Online Course Development: Presentation Skills

I save Presentation Skills for the last module for several reasons. First, they have to do a presentation in front of a small group of faculty. That necessarily requires that they are back on campus to complete this. Learning presentation skills closely followed by an actual presentation works best. Second, they need a topic for their presentation. I use the presentation as another way to pull together all they have learned in the course about themselves. So the presentation is a capstone assignment incorporating all of the strengths exploration, branding and professional development.

The Presentation Skills Workshop includes mini-sessions on determining your purpose, analyzing your audience, knowing yourself as a speaker and getting information for a presentation. Students then learn how to organize their information and prepare visuals for a presentation. Finally, they explore ways to polish, practice and powerfully present.

I have developed a Presentation Planning Worksheet they submit in advance. This requires them to think about themselves as speakers, select information and organize their presentation.

I created a Doodle sign-up calendar for students and accounting faculty to select time slots. Remarkably, everyone slotted themselves into an appropriate slot!

Watching student presentations is one of my favorite parts of this process. I love to see the students in action and hear what they have chosen to share about themselves. And for this online class, it will be the first time I actually get to put names with faces!