20 Questions: Can Pecha-Kucha 20x20 Help Students Improve Presentation Skills?

1. What is Pecha-Kucha 20x20?
   Pecha-Kucha (PK) 20x20 is a presentation format that asks the speaker to make a presentation using 20 slides shown exactly for 20 seconds each, with slides advancing automatically. Pecha-Kucha is a Japanese onomatopoeic adverb based on the sound of chit-chat and used to describe chattering or jabbering on in an energetic way.
   
   Official website and explanation = http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what
   
   Note: In Japan, the phrase pecha-kucha has a bit of a negative connotation meaning noisy, mindless and even annoying jabber, which may have been lost on the non-Japanese inventors when they chose that name...but oh well, it is the official name and it has stuck to a cool presentation format that I like. My Japanese students find it an awkward name to use for what ends up being a well-prepared presentation and we just use "20x20." Another problem is that most people around the world never know how to pronounce pecha-kucha, so personally I feel PK 20x20 or just "20x20" may be a more practical and informative name to use in the long term. But at the same time Pecha-Kucha is quite a unique sounding and mysterious word for non-Japanese people, and can be fun to try to pronounce, so I guess it may stick.
   
   
2. When, how and why did it start?
   PK 20x20 was invented by two architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham in Tokyo in 2003 as a format for young architects and artists to showcase their recent work in a concise, visual way. Given a microphone on stage, some speakers can get a little too carried away and take too much time explaining their concepts, so 20x20 was devised to help "liberate" the speaker (and the audience even more) from that type of over-explanation and force the presentation to be highly visual and to the point. That's the genius of 20x20. My own experience made me a fan. When I tried creating and delivering a 20x20 myself as a pilot and sample to show my students, I found the constraints of the format very helpful and fun to work with.
   
   
3. Who does 20x20s today?
   Today PK 20x20 presentations are made at events called PK Nights in hundreds of cities around the world. See pecha-kucha.org for event details and many examples of voiced over slideshows in the 20x20 format. After we did 20x20s in my ICU class, some students decided to go check out a PK night in Roppongi and said it was a cool experience.
   This video here doubles as an example of a 20x20 and an invitation to a PK Night sponsored by Speakers.org (click to see video).
   
   
4. What are people saying about it?
   Scott Gross of Forbes.com (Dec. 10, 2010) has called it "An amazing cure for death by PowerPoint" and Garr Reynolds, professor of Kansai Gaidai, presentation consultant, and author of the best-selling Presentation Zen books has labelled it an "art of liberating constraints" that helps presenters keep their talk focused and concise, much to the pleasure of the audience (Sep. 28, 2007). See also Wired Magazine Aug. 21, 2007 and www.pecha-kucha.org for what people think about 20x20 presentations.
   
   
5. How long have you (Mark) used it in your classes and in what ways?
   In January 2011, I was introduced to the concept by my highly artistic and innovative colleague Sylvan Payne (See/listen to his cool PK night presentation here) when we team-taught a presentation skills course at ICU . This year I have used it for a total of 100 students in two different English language courses at ICU and in one course in the engineering faculty of a national university called TAT where I teach part-time. I'm going to focus on describing the results from my core ICU class.
   
   
6. What did the ICU students present on?
   In Feb. this year, I used PK for academic research paper summary presentations at International Christian University (ICU) in my Academic Reading and Writing (ARW) course. 1st year ELP students finishing up their academic year presented their 1000 word research paper results in PK 20x20 format. Each student had 10 minutes including the 6 min. 40 sec. for the 20x20 and Q&A time. Topics = Death penalty, suicide, commercial surrogacy, child labor etc.
   
   
7. Did the ICU students like it? What do your surveys show?
   Almost all of my ICU ARW students (n = 32 survey respondents) rated it very positively both for being:
   "enjoyable" (31% Strongly Agree, 56% Agree, 9% Disagree, 3% Strongly Disagree) and "good as a format for improving presentation skills (69% Strongly Agree, 22% Agree, 3% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree).
   Judging from the comments, 3 students out of the 32 seemed to have had a negative reaction due to struggling with the PowerPoint requirement and the demands for preparation and rehearsal.
   
   
8. What did the TAT students present on and how did they react?
   My 2nd year TAT engineering/biology students did "Team 20x20s" in teams of three for a final presentation on a social issue (problem/analysis/possible solutions) at the end of a required English Communication course. Each student spoke for 6 or 7 slides, or a little over a minute. Topics included the need for volunteers in Tohoku, child abuse, food poisoning etc.
   
   Student reactions at TAT were mixed--one of my classes really liked it and did a fabulous job on their team 20x20s. In my other class, several groups had difficulty with team work and energy level and really struggled to make it work. I'm still tabulating those (n = 60) and may present them at an upcoming conference. 20x20 is a quite challenging speaking task and imposing the format as a requirement may not be ideal for some types of students or presentation projects.
   
   
9. How do students make a PK 20x20? What's the most difficult part?
   If I have enough time in the course, the 10 steps are 1) topic selection/goal-setting, 2) background research, 3) outline, 4) draft of script/visuals in 20x20 format, 5) creation of visuals with timed slides, 6) rehearsal, 7) delivery, 8) peer feedback, 9) criterion-based self-assessment and self-grading after watching one's own video on YouTube, 10) instructor feedback. If time is limited, I make some steps optional.
   
   The most challenging part of a 20x20 is adjusting one's content to fit the 20x20 format - Showing 20 slides 20 seconds each. To help students, I give two types of documents:
   1) A 20x20 .doc planning outline (Click to Download)
   2) A 20x20 .ppt template (Click to Download)
   
   Credit due: The original forms of both of these documents were created by my cool, innovative colleague Sylvan Payne.
   
   
10. Overall, what are the main benefits as perceived by students?
    The three biggest benefits seem to be that PK 20x20 forces students to
    1) focus on what they really want to say,
    2) use visuals effectively, and
    3) prepare/rehearse well
    and as a result of those, end up making a more interesting presentation for the audience. Some other benefits are easier time-management because speakers cannot go over their time limit, and no problem with speakers rushing to finish their conclusions. Rehearsing with the timer forces the speaker to prepare a just-right amount of ideas for each slide.
    
    
11. Benefit 1: Forces students to have more focused and organized points - Really?
    Student Comments (in their own English):
    "In PK, the number of words are strictly limited, so my skill to sift the content and focus on what is the most important and to summarize the contents was improved."
    "I liked that I need to create or present as simple as I can. By that way, I need to focus on only the most important thing, so it helped me to understand what I want to say most too."
    "Because each slide only takes 20 seconds, I could say only the main key point so that it was good to organize the presentation."
    
    
12. Benefit 2 Better use of visuals = more interesting to create / watch ?
    Survey Results:
    
    "PK helped me make a more visually attractive presentation"
    50% Strongly Agree, 28% Agree, 13% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree
    
    "PK helped me make a better presentation than a free style presentation"
    38% Strongly Agree, 41% Agree, 16% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree
    
    "PK presentations (of classmates) are more interesting to listen to than regular presentations."
    50% Strongly Agree, 34% Agree, 9% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree
    
    Of course, we have to consider that not all of the students have extensive presentation experience, and so their ability to compare to other types of presentations may be limited.
    
    Student Comments (in their own English):
    "Creating slides was enjoyable, because PK made us to use images to communicate with the listeners."
    "First of all, doing/listening to this kind of presentation was not boring! I think it is very efficient to keep audience's attention during presentation because of many images."
    "As for the listener, I was never bored because the tempo was good and easy to understand."
    
    
13. Benefit 3 Forces more preparation and rehearsal?
    Survey:
    
    "I had to practice harder than regular presentations to prepare for PK"
    Strongly Agree 41%, Agree 34%, Disagree 16%, Strongly Disagree 9%
    
    "PK helped me speak with more rhythm"
    Strongly Agree 41%, Agree 38%, Disagree 13%, Strongly Disagree 6%
    
    Student Comments (in their own English):
    "It made me practice more, but it was effective because I could find easily what I had to practice on"
    "The first few practices were hard because I couldn't keep up with the time limit, but it was easy to practice once you got the hang of it. I felt i could speak more smoothly when I did the PK than when I did a regular presentation."
    "The PK is demanding, so I like this. To make good presentations in the PK Style, students have to think, think, and think, and practice, practice, and practice."
    
    
14. What are the drawbacks or issues that came up? What did students want to change about their PK assignment?
    Students mainly mentioned problems with
    1) the demand of preparation and practice being heavy within the tight schedule we had,
    2) the format being too inflexible for what they wanted to communicate, and
    3) discomfort and a feeling of being rushed with having a timer to worry about during their presentation.
    Let's look at these one by one below.
    
    
15. Drawback 1: High demand for preparation and practice
    "To create the content and slides suitable for and effective for 20x20 slides, we need a little bit long time."
    "There should be more class time to rehearse the PK. Also, I wanted to start preparing much earlier in the term" (We had one month, but it was not enough because I chose a new topic different from my essay.)
    "There were some technical defects creating PK; for example, the counter doesn't work or the visual effects animations cannot be used."
    
    
16. Drawback 2: A lack of flexibility in making and delivering
    "Not every slides have the same importance, so 20 second for 20 slides are not so effective sometimes. "
    "In the PK presentation, speakers can hardly tell deep contents."
    "It was uncomfortable for me to make 20 slides. I want to make slides more few. This method didn't fit my want to improve my presentation."
    "Once I failed to mention some key information, but I do not have chance to retry because of time restriction."
    "I thought presenters should be in control of the timing to switch the screens because changing screens at the right time is also an important skill for presenters to make their presentation look smooth."
    
    
17. Drawback 3: A sense of discomfort with the timer
    "I very worried about whether I could finish speaking in 20 seconds, so I was hasty during the presentation. It was hard for me to relax!"
    "
    
    
18. Is it better than other types of presentation requirements? Does it help students MORE? Is it worth trying?
    This is the ultimate question, but I think it depends on what level the students are at and what their needs are. I imagine that trying to get empirical comparison results to other types of presentations (with no timer, no slide number constraint) would be a complex study to design and am not setting up anything at this point. What I can say at this point is: Give it a try yourself (for a conference presentation or class lecture to explain something) and consider it as one way to push your students to develop good habits to make better presentations (focused, visual, rehearsed). For motivated students who have some experience with trying to make an English presentation, PK 20x20 will probably work well. For students who do not have much to say or do not care enough to prepare well, or have never made a presentation in English before, PK 20x20 may not be ideal or modifications of the format may be needed. Also, for fairly advanced or experienced presenters (like myself), some of the constraints can be a bit frustrating, too, but it is still enjoyable to try to design a message within 20x20 specs.
    
    
19. Will you continue to use it in classes or research it in the future?
    Use in classes? Yes. Research? Still seeking future directions. My main research interest is identifying the stages that Japanese college and professional ELLs go through toward developing a sense of confidence in their ability to communicate orally in an effective way, and I believe that using PK 20x20 is beneficial training for emphasizing good habits in making a presentation using slides and avoiding death by PowerPoint. At the same time, I think I will use it in a flexible manner with an aim to squeeze out only the real essence that makes 20x20 work. For example, 20 seconds may not need be an exact time. The essence is to help students speak shortly on a focused point, so it probably makes more sense to require the use of a timer, but say "No more than 20 seconds per slide" just in case students want to speak more shortly on one image. The timer can be easily shortened (or lengthed a bit, perhaps) in the PowerPoint template by deleting some of the dots. As a result, 20 slides becomes a minimum number to encourage students to not overload slides and keep key words and images focused on one point. I want to try with those new flexible guidelines.
    
    It may also be interesting to act like the requirements are strict until just one day before the presentation and then relax them suddenly to allow some degree of flexibility in the style of delivery such as: 1) It will be OK to stop the timer or even go back to a slide to clarify a point, 2) It is OK to change the timer a little by adding or taking off dots, and 3) It is OK to not have exactly 20 slides. Plus or minus a few is no problem. Too flexible for Pecha-Kucha purists? I want to try it and see how it goes.
    
    
20. Can we see samples? Can we ask you questions about it?
    Samples of my materials and student work such as slides, photos, handouts, and video clips will be presented at JACET 50 in Fukuoka next week. Also, feel free to send me questions or comments through this blog. -Mark