Effective Oral Presentations (script)

The Cambridge College School of Undergraduate Studies presents

Effective Oral Presentations: A Virtual Infosession Purpose Welcome to the Cambridge College Effective Oral Presentations virtual infosession! In this presentation, I will introduce to you one method for effectively delivering information to an audience via oral presentation.

Grabber For most people, the thought of learning to give a presentation is somewhat absurd. After all, we start giving presentations in primary school, so it’s a skill everyone already has, right?

Wrong! Take a moment and think back on the last five to ten presentations you attended. How many of those were what you might call lackluster, boring, disorganized, or just plain bad? Or, on the flip-side, how many of those left you feeling inspired, educated, and confident in your understanding of the information presented?

WIIFM By the end of this presentation, you will have a firm understanding of how you can consistently create and deliver presentations that are engaging and effective.

Credibility The presentation method described in this series of videos is derived from the book Speaking Your Way to the Top

by Marjorie Brody. It is also the method taught to students in the COM 322: Effective Oral Presentations course offered through the School of Undergraduate Studies at Cambridge College. The students who complete this course - myself included - consistently find that our presentations are better-received, following completion of the course, and that our audiences remain engaged during our presentations, whether the presentation lasts ten minutes or an hour. There are many different presentation methods out there. We’re proof that this particular method works!

Preview There are eight pieces that make up an effective presentation. We will cover each in this presentation. They are: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Purpose Grabber WIIFM Credibility Preview Body Review, and Memorable Statement

Let’s start with the Purpose.

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Body Purpose The first piece of an effective presentation is the Purpose. This establishes for your audience what the topic of your presentation will be. Do not go into any detail here; just tell them what you’re going to talk about. If your audience doesn’t know you, you can also tell them your name. For example, a good presentation Purpose might be: “My name is Bruce Banner, and today, I’m going to talk to you about the dangers of mishandling Gamma radiation.”

This piece should be 1 sentence long.

Grabber The second piece of an effective presentation is the Grabber. The purpose of the Grabber is to “grab” your audience’s attention. There are a myriad of ways to do this! You can ask for a show of hands - audience participation is always a good way to engage people. You can tell a joke. You can share an interesting statistic or factoid. You can ask a question. Whatever you do, it should be related to your topic, and should get all eyes firmly focused on YOU. This piece can be a little longer - 2 to 5 sentences.

WIIFM The third piece of an effective presentation is the WIIFM, which stands for “What’s In It For Me?” Don’t be confused by the name of this piece - it’s NOT asking what’s in it for you, the presenter. Rather, in this piece, you are tasked with answering your audience’s unspoken question of “what’s in this presentation for me that I need to learn?”

In short, you’re telling the audience in this section what the take-away is from your presentation. By the end of the presentation, what will they know or be able to do that they do not know and are unable to do now, before the presentation has begun?

This piece should be 1 to 3 sentences in length.

Credibility The fourth piece of an effective presentation is the establishment of Credibility. This allows you to tell the audience why they should listen to you and believe the things you’re telling them. What makes you a reliable expert whom they can trust?

This piece can be a bit longer, 2 to 5 sentences in length.

Preview The fifth piece of an effective presentation is the Preview. In the Preview, you list the topics you’re going to cover in your presentation, without giving any detail. Think of this list as the mile-markers on a road-trip. Without them, your audience may sit in their seats thinking, “How much more of this are we covering? Will we cover this certain aspect of the topic that interests me?” If that’s happening, then the audience is busy thinking, NOT busy listening to you! So long as you’ve previewed what you’re going to tell them, they should be able to relax and take in what you’re presenting, without distraction.

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Body The sixth - and largest - piece of an effective presentation is the Body. The Body of a presentation follows the Preview exactly. If you have five topics listed in your Preview, you should have five topics covered in the Body. The Body is where you get to expand and provide detail on each of the topics you listed in your preview. If a topic isn’t in the Preview, it shouldn’t be in the Body. If a topic is in the Body, it NEEDS to be listed in the Preview.

When I write a presentation, I find that I like to make my Preview list first, then begin writing the content of the Body. Inevitably, I will go back and add things to the Preview, as they are things I want to include in the Body.

I find this extremely helpful when I’m working on a presentation with a time-limit. I know that the five presentation sections preceding the Body can be completed in two to three minutes, maximum. The two sections following the Body will have approximately the same duration. That means that, if I have thirty minutes to present, I can remove five minutes for the non-Body sections, leaving me twenty-five minutes. I can look at my Preview and determine how many minutes I have for each topic I intend to cover. It takes a bit of practice to work out your timings, but believe me - you and your audience will be glad you did!

Review The seventh piece of an effective presentation is the Review. The Review serves to solidify the information you have just provided. Like the Body, the Review touches on each topic from the Preview in order. If it’s in the Preview, it should be in the Body AND the Review.

It’s important to remember in your Review that the information you’re presenting is familiar to you, but may be brand-new to your audience members. Therefore, it is imperative that you give a repeat of the most important information covered in the Body. This will help your audience remember and retain the most important points from your presentation.

Memorable Statement The eighth and final piece of an effective presentation is the Memorable Statement. This can be a call to action, a quote, a philosophical statement, etc. It wraps up the presentation nicely, and gives your audience the cue they’ll be wanting for when to applaud.

This piece is 1 to 3 sentences in length.

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Review So that’s the formula! Eight pieces, one solid presentation. To review, the pieces that make up an effective oral presentation are: 1. The Preview, where you introduce your topic (and your name, if you are presenting to a group of strangers); 2. The Grabber, where you use a joke, a show of hands, a neat statistic, etc. to “grab” your audience’s attention and get them curious to hear what you have to say; 3. The WIIFM, or “What’s In It For Me?” where you answer the unspoken question of “What will I know or be able to do by the end of this presentation that I don’t know or can’t do right now?”; 4. The establishment of Credibility, where you establish for your audience why they should listen to you and trust that the things you tell them are true and legitimate; 5. The Preview, where you list, without detail, the topics you’re going to cover in the Body of the presentation; 6. The Body, where you cover, in detail, each of the topics listed in the Preview, in the same order they appeared in the Preview; 7. The Review, where you list and provide the highlights of each of the topics listed in the Preview and covered in the Body, allowing your audience to have a second go-round of the most important information you gave them; and 8. The Memorable Statement, which is a short, punchy assertion, a quote, a philosophy, etc. that neatly wraps up your presentation.

Memorable Statement Standing in front of an audience and speaking can be a nerve-wracking experience, just as sitting in an audience and listening to a presentation can be mind-numbing and dull. With this prescription, it is my hope that you will find the experience of delivering an oral presentation less stressful, and more effective for those to whom you present.

I hope that you have enjoyed this presentation, and wish you the best of luck as you create and deliver presentations of your own. Thanks for watching!

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