Video presentation skills workshops – an overview

Our objective for the DIAL online presentation skills community was to work out ways of developing video presentation skills with students.

Working with Chitra Buckley, the course director of MA Fashion Entrepreneurship at the London College of Fashion, we are aiming to create a workshop that will help students develop their presentation and pitching skills by recording themselves on a video camera doing a one-minute elevator pitch to explain their business idea or project. The pilot took place in the run up to defining the MA Fashion Entrepreneurship students’ final projects and to help in constructing a pitch for their own digital identity.

A wider aim is to provide a workshop outline and supporting materials that others can use to teach these skills to other students.

We are also collaborating with SEE, particularly with Student Development Officer Pei-Chin Tay, who is developing training material on how to make a great video pitch for the SEED Fund, and Speaking Out, a social enterprise that I run to help develop public speaking confidence.

A key part of the project was the collaboration between academic staff and the partner organisations. Chitra was devising a structure for presentation skills as part of her PGCert. We then developed the sessions further, in association with partners such as SEE, in relation to the elevator pitching, and Speaking Out for the exercises to improve presentation confidence and skills, with DIAL providing the digital literacy skills angle. Chitra also facilitated the sessions and developed the feedback sheets. This interaction between the partners was essential to the success of the project.

The following sections describe the series of three workshops that we ran, with the intention that other facilitators can run similar workshops themselves. There are a number of things we learned and things that we’d do differently included!

Preparation

Preparation for the video presentation skills workshop

Workshop 1 – trying out video pitching

Workshop 1, part 1 – filming one minute video pitches without training
Workshop 1, part 2 – watching the video pitches on a big screen

Workshop 2 – video pitch training and practice

Workshop 2, part 1 – training on how to do a video elevator pitch
Workshop 2, part 2 – exercises to practice video presentations

Workshop 3 – peer feedback 

Workshop 3 – Peer feedback on the before and after videos

Videos

Video demonstrating how to teach the workshop

Lessons learned

Video presentation skills workshop – lessons learned

More details about the online presentation skills project and the project plan.