Taking presentations seriously: Invoking narrative craft in academic talks

As academics, we attend a lot conferences where the majority of talks we sit through are just plain bad. Presenters ascend to the podium to read from a set of unfinished jottings, dots and half-statements scattered across randomly selected backgrounds. This is ironic because as health professions educators, we care about good communication and teaching. Many of us study how to share information and knowledge in ways that have meaning for learners. The premise of this article is that we have an imperative to become better communicators and presenters of our science. To do so, we suggest looking to the art and craft of narrative. We can identify various reasons why academic presentations are so often poorly done. Many faculty members only receive institutional support to attend a conference if they give a presentation. Academic credit, moreover, comes from the list of presentations on one’s CV. Writing good abstracts is better value than crafting good presentations. Add the lure of a pleasing venue (Vancouver, Barcelona etc.) and our conference culture makes sense. Presentations are not serious business because it is their acceptance, not their quality, that contribute to academic advancement. Even if we have an explanation, it is still an undesirable state of affairs. We do a disservice to the people who sit, bored and distracted, through our presentations. We do a disservice to our own academic work by not taking the time to write a presentation that communicates the new knowledge we