While the content of the message is essential, how educators put the message across is equally important. Following are some ideas educators should keep in mind in order to make effective presentations to groups.
Use One's Voice Effectively
An educator's voice is his/her most powerful tool when in direct contact with citizens. Knowing the content of the message, voter educators should be sensitive to the way it is conveyed. Being mindful of the group and how they are responding to the message, voter educators should adapt the way they speak to suit the group.
In doing this, people will hear the message more clearly and easily. A group of elderly people will not feel comfortable with an educator who has decided to put a voter education message to loud rap music and the information the message contains may be lost.
Get the Volume Right
Speaking too loudly or too softly affects the effective delivery of messages. The size of the room and the number of participants should determine the level of the educator's voice.
A large hall and a soft voice means that the message becomes lost, people become frustrated and distracted, and lose interest. The opposite also is true: if in a small room, the educator is bellowing the information, the effect may be that people will not listen because they are being shouted at and may feel too intimidated to ask questions.
A good tip is to speak so that people sitting toward the back of the venue can hear clearly. Educators also should ask at regular intervals whether or not they are clearly audible.
Vary the Pitch of One's Voice
Intonation is the level and pitch of one's voice and although intonation varies from one person to the next, varying the level, pace, and emphases in a presentation will contribute to a well-received message. Educators' belief in the importance of elections and voting is indicated in their manner of speaking.
A monotonous voice can lull the group into not listening. A lively and upbeat voice, emphasising certain words or phrases by increasing the volume or saying certain words more slowly, will maintain the group's interest.
Use Positive Body Language
The way educators move, stand, and sit indicates to the group the level of commitment and understanding of the educator. Educators will, with practice, find a manner that suits them and also maintains the group's interest. Being prepared and having a real understanding of the information and the issues facing people will assist educators in being at ease. Being comfortable with oneself as an educator means that the group also will be comfortable, relaxed, and willing to
listen and participate.
Leaning disinterestedly against a wall with arms folded sends a clear message to people that the educator has no real commitment to being there and to getting people to vote and participate in the political life of their town or country. Alternatively, pacing the room up and down in front of the group can indicate nervousness and give the impression of rushing through the information. Strike a balance between being to stiff and overly formal and on the other hand, constantly moving
around.
Use Language Sensitively
Communicating around the globe would be much easier if everyone spoke the same language. As this is not the case and people want to understand and be understood clearly, being sensitive to differences in language, terms and concepts, is the duty of the voter educator.
Languages develop to meet the needs of a particular context: with the world changing so the contexts alter. Foreign and outside languages influence the vernacular. Depending on the degree to which a group is multilingual, new concepts can be incorporated as they stand with the same meaning attached; or the word is used yet the meaning is adapted to the local context; or a new version of the word is made to suit the meaning according to the local context. Groups that are
very isolated and unilingual will often find equivalent words and meanings in their own language and not simply adopt the foreign term.
International agencies and voter educators who do not speak all the local languages need to develop mechanisms to ensure that the same message is passed on to all potential voters. The ideal would be to find local educators who straddle the local and the democracy education worlds. This ensures that local words and meanings are linked to the new terms of voter education when developing materials and training educators or community groups.
In most cases, especially in newer democracies, materials will be developed in very simple language with easy-to-understand concepts. In some cases, the common language is that of the colonial power, English, French, Portuguese, or Spanish. These languages are used as the basis for materials and the training of educators. In the field, trainers find that to make themselves easily understood, they have to use local words to convey key concepts. For this reason, a glossary of
terms and concepts in the vernacular is becoming a popular and useful addendum to training materials.
The use of interpreters is important for
- translating materials in order to train local educators and others in voter or civic education,
- translating key concepts that may be particularly complex and confusing,
- going with voter educators to workshops or briefings so that should difficulties arise,
translation is available to make points clear.
Make Eye Contact
Making eye contact with people in a group is an important way to gauge the level of understanding and to what extent they are following the presentation. Based on this continual assessment, the educator will constantly be shifting focus, speeding up the pace or slowing it down to ensure that maximum learning is taking place.
The educator should not stare at individuals but should simply glance around the room taking note of the mood of the audience and then adapt the presentation accordingly. Making eye contact with people in a group at a workshop or briefing allows the educator to monitor who is looking confused and the find out what is puzzling them and try to solve the problem. Alternatively, on finding people falling asleep, educators should either pick up the pace or take a short break.
Dress Appropriately
Cultural norms and the need to convey a message professionally should determine how an educator dresses. Cultural considerations are important; to create offence in this manner will result in participants not listening and responding well to the message being delivered. If a woman is giving a briefing for older men from Saudi Arabia and she wears pants and no head covering, the group probably will not take her or the message seriously.
Credibility as a nonpartisan educator is key to the success of voter education campaigns. Wearing clothing that symbolises a preference for a particular political party or candidate will undermine the nonpartisan stance of the programme. Symbolic colours and slogans on T-shirts should be avoided to maintain a credible reputation for nonpartisanship.
Dressing too formally means that an interactive and participatory atmosphere will be hard to foster. A man in very business-like suit addressing a poor village in the Philippines will probably be listened to very attentively, but people may be inhibited from asking questions and engaging in discussions with the educator.
The opposite is also true. Educators who dress too casually indicate that they do not care about the group enough to make an effort, and may lose the respect of the group.
A rule generally applicable is to dress neatly, cleanly, and strike a balance between too formal or too casual, culturally acceptable, and politically nonpartisan.
Three important tips for making a successful presentation are:
- be prepared
- smile and be friendly
- listen carefully
Use Visual Aids to Complement Presentations
When preparing and using visual aids, keep in mind that whatever is used should complement the presentation and not replace the educator. Too often, briefings and workshops consist of one slide or overhead projector transparency after the next, and the group becomes lost in vast amounts of information. Balancing visual and verbal presentation is very important.
A machine that fails or is faulty distracts and undermines the effective delivery of a message. Check and test to ensure that visual aids work well. Dry run presentations to ensure that everything is working as smoothly as possible.
When using visual aids, educators should focus their attention on the group. This ensures that people are listening and paying attention to what is being said as well as looking at what is displayed. See Projected Materials.
Use Posters and Codes to Maximise Learning
Posters are powerful tools for illiterate and semi-literate groups. If they are properly developed, they can convey messages as well as enable people to identify, think about, and attach meaning and personal relevance to the images. As a tool for understanding the process and value of elections and voting, careful thought must go into the development of images and graphics. See Adult Learning.
When a target group has been chosen, a representative sampling of that group should be established to assist the developers of the posters in creating codes that will be meaningful to the broader group. This group should reflect the average age, sex, level of education, race, and religious beliefs of the target group.
By getting this group to identify not only images they find important but the meaning they attach to images, the curriculum developer is able to build a set of codes that correlates images with meaning and importance for the target group.
In designing good voter education materials for illiterate or semi-literate groups it is important to be as realistic as possible. Full-colour graphics that are realistic and based on people's own experiences work best. Posters should not be too full of images as this will be confusing. Line drawings either in black and white or selected colour are not as effective because it requires some work on the part of an audience to understand what is being communicated (see Preparing Instructional Materials for
further detail). Illiterate and semi-literate groups see their world in a 'face-value' way; realistic graphics enable them to translate what they see more readily.
To make effective use of the posters, educators need to spend time talking through the poster (or series of posters) with the group, facilitating group discussion around what people see and providing them with pertinent information for participating in elections.
With the development of codes, educators are able to get people to identify deeper issues and values associated with democratic elections, like secrecy of the ballot, the right to vote, freedom from intimidation, acceptance of the outcome, and hope for the future.
When possible, participants should be able to take away some material or a memento from a workshop.
Use of Large Posters and White Boards/Chalkboards
For posters and other prepared visual aids to be effective in voter education, they need to be large enough for big groups of people to see them. If designed well, they are suitable visual aids for illiterate and semi-literate people. They should be easy to display and require minimal maintenance. Big posters tend to be cumbersome. Programmes should take the educator's reality into account: a person using public transport may find a large poster or banner difficult to take with from one briefing or workshop to the next.
Very large posters also can be expensive to produce. There are more cost-effective and easier ways of doing this.
White boards and chalkboards are cost-effective visual aids. They can be used again and again, they need very little maintenance and are useable in all circumstances as they do not rely on electricity. The skill of using these boards well can be easily mastered. Key points to note when writing on boards are to keep the script large, clear, and legible writing and to use dark colours such as blue or black.
Boards come in various sizes. Those under 1 metre-by-600 millimetres can be carried quite easily. They can be transported conveniently on buses or other public transport because they are compact. In some cases, the boards can be folded up to make carrying them easier. For illiterate audiences whiteboards and chalkboards have the disadvantage of presenting mainly written information.
Standard Scripts Help Disseminate Accurate Information Quickly
Scripts are a way of disseminating key information about the coming elections and voting processes in a quick and accurate way. Usually, scripts are part of a voter education package that may be produced by the electoral body or a national or international organisation. They can be based on the most common and frequently asked questions on the elections and should respond to most people's concerns.
Most scripts are designed to make sure that people know what they are voting for and where, when, and how they should vote. Scripts also can address issues of intimidation, bribery, and human rights.
An innovative idea for presenting with scripts is the use of a flip chart. On one side are graphics and drawings, which the learners see. On the other side of the stand is the text that the presenter reads through.
Practice Presentations
Being prepared means that the educators should know the objectives of the programme and be sure of what needs to be said as well as how it is going to be said. Rehearsing the information for a workshop or briefing enables educators to identify areas where their knowledge is a little thin and where more information is needed to be confident in the meeting.
Gauging the time an item or exercise on the programme will take is particularly important for briefings, when the educator may be given a limited time slot, or workshop itself is very tight.
When training voter educators, time may be set aside to critique new educators on their presentation skills. This should be done in a nonthreatening way. Thinking and commenting positively will force those commenting to frame remarks so that they are useful suggestions for improvement and not negative. Voice, body language, and eye contact are all important areas that
need to be observed and critiqued.
A very powerful tool when rehearsing presentations is a video recorder. Trainees are given the opportunity to view and critique their own performances, look at strengths as well as areas that need improvement.
Preparing in this way develops educators' confidence to face the public, do more briefings, telephone more people, knock on more doors, and help spread voter education effectively.
