This course is designed for students who seek training or improvement in their English-language presentation skills for academic purposes. The focus is on English oral presentations, with special reference to poster presentations.

With the aid of interactive recording and networking media, not only can the peer audience provide timely and reviewable advice, but the presenters themselves have an opportunity to become their most rewarding critics. Students will be able to spot, mark, and envision their progress toward becoming an effective presenter.

To measure student progress from the beginning of this course to the conclusion of this course, pre and post “tests” will be utilized. This will take the form of an initial presentation and a final presentation. For the initial presentation, after the first week of class, as a take home learning task, students will be asked to prepare and present a short presentation video (3-5 minutes) about a topic of their choosing that is related to their discipline. They will be provided with a specific list of objectives that they will be trying to accomplish through their presentation. For the final presentation, students will prepare a presentation on the same topic that they had chosen for their initial presentation.

By comparing these two presentations, students will be able gauge to their improvement in their presentation skills, especially since the initial and final presentations are identical in criteria and topic. In addition to presentation skills, student progress in presentation structure and design, as well as content research will also be visible by comparing both presentations.

This course will not only teach presentation skills, but through the process of structuring and preparing a presentation, students will learn how to effectively conduct research for their topics and to incorporate this information into their presentations. In other words, not only will presentation performance skills be developed in this course, but also topical research and content design.