Even though we hear of “death by PowerPoint” to express the dread of slides we merely read, we still feel their necessary and useful. So how do we design slides to more effectively serve us in teaching and students in learning? The Assertion-Evidence Approach is a simple design principle to segment and simplify information in a way that improves slides for teaching, conferences, and other presentations. For more resources on effective presentations, see our resource collection on Lecture, Presentation, and Storytelling.
From the Assertion-Evidence Approach website: “In the assertion-evidence (AE) approach, you build your talk on messages (not topics) to tell a coherent and compelling story about your work. Those messages you then support with visual evidence (not bullet lists). In addition, you engage the audience by fashioning sentences on the spot, but after practice.”
Research
Resources
Images from and more assertion-evidence resources at the Assertion Evidence website. Assertion examples in image include “Our screening matrix narrowed the choice to four concepts” and “Temperatures in urban centers are often much warmer than in surrounding rural areas.”
Written and designed by Christina Moore, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University. Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC.
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