Visual Aids

Visual aids involve your audience and require a change from one activity to another: from hearing to seeing. When an audience can both hear and see what you are saying you are appealing to more then one sense at a time. Having them not only focus their attention on you, but reinforcing your words making them more likely to retain the information.

Visuals aids are beneficial for both the presenter and the listener. The allow the speaker too remember all the key points and to stay on track.

Here are some statistics

• Studies by educational researchers suggest that approximately 83% of human learning occurs visually, and the remaining 17% through the other senses - 11% through hearing, 3.5% through smell, 1% through taste, and 1.5% through touch.

The studies suggest that three days after an event, people retain 10% of what they heard from an oral presentation, 35% from a visual presentation, and 65% from a visual and oral presentation.

This graph itself shows the statistics for my audience. So not only did I express the statistics, I used a visual aid to present my information.

Here are some examples of visual aids you can use:

• powerpoints
• charts
• bristol boards
• overheads
• samples of products
• posters
• videos
• etc

Visual aids are critical. The following links have some ideas on how to create and use visual aids. They are a must see!
http://www.osha.gov/doc/outreachtraining/htmlfiles/traintec.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_6197286_create-aids-presentations-communicate-ideas.html

http://www.hawaii.edu/mauispeech/html/visual_aids.html