Overview

The ability to deliver presentations is vital to achieving advancement for yourself and for your ideas. Few skills in life will contribute to your success as much as presentation skills. Without a dynamic and coherent presentation, even stellar ideas can fail to convince your audience. In this course, you will learn to organize your ideas to create coherent and convincing oral presentations, while also utilizing available visual aids and using public-speaking techniques to strengthen your delivery. This course is designed for individuals who may need to present information effectively in a professional environment. In this course, you will create and deliver effective presentations, both in-person and virtually. You will: • Define what makes a presentation effective. • Plan presentations. • Design a presentation framework. • Develop the presentation body. • Create supporting materials. • Prepare for your presentation. • Deliver presentations. • Conduct a question-and-answer session. • Deliver group presentations and virtual presentations. This course requires that you have Microsoft Office installed on a Windows PC. The course setup instructions provided in the first module of the course go into more detail about the hardware and software requirements.

Syllabus

Defining Presentation Effectiveness

The first step to being able to create effective presentations is defining what it means for a presentation to be effective.

Planning Presentations

In the last lesson, you defined what makes a presentation effective. Now you're going to learn how to begin the process of creating your own effective presentations, which begins with planning.

Designing the Presentation

Once you know your objectives for your presentation, it is important to spend time designing the presentation's structure and writing the crucial elements before you begin working in your presentation software. This time spent in design will make your presentation more focused and will make the development process easier.

Developing the Presentation Body

Once you have organized your thinking and written the conclusion and introduction, it is time to develop the body of your presentation. This is the core of your talk and will take the most effort to design.

Creating Supporting Materials

In the prior two lessons, you designed and developed your presentation and created individual visual slides. In this lesson, you will pull all the pieces together into a slide deck, create your own speaker aids to help you deliver the talk, and create audience handouts.

Preparing for Your Presentation

After you have written out your presentation and created your slide deck and other supporting materials, you need to begin to prepare for the delivery of your talk. You will want to rehearse so that you can deliver your talk confidently. And you will want to pay attention to the logistics of the event so you can minimize any surprises the day of your live event.

Delivering Presentations

A successful presentation starts with the preparation of your message and ends with the delivery of that message. How you say it is just as important as what you say.

Conducting a Question-and-Answer Session

While an excellent presentation establishes your credibility, you also need to answer questions diplomatically in order not to damage that credibility. In this lesson, you'll learn how to respond gracefully and strategically to questions.

Presenting in Common Business Scenarios

Not all presentations in the business world are delivered by a single presenter, or with the audience and the speaker in the same room. These common business situations bring unique challenges, but you are capable of adapting what you've learned so far to be successful in these scenarios.