Holy shit – swearing in conference presentations works!

If you know me, or have heard me speak at conferences, you’ll know that I’m partial to the odd swear word. This is never planned, it is part of my everyday speech. I should add that I’m Scottish, which far from being an excuse, is simply a description of a culture more attuned to swearing than more mild-mannered England. Billy Connolly, a genius when it comes to oral delivery, could never have come from England. Ireland maybe, England never.

Swearing study

Let me start with some science. I’m not saying this study is definitive but it is at least one study, with a control, that shows the beneficial effect of swear words in presentations. A speech about 'lowering tuition fees' was delivered to three groups :

Group 1: Used ‘Damn’ at the start

Group 2: Used 'Damn' at the end

Group 3. No swearing at all

The swear word at the start or end had the most effect (defined as the ‘persuasiveness’ of the speech). It also enhanced the perceived intensity of the speaker. Interestingly, it neither enhanced or damaged their credibility.

Why I swear

I don't swear because this study gives me an excuse to juice up presentation style. I occasionally swear because I’ve always felt that swear words add something special – they’re the magic dust of language. 

First, when unexpected, they jolt people to attention. Who would deny that this is useful in the anodyne and often mind-numbingly, boring world of lectures, conferences and presentations. Second, attention is a necessary condition for learning – it aids retention.

Third, they have meanings which other words do not have. Shakespeare is full of filth and swear words. When I described Gove as someone who fitted his job like a ‘prick in a codpiece’, I felt as that this was a pretty good analogy.

Fourth, they’re emotive terms and if, like me, you argue that lectures and talks are hopeless on the transmission of knowledge or skills, but strong when affective, attitudinal or emotive, then they can play a vital role.

Fifth, it is time we started to puncture the pomposity and break the sheer boredom we witness at conferences and lectures. I’m not fond of those that cower behind lecterns, reading from pre-typed notes. Above all, I’m not fond of being bored. Which of us has never experienced the excruciating, almost painful levels of boredom at lectures and conferences?

Sixth, if you’re ‘offended’ by the occasional swear word, I’m offended by your lack of sensitivity toward freedom of speech and the cultural/linguistic norms of others. I find the censorship of ordinary language offensive.

Seventh, I don't give a fuck.

Blow-back

Having often sworn in presentations, I’ve received blow-back for swearing. At ALT, many moons ago, I was roundly tweckled for daring to suggest that lectures are an ineffective form of teaching (how radical). All I can say is that this talk led to me talking on this subject for a number of years ar universities all over the world. The YouTube versions reached over 25,000 people, and on the whole, it stimulated a pile of debate.
A second example was in a webinar for an Americal learning organisation about VR, where I wanted to show a video of a girl swearing while killing zombies in a VR game. They wanted it out of the presentation. As I was doing this for free, I said no. They came back and said, let's do it with  warning at the front. I said fine, as long as it's not me doing the warning. In the end we went ahead and there was no warning. What a load of baloney.

Conclusion

My friend, who was at the time a Board Member of Channel 4, told me of an instance of a game, where you have to get a pre-agreed word into your conference speech. At the annual Edinburgh TV Festival he told me of a speaker he knew who had to say ‘cunt’, which he did by asking the audience what words were banned by the BBC. See what I did there – swore at the start and the end – that’s science folks.

Tweckled at ALT!

Missed the Tweetstorm after my ALT Keynote at the University of Nottingham, as I was on the road without a mobile for the following two days. I don’t have a mobile phone as I’m not really a Gadgetboy and enjoy my periods of solitude and privacy when I travel. Nevertheless, from London to Dundee I kept bumping into people who told me that the Tweckling was fierce. I even had someone come up to me and mention the tweets as I stood outside a burning building in which I was due to deliver a keynote. She had been watching my talk online. As I say, I’m not a mobile Tweeter, so will respond here.

Don’t lecture me
‘Don’t LECTURE me (yes I’m aware of the contradiction)’ was the title of my talk. A number of people objected to me criticising the lecture, using a lecture. Ho hum. First, I explained myself in the title and verbally at the start of the talk. I was deliberately provocative as I wanted to show that the lecture is an odd format and explained the weaknesses of the format as I spoke (one hit, psychological attention, dull, memory fade etc).
To effect change, which is why I do this stuff, you need to create a sense of urgency and that means getting to the people who matter. In this case, in HE, they happen to love attending conferences. I don’t, but that’s where they hang out. To catch fish, you sometimes have to trawl in the cold, cruel sea, a place you’d rather not be. And if you think it’s easy to stand up in front of hundreds of people and say things you deeply believe but know they won’t like – try it.
I did this talk because Seb Schmoller asked me and spent a day of my life getting to Nottingham to say what I had to say, for free, so was probably the only person in the whole lecture theatre who wasn’t being paid to be there. I have never deliberately asked to speak at a conference. I do it because I’m asked. I could, admittedly just say NO, but if my aim is to change things, that would be counterproductive.

Lack of evidence?
Another charge was that I didn’t provide evidence. Sorry, but almost every point I made was backed up by a published source and, often empirical studies.
My analysis of the Socratic method included analysis by Xenophon and Plato and I gave accounts of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, along with a linguistic analysis of the word ‘lecture’, from it’s original 14th century meaning to its semantic shift in the 16th century.
I showed the covers and quoted from of five books; The Media Equation by Nass & Reeves from Stanford, What’s the use of Lectures? by Donald Bligh, Peer Instruction by Eric Mazur, Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman by Richard Feynman, Lectures in Physics by Richard Feynman.
In addition to the studies presented in these books I gave detailed slides showing the methods and results of large scale studies on the FCI test and the work of Eric Mazur. On the psychology of learning I showed research by Ebbinghaus and a contemporary study by Paul Kelley, and summarised the results from the Institute of Theoretical Physics (even promising to send people the papers on request). I also showed a summarising graph from a five year study on lecture attendance. In addition I showed two slides referencing Carol Twigg’s $8.8m research project on transformational learning. I also quoted detailed figures for the numbers of views of Lewin’s physics lectures. This, in my experience, is a great deal more than most conference presentations.
So to be accused of not presenting evidence seems to suggest that people were spending too much time tweeting and not enough time listening (one of my criticisms of the lecture format!)

Backchannel
The backchannel was showing tweets as I spoke. I rather like this, as it at least provides some form of feedback and a variety of views, although it would have been better if the chair had given me a chance to respond. Interestingly, it sort of indirectly reinforces my view that lectures are pedagogically odd (why cut out to tweet if you like the format so much?). It’s like a game where the speaker is playing shot-put and the audience darts.
However, pedantic tweets are infantile, and there were plenty of those. Puzzlingly, a fair number got upset because I swore a couple of times. There’s something deeply reactionary about portions of HE audiences, definitely a touch of the old-fashioned ‘schoolmaster’ or ‘angry from Tunbridge Wells’. Welcome to the real world, where people get passionate enough to say ‘bollocks’! Do they turn their TVs off when Frankie Boyle appears?
On the other hand some excellent blog posts have appeared from Stephen Wheeler and others, with some reasoned argument. I’ve never attended ALT, as I don’t like sitting around listening to conference lectures for two or three days but I do like the online material, Seb’s fortnightly newsletter and subsequent blog posts.