RCoA Event Speaker guidance

Plan your presentation as you would for a traditional lecture to ensure it is well structured and flows smoothly. A frequently used structure is: Introduction, declaration of conflicts of interest, learning outcomes, main content, discussion, conclusions and take away messages. It is good practice to outline the aims and objectives of your talk at the beginning of your talk and should then be summarised again at the end of your talk.

No matter how many times you have presented this, or other talks practice makes perfect. If you are delivering your presentation online, we will arrange for a practice run prior to the live session to make sure your connection is good and you know how our system works.

The College team will advise you how long your presentation should be and how long we have available for Q+A. Please ensure you keep to this timing as running on for longer can cause significant problems, with other speakers.

A good set of slides can make a presentation. Following the guidance below will help avoid the common pitfalls and produce a clear and engaging set of slides

• Use images, video, and graphics as much as possible to cut down on text.
• Make sure slides are as clear as possible for delegates.
• Ensure you keep to the 16:9 (widescreen) slide format
• Have the wording on slides larger than normal – 25% of the audience will view on their phone
• Include slides for when you are taking questions – these can be added throughout your presentation and/or at the end if you have a designated question time
• Ensure your colour combinations are clear and words are readable. Remember words in red, green, or yellow will be difficult for those who are colour blind
• Please double check your slides and images to make sure that they are appropriate and will not offend
• Send the slides to the organiser the day before so we can have them ready for you to present from, you will still be able to have control of your slides throughout your presentation

Slides need to change more frequently than in face-to-face teaching to keep the audience’s attention, so consider using basic transitions, highlights or annotations to reveal what the learner needs to know in a stepwise fashion. Highlight what you want people to look at on the slides – during live lectures we tend to have a laser pointer, recordings do not, you can therefore highlight by adding different colours or the key message could be highlighted in a box.

Visual cues such as arrows, one-word descriptors or percentages can help the audience to focus on a particular point.

Including video clips can be an engaging way of getting messages across. Please let us know in advance if you plan to use videos as there are some technical elements we will need to check.  You will need to provide the College with a copy of the video file in advance of the presentation so we can upload it to our platform for us to play during your presentation.

It is essential that presentations do not include any images with patient identifiable data. This means not only removing their name and date of birth from the actual image, but also any identifiers such as NHS/ hospital number, hospital name, doctors name, etc. from any metadata file attached. It is important to remember that identifying the clinician or the institution may, in some cases, identify the patient.

For consistency, please use the RCoA branded slide template provided. Please ensure you include a slide showing any conflicts of interest you have.If you wish to use your organisations slide you can add these between the first and last RCoA branded slide.

If you are presenting remotely, please make sure you consider the following in advance of your talk.

• eliminate potential sources of noise or distractions, children and pets are the most usual
• Ensure your phones are on silent and vibration off they can be picked up easily on microphones
• Consider your background. A clear background is best – think about what attendees will be able to see
• Have a clock in front of you – This will help you manage your presentation time
• Use headphones with a built in microphone if possible – this will prevent any echo when you speak

There are many well documented instances where a speaker has shown a slide or said something that has been deemed inappropriate by the audience. There have been a few documented cases from events, where audience members have taken offence and taken to social media to call this out, this could cause reputational damage to the speaker and the College. Therefore, please review your content and make sure that nothing you are going to say/show could be seen to be sexist, racist or gender biased.

All speakers are expected to adhere to the College’s Code of Conduct on this. The College takes a zero-tolerance stance towards any form of discrimination, harassment, or bullying. If we receive any complaints about a comment or presentation, then the College will take further action.

Provide opportunities for the audience to interact where possible through questions or polls to invite participation and increase engagement. Please make the College team aware if you wish to run a poll as part of your presentation as we need to set this up in advance.  Attendees will be able to submit questions throughout your presentation; the session Chair will facilitate these during the allocated question times. Let people know if you are going to be silent – for example if you want attendees to read a slide before you talk about it let them know – this will prevent attendees thinking they have a technical problem

At the end of your talk let the audience know if you will be sharing any handouts or slides (the organiser will then send these out on your behalf).

In most instances you will not be able to use copyright protected material in your resource. Using images, illustrations or table data sourced from the world wide web or print publications is not acceptable without prior permission from the intectual property owner. Examples would include cartoon images, news agency photographs (of famous people), specialist medical illustrations (from books or image libraries) and table data from online journals requiring subscription.

However, several exceptions allow copyright works to be used for educational purposes. Those that are most relevant are:

• The copying of works in any medium as long as the use is solely to illustrate a point or for criticism or review, it is not done for commercial purposes, it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement, and the use is fair dealing. This means minor uses, such as displaying a few lines of a paper, are permitted, but uses which would undermine sales of the article are not. Only the amount of the work needed to illustrate the point may be taken. (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright#history and https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p27_work_of_others)
• Where the copyright has expired (e.g. public domain works)
• Where you have created your own images or taken your own photographs
• Where you have obtained permission to use them from the copyright holder
• When the RCoA owns the copyright of the material e.g. other learning and teaching resources produced by the College.
• Where material is licensed under Creative Commons (CC), providing you acknowledge the source and check the terms of the license, you may be able to show these materials in your resource. Educational resources will often be labelled as such.

You can use photographic or radiological images of patients created in your place of work as long as they are fully anonymised and patients are not identifiable from the images or any data files attached. This means not only removing their name and date of birth from the actual image, but also any identifiers such as NHS/ hospital number, hospital name, doctors name, etc. from any metadata file attached.

Although it may be your work, you may have already signed away the copyright to this if you have had the research published by a journal. Any publishing agreement must be checked to see how the work can now be used. In some cases you can use the pre-print version of the article, including the illustrations. Otherwise it may be possible to request permission for extracts of journal articles to be used.

The RCoA is not eligible for an educational recording agency (ERA) licence, which would permit the use of (and copying of) TV and radio broadcasts for educational purposes. This means you cannot show (or copy) material from on demand TV services such as the BBC iPlayer unless you gain individual permission.

Commercially purchased videos and DVDs can be shown in lectures for educational purposes but substantial use of the content should not be recorded as a part of your resource unless you get permission from the copyright holder.

Commercially bought audio CDs can be used in teaching but should not be included in a lecture recording, so these sections will need to be edited out from the recorded lecture.
Podcasts that you download from the web normally have an implied licence that enables you to copy and use them, as downloading them is a means of copying, so you should be alright to use them, unless they have an accompanying statement that precludes their use.

The copyright in videos that you might show from sites such as YouTube or iTunes U resides with the creator of the video, so you would need to obtain permission directly from them (YouTube or iTunes U cannot grant this on their behalf). Some of these materials may be available for educational use or under a CC licence. While it may be permissible to show these recordings for educational purposes and provide links to the material in e-learning resources, it may not be possible to include them in a recording, depending on the type of licence .

You are responsible for making sure that your resources do not infringe copyright; however, the RCoA is at risk of being subject to legal proceedings for infringing copyright, either within recorded lectures, or by uploading materials to the website or e-learning hub, public folders or another website.
Although it may be legal to use some materials within a lecture, it does not necessarily make it legal to include them within a recorded lecture or webinar and/or upload them to the website.

If you have any concerns about material you wish to use in your resources then please contact events@rcoa.ac.uk for advice before the resource is developed. It is possible to edit resources after they are made to remove content, but is far easier to resolve issues beforehand. The RCoA may agree with you not to record your lecture or webinar presentation if it is highly dependent on copyrighted material. The RCoA reserve the right to remove any resources in the light of any proven copyright infringements.

By agreeing to share your recording you understand that the Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) will be publishing a recording of you presentation to the delegates who attended the event as well as on the RCoA website and that this may be viewed and used by Fellows and members as well as non-members, possibly for the payment of a fee.

Once the recording has been made, the RCoA will be responsible for maintaining and updating the content, in line with a timetable set for periodic review and revalidation.

By agreeing to sharing your recording you confirm:

1. I am happy for the RCoA to record my presentation at the above event/course.
2. I am happy for the RCoA to share this recording with the delegates who registered for the event/course using the secured links
3. I am happy for the RCoA to add the recording of my presentation to the RCoA educational resources on the RCoA website
4. I am the owner of the intellectual property of the content in the presentation.
5. The intellectual property rights for the recording of my session will belong to the RCoA.
6. Also that:

• I will make every effort to ensure that the content is accurate and up to date.
• I will declare in my presentation, if appropriate, any difference between my content and recommendations from national guidelines. I will also declare any conflicts of interest I have
• I will ensure nothing in the presentation will be defamatory, obscene or blasphemous or otherwise illegal in any jurisdiction.
• I will indemnify the RCoA if at a later date there is a challenge to the ownership of the copyright and it is found that I was not the original author of the work or had not got permission to use any copyright images etc. in the content.
• Where applicable, I will obtain appropriate consent from a patient or hospital if any patient identifiable information or data forming part of a patient medical record is used within the presentation.
• When using all or part of the RCoA recording for teaching or training purposes, proper acknowledgement shall be given to the RCoA. At the very least, this acknowledgement shall include "Used with the permission of the Royal College of Anaesthetists".