Let’s Talk About Talking About Science

By Emily Arendsen

           I loathe presentations. The reason is that there is no great incentive for the presenter to engage his or her audience nor for the audience to remain interested. The format where the presenter has to describe an entire research endeavor in twelve or fifty minutes leads to the presenter having to compromise between clarity and content, and the thought of entertaining your audience along the way gets pushed to the background. Once the presentation is over, the people in the audience feel pressure to either ask insightful questions or to say nothing at all, leaving those that were lost within the first part of the presentation wishing they could leave. These are the reasons why I prefer poster presentations. The presenter has limited space, so they have to reduce their content and keep the most important topics only. Then they are face to face with a small audience, so they can read the audience to make sure they are being clear and understood. When the presenter has finished their piece, the audience can ask any questions pertinent to the poster and come away with an understanding of a piece of what that researcher does.

            Today we gave poster presentations to university students and station staff, which means that we presented in Spanish. I absolutely loved it! My partner, Anna, and I presented our poster about our student-led research project in which we investigated trichome density as a response to herbivory. Trichomes are small hairs on the leaves and stems of plants that protect the leaves from being eaten, among other things. We found that our model species, Piper urostachyum, does not increase trichome density as a response to herbivory, nor does it invest in trichomes as a defense against herbivory when it has more light resources available to do so, contrary to our hypothesis. We presented to a wide range of people, some of whom knew plants very well and others that had never thought about how plants need defenses, and we were able to explain to all of them what we found and why we care. The students and station staff were all attentive and were very patient with us pausing to find the right word. Every group asked questions that showed that they were able to understand and interact with the results that we presented to them. We were even able to hear about some of the research projects being done by PhD.-level researchers at the station from one of the field assistants of a climate change project. At the end, they commended us for our ability to communicate in Spanish and Anna and I were satisfied with the work that we had done.

            Presenting to people in this interactive format gives the presenter a greater ability to connect with their audience and to learn from the audience as much as the audience is learning from the researcher. It’s less intimidating from the perspective of the presenter and the audience. Perhaps most importantly, it allows for conversation to begin naturally and for the exchange of information to flow freely to the benefit of everyone involved.