Presentation Skills  

With a little bit of knowledge, some great resources and some practice, you can drastically improve your presentations, making you more at-ease in front of an audience, and making the experience more enjoyable for them as well.

Here are some general resources to get you started:

Better Approaches to Presentations
 

http://www.presentationzen.com
Garr Reynolds’ blog, “Presentation Zen” is one of the best. Read it regularly.

http://www.beyondbulletpoints.com
Cliff Atkinson created the “Beyond Bullet Points” approach to presentation creation and delivery and is the author of Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate and Inspire. I highly recommend both the book and the website.

The UH Libraries offer access to a number of e-books on presentation skills. Some titles include:

• The Complete Presentation Skills Handbook by Suzy Siddons
• Develop Your Presentation Skills by Theo Theobald
• A Student's Guide to Presentations by Barbara Chivers and Michael Shoolbred
• The Truth About Perfecting Your Presentation Skills by James S. O'Rourke

"People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone." This is the Multimedia Principle articulated by Dr. Richard Mayer, UC-Santa Barbara, after years of research. For a more effective presentation, minimize your use of text on your slides and add high-quality images. Here are some of my favorite resources for free images: