Giving Effective Presentations (Online) - FULLY BOOKED

Course description

There is more to a successful presentation than having good slides and knowing your stuff. Effective presentations are also about communication, energy, confidence, having rapport with your audience. This intensive and hands-on course offers you the opportunity to get a fresh perspective on presenting, try out new techniques and experiment with ideas you might not have considered before.

NB. This is not a language course!

Learning objectives

This three-session course aims to help you give clear and convincing presentations in English. 

Instructional method

In the first meetings, you will give a 10-minute research-related presentation and receive feedback on your performance. Your talk is geared towards your fellow participants (i.e. a mixed-background life sciences audience) and you do not use a full script. After that, we will explore and reflect on some of the ingredients of effective presentations. You will give two prepared short talks. In the last meeting, you will make a fresh 10-minute research-related presentation to demonstrate what you have learned. You will also do a brief talk. 

Course trainer

Margo de Wolf, About English

Group Size

4 participants

Number of credits

0.6 EC

Course schedule

Course certificate

You will receive a course certificate if you complete all the course requirements, that is, attend all three course sessions and complete all presentation assignments. 

Course fee

Course fee internal PhD candidates: €0.
Course fee academic staff UU/UMC: €725.
Course fee external participants (if space permits): €1205.

‘Internal PhD candidates’ include:

• PhD candidates registered to the Graduate School of Life Sciences of Utrecht University via Hora Est/MyPhD

‘Academic staff UU/UMC’ include:

• PhD candidates of Utrecht University, not registered to the Graduate School of Life Sciences via Hora Est/MyPhD; 
• Postdocs employed by the Utrecht University or UMC Utrecht;
• Other academic staff employed at the UU/UMC

‘External participants' include:

• all other participants

Our no-show policy

We are happy to offer courses and workshops for free to all GSLS PhDs. However: free of charge does not mean free of responsibility. Our activities tend to be fully booked well in advance. For every late cancellation or no-show we have had to disappoint others who would have liked to attend.

This is how we work: 

• Once you have signed up for a course, we expect you to attend;
• If you need to cancel your registration, do so at the earliest possible moment, at least four weeks before the start of the course;
• You have to attend 1/4th of the course sessions, the first session is always obligatory!;
• Not meeting the attendance requirements or cancelling within four weeks before the course starts means you will be charged no-show fee (€365 for this course);
• We are unable to make any exceptions.

Very nice course to practice presentation skills, due to the small number of participants. This course has really given me a new perspective on presenting research, in terms of really taking the perspective of the listener

Because of Margo's personal approach and the safe environment she creates during her lessons, I was able to start to even enjoy giving presentations!

A great opportunity of giving presentations and receiving feedback from the audience in many aspects, which can be used to improve your oral presentation skills