Showing Context with Magic Move

I use Keynote for all of my presentations. It’s a hassle to have to run them off of my own devices instead of using a venue’s PC (though it’s getting easier), but it’s worth it for one reason: making animations is incredibly easy in Keynote.

Fitting In

When I say animations, I don’t mean dissolves and smash cuts. I mean moving objects within a slide in a way that shows them in a new light or reveals more context.

For example, here’s a graph showing changes in global surface temperatures over the past thirteen ears (which looks flat), which I then frame in terms of a much longer timescale (which shows temperatures rising at an increasing rate):

Here’s another example from my dissertation work. My research involves taking randomized trials and analyzing them as an interrupted time series analysis. This can be a little difficult to understand conceptually, so I use an animation to visually show the difference between the two analytic strategies:

To me, these animations are useful because the objects of interest never disappear from the screen. They are simply reframed in a different context, allowing the audience to make the leap from one setting to another.

I’m sure there’s some great literature on why this is more compelling, but all I can say is that it has worked very well in my experience. Better still, the time cost of making these is much lower than you might think.

From Transitions to Animations

I made a toy example that builds a diagram using three methods: a simple dissolve transition, an animation, and an animation with an additional delay that I find appealing. Here they in sequence:

And here they are next to one another (I timed it so that the actual length of transitions is the same for all three):

Here’s a link to the Keynote file, if you’d like to play with it further.

From Dissolve to Magic Move

Going from the dissolve transitions to the animated transitions is as simple as changing the transition between slides from “Dissolve” to “Magic Move”. Magic Move is a Keynote-specific transition that detects identical objects between two slides, then transitions between the slides by having those objects move from their place in Slide 1 to their place in Slide 2. The easiest way to make this happen is as follows:

  1. Duplicate Slide 1 and change its transition to “Magic Move”;
  2. Move around the objects in the duplicated slide as you’d like;
  3. Profit.

It can be a little finicky at times, especially if you have lots of similar objects (I’ve had this problem when there were lots of arrows on a slide – more on that later), but for most situations it works.

From Magic Move to Delayed Transitions

The jump in quality from Dissolve to Magic Move is enormous; now let’s talk add some frills. I often like to have the objects in Slide 2 that are brand new to fade in after the initial movement has taken place, as opposed to during. Doing this requires a few more steps:

  1. Select all the objects in Slide 2 that aren’t part of the Magic Move transition;
  2. Give them each a “Fade In” animation (I tend to use Dissolve with a short duration);
  3. Click on Build Order;
  4. Decide if you want these objects to fade all at once or one at a time, and make the appropriate adjustment;
  5. Make sure that the first animation in Build Order is set to start “After Transition”.

This may seem like a lot of steps for a small change, but there’s an added benefit: by having objects fade in after the transition, you remove them from Magic Move’s detection algorithm. So, if you’re noticing that Magic Move is choosing the wrong objects to move, you can remove them from the equation by having them fade in afterwards. Bingo!

From Slides to Videos

In my opinion, these animations make presentations a much more valuable tool to convey complex information in a comprehensible way. So valuable, in fact, that I’ve taken the additional step of making them full fledged videos. Almost all of the materials in the Teaching section of my website were made using Keynote. After setting up animations to my liking, I use the “Record Slideshow” function to add a voiceover and export it as a video file. But that’s for another post.

MOOC Money

Caroline M. Hoxby recently published a NBER working paper on the role of MOOCs in the future business models of both “selective” and “non-selective” postsecondary institutions. The bulk of the paper would be interesting only to an economist, but the end is where things get interesting.

Hoxby argues that the current way that MOOCs are run (make your courses available publicly) could align with the business of non-selective institutions, in that students would pay to enroll in a course just like they would at a brick and mortar school. For “Highly Selective Postsecondary Education” (HSPE) Institutions (schools that rely heavily on alumni donations), though, Hoxby presents an alterative:

Viable online education for HSPE must deal with two problems: (i) the selectivity necessary for offering advanced education and (ii) the experiences that build the beliefs and adherence that sustain the venture capital-like financial model.

Consider a system in which HSPE institutions created online versions of their courses that could be traded with other institutions whose students had similarly high aptitude and preparation. The exporting institution could maintain the advanced nature of the course by limiting enrollment to those outside students who were best prepared, by disallowing outside students whose home institutions had previously sent students who underperformed, or by insisting that the outside students receive support (interactions and assessment) from an instructor at their home institution who is trusted by the exporting faculty member. Exporting institutions might offer such courses at a sustainable cost.18 A student’s home HSPE institution would continue to set his degree requirements, grant his degree, and be responsible for all other aspects of his PE experience.

I haven’t thought enough about this model to consider its implications, but this is one of the more novel pieces I’ve come across that speaks directly to how higher education business models can incorporate these new modes of teaching. If you’re aware of others, please do let me know!

Link: The Economics of Online Postsecondary Education: MOOCs, Nonselective Education, and Highly Selective Education

Teaching Regression Discontinuity

A very enjoyable post on the regression discontinuity study design over at the must-read Development Impact blog. I was lucky enough to introduce this design to a room full of policy master’s students this semester, and I agree completely with all of Evans’ points. In addition to being a conceptually interesting design, RD is a great way to introduce students to the rationale behind quasi-experimental studies.