Presentation Skills Peer Feedback and Coaching: A Two-Part Series

Session 1: Tuesday, July 11, 10:30 am to 1:30 pm
Session 2: Tuesday, July 25, 10:30 am to 1:30 pm

What makes a presenter effective? Is it content, delivery, or visuals—or the combination of them all? In this two-part series, you’ll have the opportunity to work on your areas for greatest improvement in your presentations. Through readings, peer feedback, expert coaching, and viewing videorecordings of your own presentations, you’ll identify and work on targeted goals that can make the greatest impact in your success as a presenter.

Because all presentation topics will need to be accessible to a broad audience beyond your discipline in order to receive the most useful feedback, you’ll develop a five-minute presentation using one of the topics below:

• Share a compelling question that drives your research, accessible to a lay audience, in the style of GradX talks
• Persuade the audience to join your student organization or volunteer with a community organization
• Persuade the audience to invest in your product
• Upon approval of the facilitator, another topic accessible to a broad audience

This two-part workshop requires a commitment to attend both sessions and provide constructive feedback to your peers, in addition to completing a reading/viewing assignment before Session 1. Up to five participants will be selected for this limited-enrollment opportunity. The application deadline is Monday, June 26 at 5:00 pm. The facilitator is Dr. Melissa Bostrom, Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Professional Development.

The application requires two brief essays, which applicants can upload as a single PDF file via Qualtrics survey:

• What do you hope to gain from this workshop series? (up to 250 words)
• How does developing strong presentation skills for a broad audience support your professional development goals? (up to 250 words)

These workshops are offered as part of The Graduate School’s Professional Development Series. Questions? Contact melissa.bostrom@duke.edu.