All entries for Thursday 31 July 2014

Concluding entry on Presentation Skills

Follow-up to First entry on Delivering effective presentations from David's blog

Over the last few weeks, I have tried to improve different aspects of good presenation skills.

In my first action point, I tried to improve my body posture. I learned from the workshop that good body posture was perhaps the most important component for a good presentation. Having had problems with posture in the past, I tried my best to return to a ‘neutral stance’ as often as possible after communicating. I found that having a better posture helped me come across as more confident and happier to others which in turn made me feel more confident and happier.

My second action point was to practice reading aloud to practice my presentation skills. Althought it felt very strange to read aloud in an empty room, I found the exercise quite useful for timing, confidence and correcting work.

My third action point was to use the ‘must, should and could’ know technique of assembling information in my dissertation work. Althought this was difficult for the purpose of organising a more detailed written work, I found the technique somewhat effective with the help of colour-coding my notes. Thus I was able to re-apropriate a technique for presentation work into a technique for written work.

Despite the lack of presentation opportunities over the last few weeks, I have found that practising the different aspects that make up good presentation skills can be helpful in many other fields of work.

Good posture and reading aloud presentations can be very useful in building confidence in public scenarios. Reading aloud can also help reasses and correct existing work. Using techniques of what people ‘must, should and could’ know about key bits of information can also be useful in organising a large piece of written work like a dissertation. Overall the presentation workshop and the three action points from it have made me feel more confident about public events. I will certainly use these techniques for any presentation I may need to do in the future.

David Walker : 31 Jul 2014 13:00 |  Tags: Actions P4 Portfolio Wspa |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Update to Action point 3 on Delivering effective presentations

Follow-up to First entry on Delivering effective presentations from David's blog

My third action point from the Presentation skills workshop was to use the ‘must, should and could know’ technique behind presentations in my dissertation work.

Despite the lack of presentation opportunities over the summer period, I have tried to use the ‘must, should and could’ know technique in my dissertation research and writing process.

Over the last six to seven weeks, I have found it difficult to attribute the technique to my dissertation work. That said, I believe I have used the technique to the best of my ability. By using colour coding, with highlighting pens, I have found it quite useful in highlighting both what I believe is essential and non-essential information in my Master thesis.

Having nearly finished what I hope to be one of the final drafts of my first chapter, I have found my colour-coded technique of what ‘must, should and could’ be known to be useful in the writing and editing process.

Although the technique is much better suited to presentational work, I believe that it can be appropriated in the above way. After all, my dissertation will be a presentation of sorts which will be judged in a similar fashion to my past presentations. My thesis will be judged on its content and whether I portrayed enough essential information or not and whether I added some interesting extras. This is essentially another way of using the ‘must, should and could’ know technique.

David Walker : 31 Jul 2014 09:00 |  Tags: Actions P4 Portfolio Wspa |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem