Teaching Effective Presentation Skills

Instructions: This project requires you to develop a PowerPoint slide presentation for use as a training tool with managers and supervisors on how to prepare an effective presentation. As you move up through the workforce you will at some point be required to give a briefing or presentation to others. Hopefully, one day you will also have to the opportunity to develop one of your worker’s speaking and presentation skills. There is great satisfaction in taking a nervous employee, helping them to develop their presentation, coaching them on delivery and then watching them knock it out of the park!  With this in mind, your presentation should briefly outline (i.e., no more than 2-3 slides) how to start a presentation (that is attention getting steps) an and overview for the audience.  You should focus the majority of your presentation (i.e., 8-10 slides) on what makes an effective presentation. Factors to consider in all forms of communication–Who is your audience? What is your message? Are you trying to persuade? Inform? The Week 5, Lesson 1 has a lot of great information to get you started, as well as the Forum in Week 4 (the Guy Kawasaki TED Talk).

Here are some guidelines to get you started: You are going to brief a small group of newly graduated APUS Business Students on how to present an effective presentation. Your audience ages are anywhere from 20-60 years of age, with various business backgrounds, military experience, and even some small business owners.

There should be an introduction slide, a topic overview slide, 8-10 slides on presentation techniques, a conclusion slide and lastly a reference slide. Use the “notes” feature of PowerPoint to list your talking points on each slide for me to read what you would actually be saying.

Submission Instructions: Submit your work as an MS PowerPoint (.ppt) presentation. The body of your presentation should include at least 8-10 presentation slides, in addition to a title slide, introduction slide(s), and references at the end of your presentation for a total of no more than 15 slides. PowerPoint presentations longer than 15 slides will not be read after the 15th slide. As such, please ensure that all assignment questions are answered within the first 15 slides, as your grade will be based on the first 15 slides received.

Your grade will based upon your ability to follow assignment instructions, research conducted, effectiveness of the training proposed, critical thinking and analysis, and APA format.

Please support your ideas, arguments, and opinions with independent research, include at least three (3) supporting references or sources (do NOT use your textbook as one of the three required references, or encyclopedias,  Wikipedia, unknown, undated, or anonymous sources, such as brief articles from websites), include a reference section (i.e., 1-2 slides), and cite all sources properly in the text of each slide, in accordance with the 6th edition of the APA manual, Chapters 6 & 7.

Helpful Tips

I encourage you to go online to Purdue OWL, or Excelsior OWL, which have writing labs for students. Look up PowerPoint presentations in APA format in the search box. These websites will have helpful tips on best practices. TED talks are also another great source for good information.

References:

Excelsior OWL:  http://owl.excelsior.edu/posts/view/277

Purdue OWL: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/17/

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