Presentation Skills- There are 5 basic presentation skills that a trainer needs to understand to effectively present new material to participants. They are:
Voice: Speak in a clear, firm voice and vary your volume and pitch when you want to emphasize something. Make sure that all participants can hear you easily but be sure not to shout or talk so loud that you sound angry.
Tone: Many people confuse voice and tone. Tone is the ‘feeling’ that emanates from voice and mannerisms. A tone that is confident and warm, and not dry or ego-centric works well in projecting a comfortable feeling to your participants.
Vocabulary: Stay away from unfamiliar terms and jargon as much as possible unless you are sure that your audience will understand. If you need to introduce technical terms and jargon, take the time to define them for your participants. Acronyms fall into this category. If you use them, make sure you tell the participants what the acronyms stand for.
Humor: A trainer with a good sense of humor can actually help to create a more relaxed atmosphere for the participants. Humor in teaching has been known to liven up boring material and help to diminish the traditional idea that the teacher is dominant and the participants are subordinate. Too much humor can be detrimental. You want the participants to know that you take your work seriously so they will too.
You should never resort to humor at the expense of any of the participants. Appropriate forms of humor in computer classes might be cartoons or illustrations with a computer-related theme, or some of your past experiences where you are the target for the punch line.
Body Language: It is a known fact that participants respond better to a trainer who is moderately active and moves around the room to connect with participants. The trainer who stands at the board or sits at their computer all day does nothing to present an image of comfort in the classroom. On the other hand, getting too close to a participant’s personal space is not good either. You might want to try teaching from the back of the room when participants are doing exercises so that you can readily see if anyone if having problems without making them draw attention to themselves. Questions such as “how is it going” as you approach a workstation prevents you from startling the participant.
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