Warwick Skills Portfolio Award (done)

I have finally got the Warwick Skills Portfolio Award (WSPA); part of Warwick development scheme that targets academic, personal and professional skills; I was lucky to attend 9 workshops and privileged to meet the amazing tutors, I leant so much about many things, namely personal and academic skill.

For the first time, this year, there was a showcase event in which the student who have participated in the WSPA scheme and successfully finished it could present about their experience to a group of fellow student, prospect students and tutors. Five students presented that day, I was the first one, and it was awesome! after the presentations there was a dinner buffet followed by a question and answer panel hosted by the presenters, again, it was extraordinary!! Especially that it was my first panel :)

Many things to reflect upon, for instance, the experience of networking with people after giving a presentation is something else. But I want to consider the panel experience since it was brand new for me, when the event organizer first told me about it, asking whether or not I want to participate, I knew what i should do; get out of my comfort zone and do the thing that will benefit me, so I said "I would love to", later on, when it was time for the panel, I dealt with it just like a presentation; expect in a presentation you get to ask the question and answer it, in a panel someone else get to ask you the question. The techniques I applied were also very similar; take a good breath, speak clearly, pause and check for understanding.

Getting feedback is probably the most important thing to improve presentations, you get it from the body language of your audience, and if you’re lucky enough someone will come up to you afterwards and tell you what they think of your presentation, usually it’s praise, otherwise, they wouldn’t even bother.

Anyways, I got loads of feedback from students and tutors, mostly positive, all constructive criticism. The one piece of feedback that I loved the most was from Bev Welsh, an expert in education with a huge experience in communication skills training (me with her in photo) told me after the showcase was done "you are a superstar!" this was the best feedback I had for a long time, especially coming from Bev, needless to say, this really meant very much to me.

So apparently, a applying presentation techniques to the panel worked for me, this shouldn’t be a surprise since I remember Bev saying in her workshop on “delivering effective presentations” that almost all communications could be regarded as presentations, think of introducing yourself to your department head or meeting with your project supervisor, all presentations in a way.

Mohammad Waseem Sandouk : 31 May 2012 14:58 |  Tags: Award Developement Improvement Portfolio Skills Warwick Wspa |  Comments (5) |  Report a problem