In her book "Resonate", Nancy Duarte puts a presentation into the perspective. If you take a report as one extreme and a story as the other, a presentation should fall in between these two extremes.
She describes reports as exhaustive, informational and factual. The structure is usually hierarchical. They are delivered in a plain, direct, and precise manner. I think about an academic thesis or business report. Mostly text paragraphs, few graphs and tables, and some bulleted lists.
On the other hand there are stories. Novels & movies. Emotional and dramatic.
Now as reports need all your focus and attention in order for you to grasp the underlying message, a movie tries to touch your other senses and emotions to get the message across.
Now presentations should fall somewhere in the middle.
Where they are placed depend on the presenter and the environment.
In a university setting I see presentations put right next to reports. Paragraphs put into bullets, if at all, and then onto slides. Maybe decorated with some pictures and then presented.
I think presentations need to be pushed more towards the middle. A presentations purpose is to explain the detailed data from the report as visually as possible. If you take the format from the report and put it onto slides, it's still a report. In oder to become a presentation, there need to be some elements from a story incorporated.
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