Category: Presenting

My colleague, and ‘go to’ person on all things teaching related, Ruth Moeller was kind enough to write a guest post for those of you who are looking for some tips to improve your teaching. Ruth is the Senior Advisor on Learning and Teaching in the Design and Social context college at RMIT University and editor of the Teaching Tom Tom blog. This post is written from the point of view of a student in your class who has some ideas for making your teaching better. Enjoy!

In my job I have the privilege to work with some extraordinarily intelligent people. I mean – really clever. Intimidatingly clever. Clever to the point where I dare not open my mouth in some meetings for fear someone will discover I shouldn’t really be there. It’s not easy to live around all these clever clogs and be of average intelligence, so I have some coping strategies. These strategies have been developed by watching how clever people behave. The general principle here is: if I act like a clever person, I may become more clever – or at least I will appear to be more clever (which, existentially speaking, is the same thing).

“I told one of the mothers what I was studying for my PhD and she laughed in my face. Not kindly interested laughter either – out right derision. She paused after this and said “Why the hell would you bother doing that!” To add insult to injury, she went on to tell me she had a really difficult job – as a make up artist “

Watching Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks facing the UK’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, surrounded by media hounds and with the world’s TV cameras scrutinising every breath, I couldn’t help reflecting that a doctoral viva voce (or defense) is really very civilised by comparison…

How do you create a digital identity for yourself?

How can you design a beautiful poster for a conference? I’m not sure, but here’s what not to do.

While we’re talking about public speaking, can you spare a minute to think about people with hearing impairments? Last week, here in the UK, was Deaf Awareness Week (2nd – 8th May).  I normally talk about researchers and  libraries on this blog, but since I have a minor hearing impairment I have a vested interest in this event. …continue reading.

Connecting with your audience – it’s all about the empathy. And the trashy novels.

Presentations  for a faculty or disciplinary audience are subtly different to those you give at a conference, but not talked about as frequently. These ‘internal’ presentations are important because they tell your colleagues what kind of researcher you are; it helps you socially and academically to perform well to your peers. This topic occurred to …continue reading.

@thetokenlefty was freaking out about his confirmation presentation – so I wrote this post to reassure him