Public Speaking (2024-IV)

Target audience

If you feel you need to become better at presenting in general, you can follow this course at any moment during your PhD. If you (also) want to practise with presenting your PhD research, it’s best to take this course after or at the end of the literature phase.

Course description

Nonetheless of how good you are in presenting, as soon as you step in front of an audience something inside you tends to change. It seems like you’re not completely yourself: your brain is not as quick as you would like it to be, you lack control, are unfocussed at times and/or start to talk faster without pausing. It might even be that you have nerves, moments of panic or black-outs that make presenting into something you’d rather avoid.

In this course your trainer Gerben Tuin will look into your optimal way of communicating by helping you to reframe your approach to public speaking. Rather than considering it a linear model of communication (unidirectional transfer of information from sender to receiver), you learn how to understand and navigate it as a transactional model (reciprocal sending and receiving of messages). In doing so, you level up your toolkit when it comes to public speaking, and go quite a few steps beyond ‘’tell them what you will say, say it, and tell them what you have said’’!

So, if you are ready to become a more confident and engaging public speaker, this course will help you to reach that next level in your way of presenting yourself and your work.

Learning objectives

You will learn:

• Prioritising and structuring content
• Dealing with nerves, obligation and boredom
• Employing principles of ethos, pathos and logos to engage your audience
• Designing and interacting with slides or other aids
• Engaging audience imagination through visuals, hand gestures, silence and questions
• Managing and responding to your audience using eye-contact, questions and body positioning

Instructional method

• Discussions on the topic of speaking in public and self-presentation;
• Presentations and exercises;
• Trainer and peer feedback on public speaking skills and style;
• Take-home assignments.

Trainer

You will be trained by Gerben Tuin (gt-training)

Group size

15 to 20 participants

Number of credits

0.9 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 attending the course sessions and completing all the course requirements.

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 (€ 120). 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.

I gave a presentation to a large and knowledgeable audience. For the first time, I used the 4th focus point and let my audience 'imagine' my research story. I got very positive feedback from the audience. It was just the beginning and will experience more in the future.

The course is a great combination of skills with matching results