Presentation Skills Course for Beginners

Improve your work skills by learning vital presentation skills with our career development & communication skills short courses in Sydney!

Making an impactful presentation can often be the difference between success and failure. Whilst many companies, universities, and schools will teach you how to present, very few (if any) provide guidance on creating the supporting material.

This course will help you to breach that gap! You can put yourself ahead of the competition with the guidance of this course to create impactful slides in PowerPoint.

If you're looking to improve how you communicate your ideas and present them to an audience, then this is the course for you!

Learning outcomes

By the end of this presentation skills course, you will have enhanced your career prospects by:

• Structure presentations clearly and concisely using issue trees, the MECE principle, and the Minto pyramid principle.
• Take your core message, as well as all supporting evidence, and create a compelling, logical and easy to follow storyline.
• Create slides that support the storyline and help the delivery of the message from both a structural and visual perspective.
• Demonstrate a higher proficiency in PowerPoint, enabling you to be more effective with your time.

Course content

What will be covered in this presentation skills course?

Session 1: Structure

• How to create good structure through clear messaging, maintaining a coherent main thread, and not getting side-tracked in messaging.
• This session will provide the baseline knowledge on how to:
  • define the problem
  • articulate the message
  • provide supporting evidence
  • use storyboarding to ensure effective structure.
• The tools, concepts, and frameworks necessary to help with this: MECE, Issue Trees, Minto Pyramid, Social Styles (to ensure you communicate with the audience in the right way), & Storyboarding.

Session 2: Message

• Creating a visual representation of your message in your slides and how to avoid common pitfalls (e.g., messy slides, distracting graphics, too much/too little text).
• How do you illustrate your message? How will your slides look? How to present data in the best way
• Matching the design to the purpose of the slides:
  • Will these get presented once and read many times (e.g., a board presentation)?
  • Will they only ever get read (e.g., an RFP response)?
  • Will they get presented once and never read (e.g., TED talk)?
• Each slide needs the right balance to serve as a presentation aid, helping to convey the message rather than distracting from the main message.
• At the end of this session, students should have learned the basic principles of slide layout, data visualisation and writing for a clear and concise presentation.
  Students will have an opportunity to ask for feedback on their presentation at the end of the class.

Session 3: Present

• Navigating PowerPoint and presentations.
• In-depth PowerPoint tips and tricks will get shared, aimed at helping students to improve their effectiveness and efficiency in PowerPoint.
• Students will present their slides and receive feedback on them.

Intended audience

Who is this presentation skills course for?

This presentation skills course is designed for students looking to upskill and enhance their abilities to deliver impactful presentations. It is suitable for individuals from various backgrounds, including professionals who regularly present to their board, university students seeking to deliver outstanding project presentations, and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to pitch their ideas effectively to potential investors.

Course venue

Rozelle Campus

2A Gordon Street, Rozelle NSW 2039 (corner of Gordon St & Victoria Rd in the grounds of St. Joseph's Church)