Electronic Appendix
About the Authors

The Reporting Process
A Few Words About Writing
A Concluding Comment

Types of Audiences
Audience Point of View and Use of Report
Some Off-The-Record Notes About Audiences
Messages About You

Purposes of Reports
Types of Reports
Report components
Report Readability
General Comments on Reports with Quantitative Data
Focus Group Reports

Communication and Meaning
Design Principles and Maxims
Using Design Principles and Maxims

When to Graph
Fonts
White Space
Color
Pattern

Tables
Charts
Charts that depict size
Charts that depict change over time
Charts that show what is typical or exceptional
Charts that depict quantitative predictions or relationships
Charts that show other relationships: space, people, processes
Some ideas for drawing attention to particular elements within charts
Integrating text and graphics
Some basic guidelines for presenting charts
Conclusion

The World Wide Web

CHAPTER 8 - ORAL REPORTS

The Process of Oral Presentations
Developing Confidence
Assessing and Responding to the Audience During the Presentation
Introductions to Oral Presentations
Conclusions to Oral Presentations
Effective Delivery
Using Visual Aids
Conclusion

About the Authors

Trudy H. Bers is Senior Director of Research, Curriculum and Planning at Oakton College, Illinois. She received her bachelor of arts and doctorate in political science from the University of Illinois-Urbana, and also has master's degrees from Columbia University in public law and government and the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in marketing and organizational behavior. She has been active in a number of national organizations, serving as the Association for Institutional Research president in 1995-96 and as the chairperson of the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative in 1998.

Jeffrey A. Seybert is Director of Research, Evaluation, and Instructional Development at Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS. He has a bachelor's degree in psychology from California State University-Long Beach, master's and doctoral degrees in psychology from the University of Oklahoma, and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jeff has been active in several professional organizations including the Association for Institutional Research, the National Council for Research and Planning, and the Mid-America Association for Institutional Research.

This monograph came about for a variety of reasons. One is the strong interest shown by the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) members in the subject of graphic depictions of data and effective reporting. A number of indicators of this interest exist. In June 1986, Edward Tufte presented a keynote address at the AIR annual Forum in Orlando, FL, about the use of graphics to portray data and information. Using a variety of illustrations, few from higher education, he captured his audience and held their attention to a degree rarely observed in any address to an audience of 1,000 people. Tufte’s message was actually quite simple, and is presented cogently in his 1983 book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information: data graphics are paragraphs about data and should be treated as such. The implication of this concept is that graphics must be integrated with the text, illustrating key points or providing data and information in a format that makes them easier to grasp and understand than the written word permits (p. 28). Tufte’s keynote address continues to be among the most memorable presented to the Association.

A second indicator is the continuing attraction of pre-Forum workshops and the module about Effective Reporting included in the AIR Foundations Institute, and the movement of state and regional institutional research associations to schedule similar sessions at their annual meetings. Jeff Seybert developed the original effective reporting workshop, which has also been presented by Harriott Calhoun and Trudy Bers. A third indicator is the positive reception of 1995 AIR Forum participants to the keynote address by Stephen Kosslyn, who demonstrated, through graphic displays, how our eyes and brain receive and interpret visual symbols.

A second reason for writing this monograph is the persistent disappointment, even complaints, among conference attendees at all types of meetings about the poor quality of graphics and visual presentations used by presenters. This concern spans disciplines, scope of conferences (local, national or international), size of audiences, and subject of presentations. Despite the widespread availability and relative low cost of sophisticated graphics and presentation software that can generate high quality images in a matter of moments, a surprising number of presenters continue to use dull, small type, barely readable images that resemble pages created on old typewriters. Graphic representations of data are little better, often employing shading or patterns that hinder rather than help understanding.

A third reason is the lack of a short, readily available, usable guide for institution researchers. Most researchers’ expertise is in designing and implementing research, not in presenting data and information from that research. However, the success and overall quality of work they do are affected by how the work is presented as well as the substance. Few researchers have the time, resources, or motivation to research the literature or to attend professional meetings related to graphic design or writing prose. However, based on the popularity and positive evaluations of programs about reporting, which we noted above, it is clear they want to improve what they produce and to learn more about how to accomplish this goal.1

A quite different reason for developing this work is the increasing attention being given to the critical thinking skill of graphicacy, the ability to understand graphic displays (Wainer, 1992). Wainer suggests there are three basic levels of questions that charts can be used to answer. We have adapted them using examples from higher education.

• Very elementary questions, such as "What is the average student grade point average?"
• Intermediate level questions that involve trends, such as "How have student grade point averages changed from 1980 to 1995?"
• Higher level questions that involve relationships among variables and more sophisticated reasoning, such as "What grade point averages are expected for various student ethnic groups, based on what variables?"

Our last reason is more personal. During the past few years, we each have received positive feedback for some of the graphic depictions of data and information we have used in our presentations and reports. We have learned that when our work, whether formal reports or informal presentations, is enhanced by high quality graphic displays, it is received more favorably, conveys information more forcefully, and holds audience attention more strongly than works that use text alone or pedantic black and white tables or graphs. It has, frankly, been challenging and fun to create visual displays, especially because the overall merit of our work has improved.

We have also noticed that brief reports, especially those that contain bulleted points, questions and answers rather than didactic presentations, and clear headings and subheadings to guide the reader, garner more attention and generate more conversation than long, formal reports of many pages. The analytic, technical, and data-intensive tables we, as institutional researchers, so admire, do not travel well to most colleagues, and certainly are little appreciated by audiences outside of higher education.

Most of what we learned has occurred as a result of our culling through existing literature, listening to and watching presentations, trial and error in creating graphics and reports, and talking to others. Of special value for one of us – Trudy Bers – was a presentation done by her colleague, James Krauss, at Oakton Community College. Krauss, a professor in the art department, offers a workshop/seminar entitled "Taming the Blackboard Jungle," in which he offers instructors new ideas and insights to make their classroom presentations more visually effective.

Putting together what we learned in this document forced us to review, rethink, and reorganize our scattered information and, in the process, we hope, develop a resource that will be useful for others.

This work focuses on several types of presentations. The first type of presentation is the written report. Usually researchers’ major focus in preparing reports is on the contents, not on alternative ways for presenting information, the report’s appearance, or the audiences to which a report is directed. These are critical attributes, however, and markedly affect how our work is received, interpreted, and used.

The second type of presentation is graphic displays, or charts. Often included within reports, and so germane to them, graphics also stand alone as a topic to be considered. Following Mims (1987), we use the term chart as the most generic term for graphic displays. Charts can a) present words in an organized fashion, such as an organization chart; b) present data in an organized or symbolic fashion, such as in a bar chart or map; c) present text or symbols to depict an object, concept or process, such as in a flowchart; or d) present numerical, verbal or symbolic information in a table. The term graph usually is restricted to statistical charts. Web pages are a form of graphic display.

The third type of presentation is oral. Not a speech communications text, this monograph does, however, present some key principles for enhancing oral presentations, whether they take place in fairly informal settings such as committee meetings, at professional conferences, or to audiences drawn primarily from outside higher education such as legislators or community groups.

Together, written reports, graphical displays, and oral presentations comprise the dominant means by which researchers convey their work to others. Effective communication requires, at the outset, thought, planning, and consideration of the "others" to whom communications are directed. We begin this monograph with some general observations about the reporting process overall, then consider more specific aspects of effective communications.

Trudy Bers and Jeffrey Seybert

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