Become a Better Presenter: Improve Your Public Speaking Skills (FutureLearn)

Presenting to an audience, either online or in person, can be a daunting prospect, and requires specific skills in order to be successful.

It doesn’t matter what your level of experience is, this course will help build your confidence and give you the tools you need to improve your presenting style.

Build presentation skills based on your strengths and weaknesses

You’ll reflect on your own presentation style, identifying aspects where you feel you excel as well as areas where you need to improve.

You’ll learn how to add personality and life into your presentation style, and you’ll also decipher how to explain information clearly and effectively to your audience without needing to rely on jargon or them having pre-existing subject knowledge.

Understand how to sharpen and improve your public speaking

Whether you’re presenting to a formal meeting or speaking to 500 people from a stage, you’ll find out how to sharpen your presenting skills and pitch to whomever your audience may be, specifically through improvisation and storytelling.

You’ll also learn what to do when things go wrong and will learn how to tackle difficult and controversial questions as well as how to manage challenging audience behaviour.

Finally, you’ll apply what you have learned in theory and put it into practice, and will share and discuss your thoughts and fears with other learners.

Learn from The Presenter Network at the Royal Observatory Greenwich

The Presenter Network - founded by the Royal Observatory Greenwich - brings people together to provide a supportive space where members can share experiences and techniques to help everyone grow and develop as presenters.

You’ll learn from a range of experts within the presentation field, and will be able to tap into a vast and experienced network of presenters.

What topics will you cover?

- How to identify your presenting strengths and weaknesses.

- How to add personality and life into your presenting style.

- How to engage with your audience whoever that may be from formal meetings to full-blown theatre shows.

- How to sharpen your presenting skills, specifically when it comes to improvisation, storytelling and weaving a narrative through your presentations.

- Activities that will allow you to put the theory you have learned into practice.

- What to do when things go wrong.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Reflect on your own presenting style identifying aspects where you feel you excel as well as where you need to improve.

- Explain information clearly and effectively to your audience without needing to rely on jargon or them having pre-existing subject knowledge.

- Apply what you have learned in theory and put it into practice.

- Share and discuss your thoughts and fears about presenting with other learners in a similar position to see what their concerns are about presenting too.

- Learn how to interact effectively with your audience covering everything from tackling difficult and controversial questions to dealing with challenging behavior.

- Identify networks and sources you can tap into to keep your skills sharp.

Who is the course for?

This course is best suited to people from a whole range of sectors who need to present or speak as part of their jobs.

It will also be relevant to anyone who needs to present digitally now and is unsure where to start, as well as those who have experience of presenting but feel that they could improve.