Presentation Skills & Tools
Overcome your anxiety and learn how to give confident presentations
Content & learning objectives
There’s no doubt that given oral presentations in front of an audience can often be daunting. However, with careful planning and learning from the experience of others, you can make a good start. It’s also important to be aware of the range of tools that can help make presentations more effective for the audience, and to avoid the many pitfalls such technologies can lead to for the unprepared!
In this lesson, we’ll provide you with a general introduction to approaches to giving presentations and see some examples of good quality presenters, as well as learning from them.
Click on the image to start the lesson and if you successfully complete it, you can obtain a digital badge.
Resources for learners, trainers, and developers
Are there badges available for this topic?
Yes. There is a basic knowledge badge, awarded to anyone who successfully completes the online lesson and quiz. A more advanced skills badge may be available via your local institution, based on your demonstrated skill and performance at designing and delivering presentations.
How can we run a workshop or classroom session on this topic?
This topic is clearly very amenable to workshop sessions, or training courses. All of us benefit from having opportunities to practice our presentations, get feedback from others, and to adapt and change our approach and style. Most institutions of higher education offer such training, and you should seek out what is currently on offer wherever you are. Effective training can also include recording presentations so that you can view them back and take note of how well you think you got your point accross or argued your case. Another effective approach is to pair up with a colleague and give (constructive) feedback to each othe.
Are there resources and materials available?
Yes. There is no shortage of publications, courses, video materials, and much more on this topic. Some useful links are listed on this page, but these are only a small sample of what is available.
Can I download a copy of this interactive lesson?
Yes. We provide all the materials which we have developed (or adapted, subject to licence permissions) for use under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence. We will shortly be making downloadable SCORM versions available here.
Further information & useful links:
‘The secret structure of great talks’, Nancy Duarte’s TED talk : https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks
‘Resonate’ and ‘Slide:ology’ by Nancy Duarte:
Some presentation tools :
- Haiku Deck: https://www.haikudeck.com/
- Prezi: https://prezi.com/
- Keynote: http://www.apple.com/lae/keynote/
- Powerpoint Online: https://office.live.com/start/PowerPoint.aspx
- Google Slides: https://www.google.com/slides/about/
- Microsoft Sway: https://sway.com/