressed Windows/D.

  • mustech

    I have found the PDF format to be a much more versatile format in creating engaging and interactive presentation materials for my students. Its ability to handle collections of materials designed for print or screen in tandem, not to mention its interactive capabilities makes it an ideal format for communicating information to students.

  • bergtrom

    The most effective use of presentation software such as PowerPoint or Prezi might be topic- and discipline-specific. Therefore I have to reject the parochial comments like “The best tip for PPT is to use Prezi” or “The easiest way to improve your PowerPoint presentations is to stop doing them.” You can abuse PowerPoint (or Prezi or any other presentation tool) as easily as you can abuse any power tool. Bu I’ll be chucking neither PowerPoint nor my table saw any time soon. At least not until someone shows me how to cut the top of my oak coffee table more efficiently without my table saw, and how to present cellular processes without the powerful animation features of PowerPoint. As is noted somewhere in this thread, it’s not the tool but the user that can kill PowerPoint presentations.

  • activelylearningtolearn

    Thank you for this great information.

    After incorporating audience response systems into my presentations, I gradually forfeited bullet-points of information. Instead, I shuffle through slides that poll for common misunderstandings or ask application, analysis, synthesis, or evaluation questions while encouraging the audience to respond in groups. What I say only informs the questions on the screen or responds to the audience’s answers. Sometimes I incorporate a “lessons learned” slide after a series of related questions. Even when I don’t use response systems, this presentation strategy improves engagement — and over time, attendance. (I hope it improves learning but do not have evidence to support that claim.)

    Unfortunately, I never noticed/understood the Note or Presenter View features. They will be very useful for this presentation strategy. I can’t wait to try them!

  • Guest

    Best things I think are to make the slides visually appealing with a nice graph, image or something simple. Second I would say keep the text to a minimum and whatever you do write make sure it’s leading, i.e. it makes the viewer want to listen to you explain what the text means.

  • missoularedhead

    Humor. Humor goes a long, long way with PowerPoint. I’ll put up a silly image (in a presentation about how to do research, for instance, I’ll put the LOLcat about Wikipedia), or I’ll actually talk about an ‘artistic recreation’ of something. Also, yes, bullet points are so, so much better than a paragraph. I do PPT mostly so my students have something to refer to, and something to look at, but I never, ever put everything on them.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4304647 Nancy Darling

    This is a shameless plug. I have three blog posts I have done on this topic for Psychology Today based on a presentation I do every year for students on how to present. (Nothing like presenting on presenting for intimidation.) I started putting together the presentation assuming I’d use PowerPoint (the students wanted to use it) and realized when I finished it that I REALLY needed a handout instead. Here are the posts:

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thinking-about-kids/201003/how-give-presentation-part-i-its-not-about-you
    &
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thinking-about-kids/201003/how-give-presentation-part-ii-tell-good-story

  • uconnregistrar

    Dick Hardt, the Canadian open source software entrepreneur, makes the most interesting use of PowerPoint in presentations that I’ve seen. His Identity 2.0 keynote at OSCON 2005 is eye-opening.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E

  • 22058726

    The best tip I can give anyone using PowerPoint is to AVOID READING THE SLIDES out loud to the audience – and you might be surprised at how often people do it. I once saw a PowerPoint presentation in which the presenter broke every cardinal rule of PowerPoint construction and delivery. The slides were packed with text – no visuals – and, since the text was too small for the audience to read, she READ THE SLIDES to us. *sigh*

  • dld18

    I have a nifty presentation I give to my graduate students about effective presentations and power point shows that includes the following advice: use power point as an outline. The more you put on your slides, the more likely you are to read the darn things, which bores everyone. Fewer words forces the presenter to speak from what he or she knows, to be interesting and engaging.

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