Giving Effective Presentations (Online)

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 meeting, 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. In the second meeting, we will explore and reflect on some of the ingredients of effective presentations. You will give two prepared short talks. In the third 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

Study load

In addition to the scheduled sessions, you should take into account an extra study load of approximately 8 hours in total. This study load generally consists of homework assignments in preparation for the next session.

Course certificate

You will receive a course certificate after actively participating in all thee training sessions and completing all presentation assignments. 

Cancellation and No-show policy

This course is free for GSLS PhD candidates. However: free of charge does not mean free of responsibility. Once you have signed up for a course, we expect you to attend. For every late cancellation or no-show we have had to disappoint others who would have liked to attend. This is our policy:

• You may cancel free of charge up to 4 weeks before the start of the course. After this date you can only cancel if you have a GSLS PhD candidate to replace you in the course. Send the name and contact information of your replacement to pcc@uu.nl, at least 2 working days before the start of the course;
• We expect that you actively attend the full course, but at least 80%. It is mandatory to attend the first session. If you are absent the first session you cannot follow the remaining of the course;
• Not meeting the above requirements means you will be charged a no-show fee (€ 365). We will send the invoice after the course has ended. We are unable to make any exceptions, unless you have a valid reason (i.e., illness or death in the family 1^st/2^nd degree or partner). Your supervisor has to send an e-mail to pcc@uu.nl indicating the reason.

Unfortunately we don’t offer this course for participants not part of the GSLS. Our courses tend to be fully booked by GSLS PhD candidates.

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