Dear class,

After we have been through several presentations for the past lessons, there are several things that I wish to highlight to you. I hope that you are able to read through these points and improve on them:

• Font colour: For most classes, this is one of the most common practices that teams have adopted. Do refrain from using inappropriate colour such as red. Please do not use this colour because it is unreadable when projected on the screen. Yellow and green are another two colours to stay away from.

• Elaboration: As the lessons progress, most of you are now able to elaborate very well. And you have improved tremendously since the first lesson. Nevertheless, there are still a few of you who are less vocal. Do note that you have the potential to be vocal as well. So, do continue to contribute your points for subsequent lessons.

• Names on presentation slides: Some teams have – at times – forgotten to put their names on the presentation slides. Do include your name (preferably on the first slide) so that it’s easier for your facilitator to use them as references to identify your work.

• Maintaining eye contact with your audience: It can be observed that most of you are now presenting while maintaining eye contact with your audience. However, there’s still a minority of you who are still focusing too much on your facilitator. Do sweep your eyes across the class and maintain eye contact with your audience. It need not be everybody but the gesture of doing so is important, because it shows that you are engaging your audience.

• Scripts: As at time of writing, none of you in the class present while using scripts. Well done! Do also paraphrase your words and not read off the slides. Do provide examples whenever appropriate as well.

• Order of presenting teams: Since I believe that the class has the ability to organise yourself, do take the initiative to determine the order of the presenting teams (read: who is presenting first, second etc) before the start of the presentation.

• Appropriate posture and behaviour during presentation: Do maintain an upright posture when presenting. Do refrain from spinning around in chairs or joke around with friends while presenting or while your team is presenting. Do not doodle or draw on the white board during your team presentation and face the audience.  Presenting from the front or the back of the class is fine but please do not present at your table.

• Stay engaged with the presenting teams: For those of you who have presented or has yet to present, please do stay engaged with the presenting team and listen intently to their presentation. This is a mark of respect and I believe you will want other teams to listen to you too. During the presentation session, do not MSN, play games or listen to music since this will disengage you from the presenting teams and distract you from the presentation.

• Statistics and figures: For complicated figures and numbers, please simplify them for your audience and increase the font size for display on your slides. Do not place them in a remote corner of the slide.

• Ask your audience questions: It is a good technique to ask your audience questions when you are presenting. Sometimes, your audience may tune off mentally when listening to your presentation not because they want to but all of us have a limited attention span. Hence, throwing questions to the floor will better engage them.

I will be adding more points as I discover them. Despite the abovementioned area for improvement, I personally feel that all of you are good presenters. So, keep up the enthusiasm!

 By the way, please use a different font colour for your responses in the worksheet.