Page 3 - AV Presentations - Student Textbook

Creating Audio-Visual Presentations
By Kris Bjorgen, Ed.D.

Study Section 1: How Humans Learn

1.1 Connect

If you don’t understand how people learn new things, then you will never be an effective
teacher or preacher of God’s Word. Unfortunately, most teachers or preachers “talk” the
information to the audience. They utilize the lecture method. But did you know that the
lecture method is probably the least effective way to communicate information to people?
It’s no wonder that people can sit in a church for years and listen to the pastor preach yet
know very little about the Bible! That’s because they are not being challenged to learn.
They are just sitting and soaking, but little is getting into the brain! To start our study, we want to learn
how people learn new things. If we really understand the learning process, then perhaps we can
incorporate some new ideas into our lessons that might increase the retention of the audience. Let’s
get started….

1.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to cite the four factors of the learning process.

2. The student should be able to add to the learning process the attention spans of their
audience.

3. The student should be able to see the value of audio-visuals in their presentations.

1.3 What are audio-visuals, anyway?

The word “audio” means that a person hears something to reinforce an idea. It includes such
things as music, narration, sound bites, and of course, what the speaker is saying. The word
“video” means the person sees something to help them visualize a concept. The two tools can
be used separately. For example, you could have a series of pictures that illustrate what you
are teaching. Large pictures showing Lazarus coming out of the tomb may be used to impact
the minds of children. You could play a story on a CD that is being read or narrated as a point
of interest and reinforcement.

But tying an audio and visual presentation together you increase the overall impact on the audience and
thereby increase the probability that they will recall the information you are presenting. Also, audio and
visual tools tend to impact the emotions of an audience, which again increases the likelihood that they
will apply the information you are giving them in their lives.

And if you make the presentation interactive (audience participation), you again increase retention
because the audience is “doing” something to relate to the topic. You can tell a story, ask questions
during the presentation, poll the audience, use props, or have a member of the audience participate in a

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