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Ever wondered what sets a great presentation apart? It’s more than just the words you use. Think about this, voice modulation, or how you say things, plays a substantial role at 38%. Your body language like hand gestures or eye contact, or how you carry yourself, takes a commanding lead at 55%.

Surprisingly, the content—the words you speak—only contributes 7% to a successful presentation. This interesting fact reveals that being an impressive presenter is like having a special recipe. It’s not just about what you say but how you present yourself. 

In this blog, we’ll dive into the world of presentation skills, and here’s the exciting part—we’ll make the learning process enjoyable by exploring games and activities that can transform you into an outstanding communicator even in front of a large group. Let’s explore the elements that can make you a standout presenter on your professional journey!

Importance of Presentation Skills

In the professional world, the ability to deliver a compelling presentation goes beyond sharing information; it’s about creating a memorable impact on your audience.

Here’s why presentation skills are important:

1. Communication Mastery

Presentation skills are at the forefront of effective communication. It’s not just about what you say; it’s how you say it. A well-delivered presentation ensures your message is heard and understood, fostering clear and meaningful communication.

2. Professional Credibility

A skilled presenter commands professional credibility. The ability to articulate ideas with clarity and confidence instils trust and respect from colleagues, superiors, and stakeholders. Credibility is a cornerstone for career advancement and building strong professional relationships.

3. Influence and Persuasion

Presentations are powerful tools for influencing and persuading others. Whether pitching a proposal, leading a team meeting, or advocating for a project, effective presentation skills enable you to sway opinions, gain support, and drive initiatives forward.

4. Career Advancement

Professionals with polished presentation skills often find themselves on a fast track to career advancement. The capacity to deliver compelling presentations positions you as a valuable asset to the organisation, setting the stage for leadership roles.

5. Confidence Building

Mastering presentation skills significantly contributes to building confidence. The more skilled you become at presenting, the more confident you feel in expressing your ideas. Confidence is contagious and can inspire confidence in others, creating a positive and dynamic work culture.

Now that we understand the pivotal role presentation skills play in professional success, let’s dive into engaging activities that can serve as effective tools for improvement.

Activities To Enhance Presentation Skills

These activities go beyond traditional training methods, offering a dynamic and enjoyable way to refine your presentation prowess.

Explore the following activities to elevate your skills:

Activity 1: Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha is a unique presentation style that challenges individuals to communicate their message with precision and impact. Originating from Japan, the term “Pecha Kucha” translates to “chit-chat” in English, and the format was first introduced in 2003 by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham . Here’s how Pecha Kucha works:

20 Slides, 20 Seconds Each: 

Presenters create a slideshow with precisely 20 slides. The catch? Each slide is displayed for only 20 seconds. This strict time constraint adds an element of urgency, compelling presenters to deliver their message succinctly.

Concise and Focused Content

With only 20 seconds per slide, presenters must convey their content in the most essential and impactful points. This format discourages information overload and encourages a clear and focused presentation.

To excel in creating a Pecha Kucha presentation, consider the following tips:

Thematic Consistency: Maintain a consistent theme or message throughout your 20 slides to ensure coherence and a unified presentation.

Powerful Visuals: Prioritise impactful images, diagrams, or concise text on each slide to enhance the visual appeal and complement your spoken content.

Scripted Timing: Practise your presentation to synchronise with the 20-second time limit per slide. This ensures a smooth and well-timed delivery during the actual presentation.

Succinct Messaging: Craft concise and memorable messages for each slide, focusing on the main points to avoid overwhelming the formal audience with information.

Engaging Transitions: Plan smooth transitions between slides to keep the audience engaged. The rapid pace should feel natural and purposeful.

Feedback Seeking: Seek feedback from peers or mentors to gather insights on your Pecha Kucha presentation’s clarity, impact, and effectiveness.

Activity 2: Gush About Something You Don’t Like 

In this unconventional activity, participants are tasked with passionately speaking about something they don’t like. The challenge lies in transforming a negative subject into a positive and engaging presentation.

The objective is not to dwell on criticism but to practise the art of constructive communication and find positive aspects even in seemingly unfavourable situations.

Key Elements of the Activity:

Positive Framing: Participants must employ positive framing, emphasising constructive aspects or potential solutions related to a disliked subject. This requires creative thinking and the ability to reframe perspectives.

Expressive Communication: The activity encourages a person to maintain a passionate and expressive tone while discussing a disliked topic. This helps develop spontaneity and enthusiasm, key elements of engaging communication.

Audience Engagement: Engaging the audience is crucial in this activity, which also acts as an ice breaker. Participants must capture attention by injecting humour or providing relatable anecdotes, ensuring the presentation remains interesting despite the negative subject.

Improvisation Skills: The unpredictability of this activity fosters improvisation skills. Participants must think on their feet, respond to potential audience questions or objections, and navigate the presentation with adaptability.

Benefits of Gushing About Something You Don’t Like:

Participating in this activity provides several benefits. It cultivates the ability to find positives in challenging situations, fostering a constructive mindset. Expressive communication skills are honed through the challenge of maintaining enthusiasm, even when discussing a disliked topic. Engaging the audience under these circumstances enhances overall presentation skills, and the fun exercise sharpens improvisation skills by navigating unexpected turns.

Ultimately, this activity transforms negativity into an opportunity for growth, allowing participants to develop a positive and adaptable approach to communication challenges.

Activity 3: Photo Story

The Photo Story storytelling activity is a creative and engaging way to enhance presentation skills by incorporating visual storytelling. Participants are tasked with creating a presentation using a series of carefully selected photos as visual aids.

Each image becomes a piece of the narrative puzzle, and the presenter must seamlessly articulate the story, connecting each photo to the overarching message.

Visual Narrative Building: Participants select a sequence of photos telling a story. The challenge is to ensure that each image contributes meaningfully to the narrative, creating a cohesive and interactive visual journey.

Storytelling Skills: The activity focuses on developing storytelling skills. Presenters must describe the images and weave them into a compelling story. This enhances the ability to convey messages in a narrative format, making presentations more memorable.

Emphasis on Visual Communication: Photo Story underscores the importance of visual communication. Participants learn to use visuals effectively, recognising the impact of images in conveying emotions, themes, and key points. This skill is transferable to other aspects of presentation design.

Audience Engagement through Imagery: Engaging the audience is achieved through the power of imagery. Participants must captivate their audience by explaining the significance of each photo, fostering a deeper connection between the audience and the presented content.

Benefits of Photo Story:

Engaging in the Photo Story activity yields numerous benefits. It enhances storytelling capabilities, making presentations more engaging and memorable. The emphasis on visual communication contributes to creating visually appealing presentations in various professional contexts.

Additionally, the activity cultivates the ability to structure information coherently and captivate audiences through compelling visuals and narrative elements.

Overall, Photo Story is a versatile tool that improves presentation skills and promotes creativity and effective visual communication.

Activity 4: 30 Seconds Without Filler Words

The “30 Seconds Without Filler Words” activity is a great exercise designed to enhance public speaking skills by promoting clarity, coherence, and the elimination of filler words. Participants are challenged to speak on a random topic for 30 seconds without using common filler words such as “um,” “uh,” or “like.”

This activity aims to sharpen communication skills, encourage mindful expression, and minimise distractions to create a more impactful and engaging presentation style.

Elimination of Filler Words: The primary focus is on eliminating filler words that often diminish a presentation’s impact. Participants are encouraged to speak fluently and confidently, avoiding unnecessary pauses or distractions.

Mindful Communication: The activity cultivates mindful communication by prompting participants to recognise their speech patterns. This heightened awareness contributes to more intentional expression.

Pacing and Time Management: Participants must effectively manage their time within the 30-second limit, emphasising the importance of pacing in public speaking. This skill is transferable to various presentation scenarios where time constraints are a factor.

Enhanced Message Impact: Presenters create a more polished and professional impression for the whole room by eliminating filler words. The message becomes clearer, and the overall impact of the presentation is heightened, contributing to a more effective communication style.

Benefits of 30 Seconds Without Filler Words:

Engaging in this activity yields several benefits. It fosters an awareness of speech patterns, enabling participants to identify and eliminate filler words from their presentations. The emphasis on fluent and coherent expression enhances overall public speaking skills along with nonverbal communication, making presentations more impactful and engaging.

Moreover, the activity instils valuable lessons in time management and pacing, crucial elements in delivering concise and effective presentations. Ultimately, “30 Seconds Without Filler Words” is a targeted exercise that empowers participants to refine their communication style and deliver presentations with increased clarity and confidence.

The Power of Presentation Skills Training

Starting a presentation skills training course is like discovering a secret weapon for professional success. A skilled trainer can guide you through the intricacies of effective communication, helping you harness the true power of your voice.

Practice speaking under the guidance of experts allows you to refine your delivery, build confidence, and captivate your audience with every presentation.

Most people may underestimate the impact of a well-delivered presentation, but with the right training, you can elevate your skills to new heights.

In a presentation skills training course, you’ll discover the art of engaging an audience through various mediums. A seasoned trainer will train you on different types of presentations, teaching you to adapt your approach based on the context and audience.

Whether you write a speech, deliver a pitch, or participate in a video conference, the course equips you with the skills to excel and make your presentation successful.

A great trainer understands that effective communication goes beyond words. They emphasise the importance of non-verbal cues, teaching you to read and respond to your audience in the session. For example, when you actively listen, you can tailor your presentation to address the specific interests of your audience, ensuring they not only listen but also relate to your message.

Good presentation involves understanding these two truths: the significance of non-verbal communication and the importance of audience engagement.

In presentation skills training, every session is an opportunity to refine your abilities and unlock your full potential as a communicator.

So, if you’re interested in making a lasting impression and mastering the art of persuasive communication, a presentation skills training course is your pathway to success, offering opportunities for public speaking activities and discussion.

By Rishabh Bhandari

Presentation skill appraisal comments: crafting self-assessment and performance evaluation, training for effective leadership: presentation skills for managers, enhancing personal impact: presentation skills and personality development.

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Home Blog Education Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success

Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success

Getting the perfect presentation design is just a step toward a successful presentation. For the experienced user, building presentation skills is the answer to elevating the power of your message and showing expertise on any subject. Still, one can ask: is it the same set of skills, or are they dependable on the type of presentation?

In this article, we will introduce the different types of presentations accompanied by the skillset required to master them. The purpose, as always, is to retain the audience’s interest for a long-lasting and convincing message.

Table of Contents

The Importance of Presentation Skills

Persuasive presentations, instructional presentations, informative presentations, inspirational presentations, basic presentation skills, what are the main difficulties when giving a presentation, recommendations to improve your presentation skills, closing statement.

Effective communication is the answer to reaching business and academic goals. The scenarios in which we can be required to deliver a presentation are as diverse as one can imagine. Still, some core concepts apply to all presentations.

 We define presentation skills as a compendium of soft skills that directly affect your presentation performance and contribute to creating a great presentation. These are not qualities acquired by birth but skills you ought to train and master to delve into professional environments.

You may ask: is it really that evident when a presenter is not prepared? Here are some common signs people can experience during presentations:

• Evasive body language: Not making eye contact with the audience, arms closed tightly to the body, hands in pockets all the time.
• Lack of interest in the presenter’s voice: dull tone, not putting an effort to articulate the topics.
• Doubting when asked to answer a question
• Irksome mood

The list can go on about common presenter mistakes , and most certainly, it will affect the performance of any presented data if the lack of interest by the presenter is blatantly obvious.  Another element to consider is anxiety, and according to research by the National Institute of Mental Health, 73% of the population in the USA is affected by glossophobia , which is the fear of public speaking, judgment, or negative evaluation by other people.

Therefore, presentation skills training is essential for any business professional who wants to achieve effective communication . It will remove the anxiety from presentation performance and help users effectively deliver their message and connect with the audience.

Archetypes of presentations

Persuasive presentations aim to convince the audience – often in short periods – to acquire a product or service, adhere to a cause, or invest in a company. For business entrepreneurs or politicians, persuasive presentations are their tool for the trade.

Unless you aim to be perceived as an imposter, a proper persuasive presentation has the elements of facts, empathy, and logic, balanced under a well-crafted narrative. The central pillar of these presentations is to identify the single factor that gathered your audience: it could be a market need, a social cause, or a revolutionary concept for today’s society. It has to be something with enough power to gather critiques – both good and bad.

That single factor has to be backed up by facts. Research that builds your hypothesis on how to solve that problem. A deep understanding of the target audience’s needs , concerns, and social position regarding the solution your means can offer. When those elements are in place, building a pitch becomes an easy task. 

Graphics can help you introduce information in a compelling format, lowering the need for lengthy presentations. Good presentation skills for persuasive presentations go by the hand of filtering relevant data and creating the visual cues that resonate with what your audience demands.

One powerful example of a persuasive presentation is the technique known as the elevator pitch . You must introduce your idea or product convincingly to the audience in a timeframe between 30 seconds and less than 2 minutes. You have to expose:

• What do you do 
• What’s the problem to solve
• Why is your solution different from others 
• Why should the audience care about your expertise

For that very purpose, using engaging graphics with contrasting colors elevates the potential power of your message. It speaks professionalism, care for details, and out-of-the-box thinking. Knowing how to end a presentation is also critical, as your CTAs should be placed with care.

Therefore, let’s resume the requirements of persuasive presentations in terms of good presentation skills:

• Identifying problems and needs
• Elaborating “the hook” (the element that grabs the audience’s attention)
• Knowing how to “tie” your audience (introducing a piece of information related to the hook that causes an emotional impact)
• Broad knowledge of body language and hand gestures to quickly convey your message
• Being prepared to argue a defense of your point of view
• Handling rejection
• Having a proactive attitude to convert opportunities into new projects
• Using humor, surprise, or personal anecdotes as elements to sympathize with the audience
• Having confidence
• Be able to summarize facts and information in visually appealing ways

You can learn more about persuasive presentation techniques by clicking here .

In the case of instructional presentations, we ought to differentiate two distinctive types:

• Lecture Presentations : Presentations being held at universities or any other educative institution. Those presentations cover, topic by topic, and the contents of a syllabus and are created by the team of teachers in charge of the course.
• Training Presentations : These presentations take place during in-company training sessions and usually comprise a good amount of content that is resumed into easy-to-take solutions. They are aimed to coach employees over certain topics relevant to their work performance. The 70-20-10 Model is frequently used to address these training situations.

Lecture presentations appeal to the gradual introduction of complex concepts, following a structure set in the course’s syllabus. These presentations often have a similar aesthetic as a group of professors or researchers created to share their knowledge about a topic. Personal experience does tell that course presentations often rely on factual data, adequately documented, and on the theoretical side.

An example of a presentation that lies under this concept is a Syllabus Presentation, used by the teaching team to introduce the subject to new students, evaluation methods, concepts to be learned, and expectations to pass the course.

On the other hand, training presentations are slide decks designed to meet an organization’s specific needs in the formal education of their personnel. Commonly known as “continuous education,” plenty of companies invest resources in coaching their employees to achieve higher performance results. These presentations have the trademark of being concise since their idea is to introduce the concepts that shall be applied in practice sessions. 

Ideally, the training presentations are introduced with little text and easy-to-recognize visual cues. Since the idea is to summarize as much as possible, these are visually appealing for the audience. They must be dynamic enough to allow the presenter to convey the message.

Those key takeaways remind employees when they revisit their learning resources and allow them to ruminate on questions that fellow workers raise. 

To sum up this point, building presentation skills for instructional presentations requires:

• Ability to put complex concepts into simpler words
• Patience and a constant learning mindset
• Voice training to deliver lengthy speeches without being too dense
• Ability to summarize points and note the key takeaways
• Empathizing with the audience to understand their challenges in the learning process

The informative presentations take place in business situations, such as when to present project reports from different departments to the management. Another potential usage of these presentations is in SCRUM or other Agile methodologies, when a sprint is completed, to discuss the advance of the project with the Product Owner.

As they are presentations heavily dependent on data insights, it’s common to see the usage of infographics and charts to express usually dense data in simpler terms and easy to remember. 

Informative presentations don’t just fall into the business category. Ph.D. Dissertation and Thesis presentations are topics that belong to the informative presentations category as they condense countless research hours into manageable reports for the academic jury. 

Since these informational presentations can be perceived as lengthy and data-filled, it is important to learn the following professional presentation skills:

• Attention to detail
• Be able to explain complex information in simpler terms
• Creative thinking
• Powerful diction
• Working on pauses and transitions
• Pacing the presentation, so not too much information is divulged per slide

The leading inspirational platform, TEDx, comes to mind when talking about inspirational presentations. This presentation format has the peculiarity of maximizing the engagement with the audience to divulge a message, and due to that, it has specific requirements any presenter must meet.

This presentation format usually involves a speaker on a stage, either sitting or better standing, in which the presenter engages with the audience with a storytelling format about a life experience, a job done that provided a remarkable improvement for society, etc.

Empathizing with the audience is the key ingredient for these inspirational presentations. Still, creativity is what shapes the outcome of your performance as people are constantly looking for different experiences – not the same recipe rephrased with personal touches. The human factor is what matters here, way above data and research. What has your experience to offer to others? How can it motivate another human being to pursue a similar path or discover their true calling?

To achieve success in terms of communication skills presentation, these inspirational presentations have the following requirements:

• Focus on the audience (engage, consider their interests, and make them a part of your story)
• Putting ego aside
• Creative communication skills
• Storytelling skills
• Body language knowledge to apply the correct gestures to accompany your story
• Voice training
• Using powerful words

After discussing the different kinds of presentations we can come across at any stage of our lives, a group of presentation skills is standard in any type of presentation. See below what makes a good presentation and which skills you must count on to succeed as a presenter.

Punctuality

Punctuality is a crucial aspect of giving an effective presentation. Nothing says more about respect for your audience and the organization you represent than delivering the presentation on time . Arriving last minute puts pressure on the tech team behind audiovisuals, as they don’t have enough preparation to test microphones, stage lights, and projector settings, which can lead to a less powerful presentation Even when discussing presentations hosted in small rooms for a reduced audience, testing the equipment becomes essential for an effective presentation.

A solution for this is to arrive at least 30 minutes early. Ideally, one hour is a sweet spot since the AV crew has time to check the gear and requirements for your presentation. Another benefit of this, for example, in inspirational presentations, is measuring the previous presenter’s impact on the audience. This gives insights about how to resonate with the public, and their interest, and how to accommodate your presentation for maximum impact.

Body Language

Our bodies can make emotions transparent for others, even when we are unaware of such a fact. Proper training for body language skills reduces performance anxiety, giving the audience a sense of expertise about the presented topic. 

Give your presentation and the audience the respect they deserve by watching over these potential mistakes:

• Turning your back to the audience for extended periods : It’s okay to do so when introducing an important piece of information or explaining a graph, but it is considered rude to give your back to the audience constantly.
• Fidgeting : We are all nervous in the presence of strangers, even more, if we are the center of attention for that moment. Instead of playing with your hair or making weird hand gestures, take a deep breath to center yourself before the presentation and remember that everything you could do to prepare is already done. Trust your instincts and give your best.
• Intense eye contact : Have you watched a video where the presenter stared at the camera the entire time? That’s the feeling you transmit to spectators through intense eye contact. It’s a practice often used by politicians to persuade.
• Swearing : This is a no-brainer. Even when you see influencers swearing on camera or in podcasts or live presentations, it is considered an informal and lousy practice for business and academic situations. If you have a habit to break when it comes to this point, find the humor in these situations and replace your swear words with funny alternatives (if the presentation allows for it). 

Voice Tone plays a crucial role in delivering effective presentations and knowing how to give a good presentation. Your voice is a powerful tool for exposing your ideas and feelings . Your voice can articulate the message you are telling, briefing the audience if you feel excited about what you are sharing or, in contrast, if you feel the presentation is a burden you ought to complete.

Remember, passion is a primary ingredient in convincing people. Therefore, transmitting such passion with a vibrant voice may help gather potential business partners’ interest.  

But what if you feel sick prior to the presentation? If, by chance, your throat is sore minutes before setting foot on the stage, try this: when introducing yourself, mention that you are feeling a bit under the weather. This resonates with the audience to pay more attention to your efforts. In case you don’t feel comfortable about that, ask the organizers for a cup of tea, as it will settle your throat and relax your nerves.

Tech Skills

Believe it or not, people still feel challenged by technology these days. Maybe that’s the reason why presentation giants like Tony Robbins opt not to use PowerPoint presentations . The reality is that there are plenty of elements involved in a presentation that can go wrong from the tech side:

• A PDF not opening
• Saving your presentation in a too-recent PowerPoint version
• A computer not booting up
• Mac laptops and their never-ending compatibility nightmare
• Not knowing how to change between slides
• Not knowing how to use a laser pointer
• Internet not working
• Audio not working

We can come up with a pretty long list of potential tech pitfalls, and yet more than half of them fall in presenters not being knowledgeable about technology.

If computers aren’t your thing, let the organization know about this beforehand. There is always a crew member available to help presenters switch between slides or configure the presentation for streaming. This takes the pressure off your shoulders, allowing you to concentrate on the content to present. Remember, even Bill Gates can get a BSOD during a presentation .

Presentations, while valuable for conveying information and ideas, can be daunting for many individuals. Here are some common difficulties people encounter when giving presentations:

Public Speaking Anxiety

Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, affects a significant portion of the population. This anxiety can lead to nervousness, trembling, and forgetfulness during a presentation.

Lack of Confidence

Many presenters struggle with self-doubt, fearing that they may not be knowledgeable or skilled enough to engage their audience effectively.

Content Organization

Organizing information in a coherent and engaging manner can be challenging. Presenters often grapple with how to structure their content to make it easily digestible for the audience. Artificial Intelligence can help us significantly reduce the content arrangement time when you work with tools like our AI Presentation Maker (made for presenters by experts in presentation design). 

Audience Engagement

Keeping the audience’s attention and interest throughout the presentation can be difficult. Distractions, disengaged attendees, or lack of interaction can pose challenges.

Technical Issues

Technology glitches, such as malfunctioning equipment, incompatible file formats, or poor internet connectivity, can disrupt presentations and increase stress.

Time Management

Striking the right balance between providing enough information and staying within time limits is a common challenge. Going over or under the allotted time can affect the effectiveness of the presentation.

Handling Questions and Challenges

Responding to unexpected questions, criticism, or challenges from the audience can be difficult, especially when presenters are unprepared or lack confidence in their subject matter.

Visual Aids and Technology

Creating and effectively using visual aids like slides or multimedia can be a struggle for some presenters. Technical competence is essential in this aspect.

Language and Articulation

Poor language skills or unclear articulation can hinder effective communication. Presenters may worry about stumbling over words or failing to convey their message clearly.

Maintaining appropriate and confident body language can be challenging. Avoiding nervous habits, maintaining eye contact, and using gestures effectively requires practice.

Overcoming Impersonal Delivery

In virtual presentations, maintaining a personal connection with the audience can be difficult. The absence of face-to-face interaction can make it challenging to engage and read the audience.

Cultural and Diversity Awareness

Presenting to diverse audiences requires sensitivity to cultural differences and varying levels of familiarity with the topic.

In this section, we gathered some tips on how to improve presentation skills that can certainly make an impact if applied to your presentation skills. We believe these skills can be cultivated to transform into habits for your work routine.

Tip #1: Build a narrative

One memorable way to guarantee presentation success is by writing a story of all the points you desire to cover. This statement is based on the logic behind storytelling and its power to connect with people .

Don’t waste time memorizing slides or reading your presentation to the audience. It feels unnatural, and any question that diverts from the topic in discussion certainly puts you in jeopardy or, worse, exposes you as a fraud in the eyes of the audience. And before you ask, it is really evident when a presenter has a memorized speech. 

Build and rehearse the presentation as if telling a story to a group of interested people. Lower the language barrier by avoiding complex terms that maybe even you aren’t fully aware of their meaning. Consider the ramifications of that story, what it could lead to, and which are the opportunities to explore. Then, visualize yourself giving the presentation in a natural way.

Applying this technique makes the presentation feel like second nature to you. It broadens the spectrum in which you can show expertise over a topic or even build the basis for new interesting points of view about the project.

Tip #2: Don’t talk for more than 3 minutes per slide

It is a common practice of presenters to bombard the audience with facts and information whilst retaining the same slide on the screen. Why can this happen? It could be because the presenter condensed the talk into very few slides and preferred to talk. The reality is that your spectators won’t retain the information you are giving unless you give visual cues to help that process. 

Opt to prepare more slides and pace your speech to match the topics shown on each slide. Don’t spend more than 3 minutes per slide unless you have to introduce a complex piece of data. Use visual cues to direct the spectators about what you talk about, and summarize the principal concepts discussed at the end of each section.

Tip #3: Practice meditation daily

Anxiety is the number one enemy of professional presenters. It slowly builds without you being aware of your doubts and can hinder your performance in multiple ways: making you feel paralyzed, fidgeting, making you forget language skills or concepts, affecting your health, etc.

Meditation is an ancient practice taken from Buddhist teachings that train your mind to be here in the present. We often see the concepts of meditation and mindfulness as synonyms, whereas you should be aware that meditation is a practice that sets the blocks to reach a state of mindfulness. For presenters, being in the here and now is essential to retain focus, but meditation techniques also teach us to control our breathing and be in touch with our body signals when stress builds up. 

The customary practice of meditation has an impact on imagination and creativity but also helps to build patience – a skill much needed for connecting with your audience in instructional presentations.

Having the proper set of presentation skills can be quite subjective. It goes beyond presentation tips and deepens into how flexible we can be in our ability to communicate ideas.

Different presentations and different audiences shape the outcome of our efforts. Therefore, having a basic understanding of how to connect, raise awareness, and empathize with people can be key ingredients for your career as a presenter. A word of advice: success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes dedication and patience to build communication skills . Don’t condition your work to believe you will be ready “someday”; it’s best to practice and experience failure as part of the learning process.

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Business Presentations, Presentation Approaches, Presentation Skills Filed under Education

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• Presentation Hacks

10 Public Speaking Games and Activities to Try

• By: Kelly Allison

Public speaking is a skill like any other—to become great at it, you need to practice. But if you’re like most, then you probably don’t have a room full of people at the ready that you can speak in front of every day. Don’t let that stop you from practicing, though.

There are actually a ton of games and activities you can take advantage of that’ll help you hone your chops and become the best presenter you can be without the need for a formal audience.

Speak Nonsense According to research , an excellent presentation is 38% your voice, 55% non-verbal communication and just 7% your content. In other words, your delivery matters even more than what you say, and this exercise helps you refine it. Find a paragraph online in a language you don’t understand or simply write down a few lines of jibberish, and practice saying it aloud as though you’re giving a speech. Pay mind to your tone, inflections, and generally how you can use your voice to create more interest.

Learn From the Pros Look online for speeches that are widely accepted as exceptional. The most popular TED Talks of all time is a great place to start. Pick a talk that you’re interested in and watch it through a critical lens. Analyze the narrative structure the speaker uses, what makes their delivery effective, how their visuals enhance their talk and other components that make their speech extraordinary.

30 Seconds Filler-Free Filler words like “uh” “um” and “y’know” not only make your talk more difficult to listen to, but they also make you seem less prepared and authoritative. For this exercise, record yourself giving a talk on any topic for 30 seconds, taking care to omit all filler words. Whenever you use a filler word, start over and try again. Do this exercise ten times, filler-free.

One Minute Off-the-Cuff For this exercise, you’ll set a timer on your phone for one minute and record yourself giving an impromptu speech on any topic that interests you. The only rule is that you can’t prepare for it in any way. This is designed to get you more comfortable speaking off-the-cuff and minimize the anxiety that comes from being afraid you won’t have anything to say.

Tell a Photo Story Storytelling is critical to engaging your audience and helping them retain the information you’re sharing. To practice developing narratives, find an interesting photo online and record yourself presenting a story about it. Discuss what you think the backstory is, who the people are, their dreams, their motivations, and anything else that’ll tell a compelling story about them.

Make Up a Definition No matter what your presentation is about, you should always seem like you have authority over the topic. For this exercise, choose a word you don’t know the definition of and record yourself saying, with authority, what you think it means. Pay attention to how you can use your voice and intonations to have more command and seem more authoritative.

Q&A With an Expert You’ll need to find a friend for this one. Choose a topic or job that you don’t know much about. Ask your friend to interview you about it and answer their questions as though you’re a well-informed expert. This will help you with both your delivery and authority.

Gush About Something You Don’t Love Enthusiasm is contagious. If you want your audience to be excited about your topic, then you need to show enthusiasm for it. Choose something you’re indifferent about, say, a kitchen utensil, and practice speaking about it enthusiastically. Use your voice, emphasis, and body language to make it seem like the most exciting thing in the universe.

Make a Commercial Presentations are all about selling an idea, so you should practice the art of sales and persuasion to be the best you can be. Choose an item in your home and create a one-minute commercial about it. Record yourself saying what makes it special, how it can enhance lives, and why everyone needs that item in their corner.

Where Did That Name Come From? This is another exercise that’ll make you a better storyteller on stage. Pick an item in your home, like a stapler, and tell a story about how it got its name. The idea here isn’t to be accurate, so by all means, make something up; this is just to get you in the habit of finding and developing interesting stories from anything.

Looking for more ways to improve your presentation game? Then take Ethos3’s Badge Assessment to discover your unique presentation persona.

Kelly Allison

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Practice Presentation Skills

Improve your public speaking and presentation skills by practising them in realistic environments, with automated feedback on performance.

About the Exercise

Effective presentation skills are essential in the modern workplace. This practice exercise allows you to practice and improve your skills in several different virtual environments, including a conference room, meeting room, lecture hall, classroom, and a TEDx-styled theatre.

After each practice session, you'll receive feedback on your performance, including on your pace, filler words, pitch, listenability, eye contact (VR only), and more. You can repeat the practice session as often as you like to improve your skills.

Topics covered

• Presentaiton Skills
• Public Speaking
• Confident Communication

Accessibility

The presentation environments can be accessed from your web browser, no installation or download is required. You can also access the scenarios from virtual reality, if you have a VR headset.

Exercise Features

Screenshots.

Conference Room

Meeting Room

TEDx Theatre

Lecture Hall

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6 presentation skills and how to improve them

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What are presentation skills?

The importance of presentation skills, 6 presentation skills examples, how to improve presentation skills.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety

Learn how to captivate an audience with ease

Capturing an audience’s attention takes practice. 

Over time, great presenters learn how to organize their speeches and captivate an audience from start to finish. They spark curiosity, know how to read a room , and understand what their audience needs to walk away feeling like they learned something valuable.

Regardless of your profession, you most likely use presentation skills on a monthly or even weekly basis. Maybe you lead brainstorming sessions or host client calls. 

Developing effective presentation skills makes it easier to contribute ideas with confidence and show others you’re someone to trust. Although speaking in front of a crowd sometimes brings nerves and anxiety , it also sparks new opportunities.

Presentation skills are the qualities and abilities you need to communicate ideas effectively and deliver a compelling speech. They influence how you structure a presentation and how an audience receives it. Understanding body language , creating impactful visual aids, and projecting your voice all fall under this umbrella.

A great presentation depends on more than what you say. It’s about how you say it. Storytelling , stage presence, and voice projection all shape how well you express your ideas and connect with the audience. These skills do take practice, but they’re worth developing — especially if public speaking makes you nervous. 

Engaging a crowd isn’t easy. You may feel anxious to step in front of an audience and have all eyes and ears on you.

But feeling that anxiety doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t worth sharing. Whether you’re giving an inspiring speech or delivering a monthly recap at work, your audience is there to listen to you. Harness that nervous energy and turn it into progress.

Strong presentation skills make it easier to convey your thoughts to audiences of all sizes. They can help you tell a compelling story, convince people of a pitch , or teach a group something entirely new to them. And when it comes to the workplace, the strength of your presentation skills could play a part in getting a promotion or contributing to a new initiative.

To fully understand the impact these skills have on creating a successful presentation, it’s helpful to look at each one individually. Here are six valuable skills you can develop:

1. Active listening

Active listening is an excellent communication skill for any professional to hone. When you have strong active listening skills, you can listen to others effectively and observe their nonverbal cues . This helps you assess whether or not your audience members are engaged in and understand what you’re sharing. 

Great public speakers use active listening to assess the audience’s reactions and adjust their speech if they find it lacks impact. Signs like slouching, negative facial expressions, and roaming eye contact are all signs to watch out for when giving a presentation.

2. Body language

If you’re researching presentation skills, chances are you’ve already watched a few notable speeches like TED Talks or industry seminars. And one thing you probably noticed is that speakers can capture attention with their body language. 

A mixture of eye contact, hand gestures , and purposeful pacing makes a presentation more interesting and engaging. If you stand in one spot and don’t move your body, the audience might zone out.

3. Stage presence

A great stage presence looks different for everyone. A comedian might aim for more movement and excitement, and a conference speaker might focus their energy on the content of their speech. Although neither is better than the other, both understand their strengths and their audience’s needs. 

Developing a stage presence involves finding your own unique communication style . Lean into your strengths, whether that’s adding an injection of humor or asking questions to make it interactive . To give a great presentation, you might even incorporate relevant props or presentation slides.

4. Storytelling

According to Forbes, audiences typically pay attention for about 10 minutes before tuning out . But you can lengthen their attention span by offering a presentation that interests them for longer. Include a narrative they’ll want to listen to, and tell a story as you go along. 

Shaping your content to follow a clear narrative can spark your audience’s curiosity and entice them to pay careful attention. You can use anecdotes from your personal or professional life that take your audience along through relevant moments. If you’re pitching a product, you can start with a problem and lead your audience through the stages of how your product provides a solution.

5. Voice projection

Although this skill may be obvious, you need your audience to hear what you’re saying. This can be challenging if you’re naturally soft-spoken and struggle to project your voice.

Remember to straighten your posture and take deep breaths before speaking, which will help you speak louder and fill the room. If you’re talking into a microphone or participating in a virtual meeting, you can use your regular conversational voice, but you still want to sound confident and self-assured with a strong tone.

If you’re unsure whether everyone can hear you, you can always ask the audience at the beginning of your speech and wait for confirmation. That way, they won’t have to potentially interrupt you later.

Ensuring everyone can hear you also includes your speed and annunciation. It’s easy to speak quickly when nervous, but try to slow down and pronounce every word. Mumbling can make your presentation difficult to understand and pay attention to.

6. Verbal communication 

Although verbal communication involves your projection and tone, it also covers the language and pacing you use to get your point across. This includes where you choose to place pauses in your speech or the tone you use to emphasize important ideas.

If you’re giving a presentation on collaboration in the workplace , you might start your speech by saying, “There’s something every workplace needs to succeed: teamwork.” By placing emphasis on the word “ teamwork ,” you give your audience a hint on what ideas will follow.

To further connect with your audience through diction, pay careful attention to who you’re speaking to. The way you talk to your colleagues might be different from how you speak to a group of superiors, even if you’re discussing the same subject. You might use more humor and a conversational tone for the former and more serious, formal diction for the latter.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to presenting. Maybe you’re confident in your use of body language, but your voice projection needs work. Maybe you’re a great storyteller in small group settings, but need to work on your stage presence in front of larger crowds. 

The first step to improving presentation skills is pinpointing your gaps and determining which qualities to build upon first. Here are four tips for enhancing your presentation skills:

1. Build self-confidence

Confident people know how to speak with authority and share their ideas. Although feeling good about your presentation skills is easier said than done, building confidence is key to helping your audience believe in what you’re saying. Try practicing positive self-talk and continuously researching your topic's ins and outs.

If you don’t feel confident on the inside, fake it until you make it. Stand up straight, project your voice, and try your best to appear engaged and excited. Chances are, the audience doesn’t know you’re unsure of your skills — and they don’t need to.

Another tip is to lean into your slideshow, if you’re using one. Create something colorful and interesting so the audience’s eyes fall there instead of on you. And when you feel proud of your slideshow, you’ll be more eager to share it with others, bringing more energy to your presentation.

2. Watch other presentations

Developing the soft skills necessary for a good presentation can be challenging without seeing them in action. Watch as many as possible to become more familiar with public speaking skills and what makes a great presentation. You could attend events with keynote speakers or view past speeches on similar topics online.

Take a close look at how those presenters use verbal communication and body language to engage their audiences. Grab a notebook and jot down what you enjoyed and your main takeaways. Try to recall the techniques they used to emphasize their main points, whether they used pauses effectively, had interesting visual aids, or told a fascinating story.

3. Get in front of a crowd

You don’t need a large auditorium to practice public speaking. There are dozens of other ways to feel confident and develop good presentation skills.

If you’re a natural comedian, consider joining a small stand-up comedy club. If you’re an avid writer, participate in a public poetry reading. Even music and acting can help you feel more comfortable in front of a crowd.

If you’d rather keep it professional, you can still work on your presentation skills in the office. Challenge yourself to participate at least once in every team meeting, or plan and present a project to become more comfortable vocalizing your ideas. You could also speak to your manager about opportunities that flex your public speaking abilities.

4. Overcome fear

Many people experience feelings of fear before presenting in front of an audience, whether those feelings appear as a few butterflies or more severe anxiety. Try grounding yourself to shift your focus to the present moment. If you’re stuck dwelling on previous experiences that didn’t go well, use those mistakes as learning experiences and focus on what you can improve to do better in the future.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety 

It’s normal to feel nervous when sharing your ideas. In fact, according to a report from the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, public speaking anxiety is prevalent in 15–30% of the general population .

Even though having a fear of public speaking is common, it doesn’t make it easier. You might feel overwhelmed, become stiff, and forget what you were going to say. But although the moment might scare you, there are ways to overcome the fear and put mind over matter.

Use these tactics to reduce your stress when you have to make a presentation:

1. Practice breathing techniques

If you experience anxiety often, you’re probably familiar with breathing techniques for stress relief . Incorporating these exercises into your daily routine can help you stop worrying and regulate anxious feelings. 

Before a big presentation, take a moment alone to practice breathing techniques, ground yourself, and reduce tension. It’s also a good idea to take breaths throughout the presentation to speak slower and calm yourself down .

2. Get organized

The more organized you are, the more prepared you’ll feel. Carefully outline all of the critical information you want to use in your presentation, including your main talking points and visual aids, so you don’t forget anything. Use bullet points and visuals on each slide to remind you of what you want to talk about, and create handheld notes to help you stay on track.

3. Embrace moments of silence

It’s okay to lose your train of thought. It happens to even the most experienced public speakers once in a while. If your mind goes blank, don’t panic. Take a moment to breathe, gather your thoughts, and refer to your notes to see where you left off. You can drink some water or make a quick joke to ease the silence or regain your footing. And it’s okay to say, “Give me a moment while I find my notes.” Chances are, people understand the position you’re in.

4. Practice makes progress

Before presenting, rehearse in front of friends and family members you trust. This gives you the chance to work out any weak spots in your speech and become comfortable communicating out loud. If you want to go the extra mile, ask your makeshift audience to ask a surprise question. This tests your on-the-spot thinking and will prove that you can keep cool when things come up.

Whether you’re new to public speaking or are a seasoned presenter, you’re bound to make a few slip-ups. It happens to everyone. The most important thing is that you try your best, brush things off, and work on improving your skills to do better in your next presentation.

Although your job may require a different level of public speaking than your favorite TED Talk , developing presentation skills is handy in any profession. You can use presentation skills in a wide range of tasks in the workplace, whether you’re sharing your ideas with colleagues, expressing concerns to higher-ups, or pitching strategies to potential clients.

Remember to use active listening to read the room and engage your audience with an interesting narrative. Don’t forget to step outside your comfort zone once in a while and put your skills to practice in front of a crowd. After facing your fears, you’ll feel confident enough to put presentation skills on your resume.

If you’re trying to build your skills and become a better employee overall, try a communications coach with BetterUp. 

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Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

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14 Fun & Interactive Presentation Games for Teams and Students

So you've got an audience to energize, students to engage, or a team that needs a little extra fun — playing an interactive presentation game is an easy way to do just that.

We've done the research and found the best of these games for you: we looked specifically for games that are simple to set up, fun to play, and flexible enough to be used with a variety of presentations and audiences. Most of these activities work virtually with Zoom/PowerPoint and can also be used in person.

Which of these 14 presentation games do you like best? Take a look and let us know your favorites:

1. Live Trivia Competition

A great way to ramp up the excitement and engagement is to enable a little bit of friendly competition. Trivia is an easy way to do this—plus, it can be whole-group inclusive and large-audience friendly (if you use the right tools).

Here's a great trivia game you can run with your team, students, or any large audience. It's already created for you with questions and scoring built in to make it even easier:

Here's how to play:

• Make a free account here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the slide deck and copy it. 
• Launch the trivia game by clicking "Start Event."
• Invite your group to join in and submit answers using their mobile devices (show the winners automatically).
• Interact and play during your presentation!

This trivia game has questions on many topics to keep your audience's attention and appeal to everyone. It only takes 10-15 minutes to play, so it's a great game for long discussions! Also, this interactive activity is free for up to ten participants and is totally customizable.

2. Sing and Swing 

To really liven up your group, encourage your listeners to play Sing and Swing. This activity is best for long presentations because it boosts energy, creates a fun, light-hearted environment, and makes people laugh a lot. 

Here's how to play: 

• Before your presentation, pick a well-known song and rewrite the chorus (replace parts of it with words and phrases from your presentation) 
• When you're ready to play, show the song on your screen. 
• Invite your audience to sing it with you!

If you have a fun group or a class of energetic students, consider adding choreography to engage your audience even more. 

3. 20 Questions

If you want a presentation game that requires your listeners to talk more than you, 20 Questions is the one to play! A classic and simple activity, this game immediately boosts engagement and gets people laughing. 

Here's how to play: Have someone put an appropriate image or word on the screen behind you (this can be an audience member you trust or a colleague or co-presenter). To make things more fun, put on a blindfold so that everyone knows you can't cheat. From there, ask 20 "yes or no" questions to guess what's displayed on the screen. Your group should respond "yes" or "no" to guide you to the correct answer. 

4. Scavenger Hunt Challenge

To get your audience out of their seats, a scavenger hunt challenge is one of the best interactive games for presentations. It'll immediately energize your audience , team, or students while giving them a fun way to learn.  

There are tons of in-person and virtual scavenger hunt ideas you can use to dive deeper into your topic or help everyone learn about one another. But if you want a ready-to-play game that you can instantly launch without having any tech skills, here's a fun one to play: 

• Use an email address and password to create a free account here: https://slideswith.com/ (a free account guarantees up to ten people can play at no charge). 
• Click the game and press "Copy and use this slide deck." 
• In the top right corner, click "Start Event."
• Ask listeners to join the game by using their mobile devices to scan the QR code. Players should continue using their mobile devices to submit answers to questions.
• Have everyone start hunting for items! 

This activity is a particularly fun game because it's a photo-hunt, show-and-tell challenge! That means your audience will not only get out of their seats to find items, but they'll also get to take pictures and share and discuss photos of what they find. This conversational element will help engage your group! 

5. Group Word Clouds

Whether you're speaking to team members, students, or conference-goers, this activity lets you ask questions and get your listeners' thoughts on specific topics. 

This game is the perfect way to start your presentation, especially if you're discussing something with a wide range of opinions or are unsure how much your listeners know about a certain subject. Group Word Clouds is also beneficial if you want to do a quick meeting pulse or know how your listeners feel going into your presentation—understanding their energy levels and mood can help you adjust (if necessary) to get maximum engagement and excitement.

To enjoy this activity, keep things simple by using a tool that already offers a ready-to-play Group Word Clouds game. Here's a popular one you can launch immediately: 

• Create a free account by entering an email and password here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the game and then copy it (the button to do so is right underneath the slide deck).
• Press "Start Event" in the top right corner. 
• Tell participants to play by scanning the QR code. 
• Create word clouds and have fun!

This interactive game only takes 5-10 minutes to play, so it's a fast, fun way to engage your audience and feel out the room. Players can use their mobile devices to answer questions. This activity is also free for up to 10 people and is easy to personalize.

6. The Get to Know You Game

This activity is one of the best presentation games if you have a small group that doesn't really know each other. The Get to Know You Game is a creative way to do introductions, and it's really simple.

Here's how to play the game: Before the event, ask group members to bring a favorite song or item to the presentation (you can do this by emailing them). When you're ready to play, ask each person to introduce themself, present their song or item, and explain why they picked it. For those sharing a song, have them play it on their phones before they explain why it's their favorite. 

7. Live Poll Questions 

When you have a large group, it's not easy to find ways to boost engagement—but poll questions are the solutions, especially when they're live and interactive. With this unique setup, large groups engage by answering questions and seeing their answers displayed in a fun way. 

Your job is to make sure you actually find a game that showcases responses uniquely to captivate your group. For a quick and great option, here's a popular icebreaker activity that promises to display responses using fun formats like word clouds, donut charts, live graphs, and per-player: 

• Create an account for free to access the game:  https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the slide deck and press the button to copy it. 
• Look in the top right corner of the deck and press "Start Event."
• Invite your group to play the game. They only need to use their mobile devices to scan the QR code. 
• Start polling your audience!

This activity is one of those fun presentation games everyone will want to enjoy, so invite all of your team members and students to participate. This game can accommodate up to 250 players and takes 5-10 minutes to complete. Tell your group to use their mobile devices to submit their responses. 

8. Assumptions 

This interactive game is a great way to break up your presentation to see who's paying attention and who can answer questions pertaining to your topic. 

• Ask your audience to stand up (for virtual presentations, make sure everyone's video is on). 
• Show true or false statements on the screen one by one. 
• Tell people to raise a hand if they think the statement is correct and sit down if they think it's incorrect.
• Continue until one person is left standing.
• Award the winner. 

This activity can be as short and challenging as you want. Also, if your presentation is long, you can play multiple rounds to break up your speaking time and test your audience throughout your discussion.  

9. Controversial Questions 

Want to see where your audience, students, or team lands on controversial topics? Then, energize your presentation with a fun, creative game called Controversial Questions. This activity has prompts that inspire lively debates, so it's a great way to get your group excited and chatty. 

However, to maintain a positive environment, make sure to find a tool that offers an office-friendly, classroom-friendly, and conference-friendly game. You don't want to sour the mood by creating uncomfortable division during your presentation. To make sure this game is fun and light-hearted, here's a popular one that's suitable for all audiences and ages: 

• Sign up for a free account by inputting an email address and password here:  https://slideswith.com/pricing  
• Click the game and press the button that says, "Copy and use this deck." 
• Press "Start Event" (the button is in the top right corner). 
• Have participants join the fun by asking them to scan the QR code with their mobile devices. 
• Get controversial and play! 

This interactive game for presentations asks fun (but appropriate) questions like:

• Does pineapple belong on pizza?
• Does the person flying in the middle seat get both armrests?
• Should the toilet roll go over or under? 

Players should use their mobile devices to submit answers. Up to ten people can play for free, and you can customize the game by updating the questions!

10. Word of the Day 

With this activity, you can keep your audience, team, or students engaged throughout your entire presentation. This  game requires listeners to be alert and recognize whenever you say the word of the day. 

Here's how to play: At the beginning of your presentation, tell your group the word of the day (it can also be a phrase if you'd prefer). Say that you'll weave the word into your presentation and that your audience must shout it out whenever you mention it. 

11. Mini Activity: Group Icebreaker

Whether you're doing an in-person or virtual presentation, you need to warm up your audience to get things started on a positive note. The best way to do that is with a quick icebreaker game. 

However, make sure your questions are fun, positive, and engaging. You can easily do this by finding a game that already has the best icebreaker questions included. Here's one that's ready to play (and requiring no tech skills to launch): 

• Input an email address and password to make a free account here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the deck and copy it (press "Copy and use this deck). 
• Click the button in the top right corner that says "Start Event."
• Invite participants to play by asking them to scan the QR code. 
• Break the ice to warm up your audience!

Your group should use their mobile devices to submit responses to poll questions. Also, this game accommodates up to 250 players, but only ten people can join for free.

12. Process of Elimination 

This activity is one of the best games for presentations because it's simple yet fun and great at helping listeners get to know each other. You can play it at the beginning of your presentation or in the middle to give your group a chance to stretch their legs. 

• Before your event, create a list of "yes or no" questions. 
• Once you're ready to play, tell your group to stand up (if you're doing a virtual presentation, make sure everyone's video is on). 
• Ask each question one by one. 
• Tell attendees to stand if their answer is "yes" and sit if their answer is "no." 

The questions can relate to your topic or be totally random. Also, if you'd prefer to thin out the number of people standing, you can take a creative twist and ask your questions by saying something like this: "Stay standing if (insert scenario)." When phrasing each question this way, the game will end with one person standing. To acknowledge the winner, you can give them a round of applause or award them a prize. 

13. Conference Opener Icebreaker 

If you're speaking at a big conference, you need an interactive game for presentations that can get everyone involved and ensure every voice is heard. To achieve these goals, you should create an icebreaker game that works for large groups . 

Using an easy, intuitive template is the best step to take. That way, you don't have to start from scratch or spend hours making your game. For a template that requires no code or tech-savviness to build on, here's the best option: 

• Sign up by making a free account here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click on the game. On the next page, click the button to copy and use the deck. 
• Customize the template using the instructions HERE . 
• During your presentation, press "Start Event" in the top right corner. 
• Ask the group to use their mobile devices to scan the QR code and join the fun. (Also, make sure participants use their mobile devices to submit answers.) 
• Play and engage your audience!  

This template has fun, interactive features built in to keep your large audience engaged. Those features include polls, word clouds, and ratings. Just make sure you sign up for a paid plan to accommodate the large number of people in your group—the free account only works for up to ten players. 

14. Two Truths and a Lie 

This classic game is a fun, energizing way to help your listeners get to know one another. It's perfect for small in-person or virtual groups and is an ideal activity for the beginning of your presentation. 

Here's how to play: Pick any topic (for the purposes of this article, the topic will be "movies"). In no particular order, say two movies you've really watched and one you haven't watched. Ask your audience to guess which statement is the lie. The winner picks the next topic and says two truths and a lie. 

Be Memorable With Presentation Games

Oftentimes, people forget presentations within a week or even days, and that's because the discussions are boring. But you don't work hard preparing a presentation for it to be forgotten. If you want your message to stick, all you have to do is make it enjoyable without being corny.  

If you want to be remembered and actually get people engaged, you need to make your presentation fun and enjoyable, without coming off as corny or desperate to please. Ivan Dimitrijevic, 10 Secrets of Making Every Presentation Fun, Engaging, and Enjoyable

Luckily, the interactive presentation games in this article are unique and exciting—they're far from corny. So, use them for your upcoming presentations to make your messages compelling and memorable. 

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Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever

When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.

Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.

For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.

And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.

Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.

Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.

The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.

The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.

So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.

The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.

You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.

Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?

Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.

Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).

When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.

Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.

A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!

Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.

How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?

Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .

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Presentation Skills   Icebreakers and Energisers

• Complete Courses
• Course Modules
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• Case Studies
• 1:1 Coaching
• Icebreakers
• Review Activities

Counts as 1 download.

Creatively Speaking

Aims: • To give participants an opportunity to practice speaking in front of others, with a particular emphasis on the skills needed to think quickly.

Time: This exercise will take about 15 minutes to run. In total, allowing for discussion, we recommend allowing 20 minutes for completion.

Group Size: This module can be used with groups of up to 20 participants.

You'll Need: • A set of the Creatively Speaking Cards (one card per participant). • Blu-tac. • A stopwatch.

Notes: The timings suggested are for a group of up to 10 participants. Larger groups will need more time.

Just Beat It - Misinterpretations in Communication

Aims: • To demonstrate the dangers of making assumptions about others' knowledge when communicating. • To recognise situations where the recipient might not interpret our message in the way we intended.

Time: This exercise will take about 10 minutes to complete. In total, allowing for discussion, we recommend allowing about 30 minutes for completion.

Group Size: This module can be used with groups of almost any size.

You'll Need: • Nothing other than the materials provided.

Making Messages Memorable - The Rule of Three

Aims: • To explain the Rule of Three. • To demonstrate the impact of repeating three-word slogans during presentations or training. • To show the value of audience participation.

Time: This exercise will take about 10 minutes to complete. In total, allowing for discussion, we recommend allowing 15 minutes for completion.

Group Size: This module can be used with groups of up to 15 participants.

You'll Need: • A set of buzzers will add to the competitive atmosphere but are not essential.

One Man Brand - How Images Add Impact to Our Message

Aims: • To help participants get to know each other. • To encourage participants to think about their personal ‘brand’. • To understand the power of images to convey messages.

Time: This exercise will take about 15 minutes to complete. In total, allowing for discussion, we recommend allowing about 20 minutes for completion.

Group Size: This module can be used with groups of any size.

You'll Need: • Blank name tent cards and pens for your participants.

Notes: If using this icebreaker in very large groups ask participants to work in small teams and introduce themselves to those team members rather than the whole group.

Patsy’s Pie Making Challenge - Making the Message Memorable

Aims: • To explore ways to make messages memorable. • To understand why making messages memorable is essential to delivering a successful training session/presentation.

Time: This exercise will take about 15 minutes to complete. In total, allowing for discussion, we recommend allowing 20 minutes for completion.

Group Size: Suitable for use with groups of up to 20 participants.

You'll Need: • A collection of objects that your participants use as part of creating the story of Patsy’s Pie Making Challenge. • A soft ball.

Presentation Skills - Icebreaker

Aims: • To encourage participants to start thinking about what makes an effective presentation. • To identify the things to avoid in presentations.

Time: This exercise will take about 10 minutes to complete. In total, allowing for discussion, we recommend allowing 20 minutes for completion.

Group Size: This module is suitable for use with groups of up to 15 participants.

You'll Need: • Flipchart paper and pens.

Seeing Things Differently - When Messages get Lost in Translation

Aims: • To introduce different styles of information gathering. • To help participants recognise that we all have a different viewpoint or perspective. • To understand the importance for trainers/presenters to be aware of how their messages may be perceived.

You'll Need: • A single apple (or other type of fruit) for your participants to see.

Setting Up - Train the Trainer

Aims: • To help participants understand why it is important to arrive early to set up the training room. • To understand the impact of a well laid out and inviting training room on delegates. • To identify the key equipment they need to bring with them when running a training session.

Time: This exercise will take about 20 minutes to complete. In total, allowing for discussion, we recommend allowing 30 minutes for completion.

Group Size: Suitable for use with groups of almost any size.

You'll Need: • Resources to create a stimulating learning environment. A recommended list of equipment is provided on Page 2 of the Trainer Notes.

The Paper Folding Exercise - Visual Communication

Aims: • To show the importance of giving information visually as well as orally. • To demonstrate how different people will interpret the same information differently.

Time: This exercise will take about 5 minutes to complete. In total, allowing for discussion, we recommend allowing 10 minutes to complete this module.

Group Size: This module is suitable for use with groups of almost any size.

You'll Need: • Two sheets of A4 paper for each participant (and for you too).

Notes: We’d like to thank Mick Duncan of CWT-Chamber Training for contributing the idea for this exercise.

True or False? - Persuasive Communication

Aims: • To identify techniques that can make our spoken communication more influential.

Group Size: This module can be used with groups of up to 10 participants.

Notes: This exercise can be run with more participants, but additional time will be needed.

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Executive Presentation Training Programs

Master the Art of Exceptional Presentations

For decades, Speakeasy has been at the forefront of transforming leaders into captivating speakers. Our executive presentation training programs are meticulously crafted to give professionals the tools they need to create compelling narratives, design powerful presentations, and deliver them with unmatched conviction.

With a focus on storytelling techniques, impactful slide design, executive presence , and assertive delivery, we bring out the unique speaker in every leader. We go beyond just technique – we help you find your voice, and ensure it resonates in any boardroom.

Increased confidence among presenters when using a well-designed slide - TechSmith

More persuasiveness for presentations paired with visual aids over those without. - Management Information Systems Research Center

of employed Americans believe presentation skills are critical for workplace success. - Prezi

Flexible Program Options for Any Schedule

At Speakeasy, we understand that life is filled with diverse commitments and schedules can vary greatly. That’s why we offer a comprehensive array of programs to accommodate every professional’s unique circumstances. Whether you prefer the traditional in-person classroom experience, the convenience of live online virtual sessions, or the autonomy of self-administered digital courses, we have the perfect fit for you.

What to Expect From Executive Presentation Training

A commanding presentation can be the defining factor in clinching deals, influencing stakeholders, and propelling your career forward. Here are five compelling reasons to invest in executive presentation training:

• Enhanced Presentation Skills: Our training polishes your ability to design striking slides, narrate compelling stories, and deliver with a clear, confident voice.
• Masterful Storytelling: Learn the techniques to weave stories that engage, captivate, and drive your message home.
• Robust Audience Engagement: Grasp how to read and respond to your audience, ensuring active participation and lasting impact.
• Strategic Slide Design: Make every slide count. Learn the art of creating visual aids that complement and amplify your message.
• Preparedness for Varied Scenarios : Be it boardrooms, webinars, or international

Let Us Match You With An Executive Presentation Training Program

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Discover the Speakeasy Difference

At Speakeasy Inc., we’re dedicated to helping high-potential professionals rediscover the art of conversation, create lasting connections, and elevate their personal communication style. In today’s fast-paced digital world, authentic, face-to-face communication is more important than ever before. Here’s why you should choose Speakeasy:

Expertise in Communication

Our team of experienced coaches are passionate about communication and its power to transform lives. We bring together the latest research and time-tested techniques to help you become a confident, engaging, and influential communicator in any situation.

Personalized Approach

We understand that each individual has unique strengths and areas for improvement when it comes to communication. That’s why our programs are tailored to your specific needs, ensuring that you receive the guidance and support necessary to achieve your personal and professional goals.

Interactive Learning Environment

We believe that the best way to learn is by doing. Our immersive workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions provide ample opportunities for you to practice and refine your communication skills in a supportive, feedback-driven environment.

FAQs About Speakeasy Executive Presentation Training Programs

What exactly is covered in the executive presentation training, how does speakeasy's approach stand out from the crowd, who is the ideal candidate for this training, what key skills can i expect to develop through this training, how is the training delivered are there virtual options available, start speaking the language of success today.

Ready to transform your organization’s communication skills and drive business success? Connect with us below and let our expert coaches help you chart the path to exceptional communication with our tailored executive coaching programs.

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You Need New Skills to Make a Career Pivot. Here’s How to Find the Time to Build Them.

• Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Even when you have a full-time job.

With any significant change in your career comes the need for new skills. But that’s even more true when you want a radical career change. In these situations, it’s going to take more than listening to a few webinars to build the knowledge you need get to where you want to go. You must set aside a significant amount of time for self-directed learning, formal training, or even a second job to gain the skills for the big leap.

There are a few strategies to be effective for consistently making time for acquiring new career skills. First, accept the time commitment; you may need to scale back on nonessential activities. Second, research what’s required for your new field, whether it’s formal licensing, independent working, or side hustle work. Third, layer in learning onto activities you’re already doing throughout your day. Fourth, designate specific times you’ll dedicate to skill-building — and stick to it. Finally, modify your work schedule, if needed.

Sometimes you don’t just want a new job, you want a radical career change . Perhaps you’ve been in finance and now want to be an acupuncturist, you’re a marketer eager to lead a startup, or you’re an educator looking to shift into catering and event planning.

• ES Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time management coach and the founder of Real Life E Time Coaching & Speaking . She is the author of How to Invest Your Time Like Money and Divine Time Management . Find out more at RealLifeE.com .

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More From Forbes

3 high-income skills you can learn for free in 2024.

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The more you upskill, the more specialized you become, and the more you increase your income and ... [+] credibility

Skills trends are constantly evolving. What was in demand several years ago is no longer relevant, or has lost its sense of urgency, today. To thrive in your career at a consistent level, you need to be prepared to adapt...constantly.

Since change can occur almost without warning (look at the AI boom as an example), you should always upskill yourself at least once a year, so you're always current and on top of your career and job, instead of allowing your job or employer to be in control of you.

High-income skills afford just that. They provide you with a cushion which allows you to be flexible and navigate your way through job and business opportunities fairly easily. Since they are in demand, you will find that you will be a more attractive candidate to hiring managers and recruiters, and you will have more leverage as a freelancer.

However, merely possessing high-income skills is not magic sauce. Just like any skill, they need to be honed and developed, but unlike any other skill, the frequency with which they need to be developed is more than you might expect.

Since they occur in industries and markets that tend to shift rapidly (such as technology or marketing), you should try to always stay abreast of trends and changes that might impact your work in some way, in addition to your annual upskilling.

NSA Warns iPhone And Android Users To Turn It Off And On Again

‘godzilla minus one’ is coming to netflix this weekend, but there’s a catch, sudden u s dollar collapse fear predicted to trigger a 15 7 trillion etf bitcoin price gold flip as countries go dual currency.

For example, if you worked in marketing before the AI boom took off, you would have noticed how, within a matter of months, the entire industry and market you serve has changed. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, new AI-powered apps and tools popped up which generate designs, write copy, and can do a host of other things. If you're not careful to upskill so that you can adapt your skills to these changes, you could find yourself obsolete.

The more you upskill, the more of a specialist you become, and the more you increase your credibility and quality of work.

High-income skills pay much because they are either rare, or they provide strong tangible value to the businesses they serve. They solve or tackle a problem that is at the root of the company being able to make more money. Becoming specialized in your high-income skill puts you in a fortunate position to be able to generate unique and creative solutions to problems, and enables you to command higher pay rates and salaries.

If you're wondering where to begin, here are a few you might want to consider learning this year (and remember, you can learn these through bootcamps and online learning platforms, both free and budget-friendly options available):

High-income skills are in-demand skills that tackle a business or industry-centric problem

1. Audio and Video Editing

Who doesn't need an audio or video editor? Every day, millions of production content from videos to podcasts are released for marketing, education, and entertainment, by start-ups and well-established businesses all over the world. And for them to look polished, crisp, and seamlessly professional, they underwent a makeover by video and audio editors. This explains why A/V editors are in high demand, experiencing a 7% surge in job growth, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics .

Where You Can Learn It For Free:

• Udemy (they have a selection of free courses here )
• WsCube Tech
• Great Learning
• Reed (in the UK)

2. Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a rapidly evolving and expanding industry, that is projected to grow by 6.87% by the year 2028. Professionals with digital marketing skills are in high demand, with the BLS predicting 6% growth on average in the U.S. Everything is carried out online, from business, to shopping, to entertainment and work, so it makes perfect sense why this is a thriving skill to have.

You can expect to make as much as $124,000 as a digital marketing manager.

• HubSpot Academy

3. Google Analytics

According to Salary.com, the average you can expect to make with Google Analytics as a skill is $125,593 a year. This skill can be utilized in a variety of roles, from SEO manager, to SEO specialist, and social media analyst.

• Google Career Certificates (via Coursera)
• Google Analytics Academy

You can attend free bootcamps and online courses to learn valuable career skills

Have any of these skills piqued your interest? If so, then so long as you have a good internet connection and a laptop, there are literally no excuses to not get started building these high-income skills today.

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• Open access
• Published: 31 May 2024

Freely available, online videos to support neurological physiotherapists and students in task-specific training skill acquisition: a scoping review

• Nicola C.M. Towersey 1 ,
• Kelvin Sasse 1 ,
• Verna Stavric 1 ,
• Gemma Alder 1 &
• Nicola L. Saywell 1  

BMC Medical Education volume  24 , Article number:  603 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

20 Accesses

Metrics details

Videos to support learning of clinical skills are effective; however, little is known about the scope and educational quality of the content of freely available online videos demonstrating task-specific training (TST). This review aimed to determine the extent, characteristics of freely available online videos, and whether the content is suitable to guide skill acquisition of task-specific training for neurological physiotherapists and students.

A scoping review was conducted. Google video and YouTube were searched in December 2022. Videos that met our eligibility criteria and were explicitly designed for (TST) skill acquisition were included in the report.

Ten videos met the inclusion criteria and were difficult to find amongst the range of videos available. Most were presented by physiotherapists or occupational therapists, originated from the USA, featured stroke as the condition of the person being treated, and involved a range of interventions (upper limb, constraint induced movement therapy, balance, bicycling). Most videos were created by universities or private practices and only two used people with a neurological condition as the participant. When the content of videos and their presentation (instruction and/or demonstration), was assessed against each key component of TST (practice structure, specificity, repetition, modification, progression, feedback), five of the videos were rated very suitable and five moderately suitable to guide skill acquisition. Most videos failed to demonstrate and provide instruction on each key component of TST and were missing at least one component, with feedback most frequently omitted.

Conclusions

There are many freely available online videos which could be described as demonstrating TST; very few are suitable to guide skill acquisition. The development of a standardised and validated assessment tool, that is easy to use and assesses the content of TST videos is required to support learners to critically evaluate the educational quality of video content. Guidelines based on sound teaching theory and practice are required to assist creators of online videos to provide suitable resources that meet the learning needs of neurological physiotherapists and students.

Peer Review reports

Task-specific training (TST) is a common rehabilitation strategy used and taught by a wide range of allied health professionals including physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech language therapists and academic institutions. It involves goal directed practice, repetition, progressive challenge, and positive reinforcement to optimise motor learning [ 1 ]. TST has been shown to be effective at inducing cortical reorganization, decreasing disability and improving functional outcomes for people with neurological conditions such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury and cerebral palsy [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. TST is referred to in the literature by a range of terms, including ‘repetitive functional task practice’, ‘repetitive task practice’ [ 3 ], ‘task-orientated therapy’ [ 1 ] and ‘task-related training’ [ 9 ]. For this review, it will be referred to as task-specific training (TST).

The widespread use of the internet has extended traditional education by enabling users to search for, watch, and share a large variety of freely available online videos to supplement their learning. The use of online videos has grown in popularity over the past decade with ease of access and low cost making them one of the most frequently used self-learning resources for health professionals and students [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Videos have been shown to significantly improve learning outcomes [ 13 ], however, mechanisms for controlling the content within online videos are limited. The results of internet searches are determined by an algorithm using likes, views, and popularity rather than an assessment of whether the content is suitable to guide skill acquisition [ 14 , 15 ] and previous studies have found online videos often omit key learning points and are of variable educational quality [ 14 , 16 , 17 , 18 ].

Freely available online videos may be useful to guide skill acquisition and reinforce learning for neurological physiotherapists and students. However, there is a need to evaluate the quality of the content of these videos to ensure that they are based on best practice. To our knowledge, there has been no research exploring the extent, characteristics, and educational quality of freely available online videos for the skill acquisition of TST. In this scoping review, our aim was to determine the extent, characteristics, and whether the content of freely available online videos is suitable to guide skill acquisition of TST.

A scoping review was conducted and carried out according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and meta-analysis for scoping reviews (PRISMA- ScR), adapting the five stages suggested by Arksey and O’Malley and the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) for evidence synthesis [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]. An a priori protocol was developed to guide this review prior to undertaking it.

Identifying relevant videos

A detailed search plan outlining the search terms, sources, eligibility criteria, and delimiters was established based on suggestions by Godin et al. [ 24 ], and in consultation with a senior librarian. The JBI; Population, Concept and Context (PCC) elements were used to formulate a combination of search terms to maintain transparency, ensure organised search methods, and reduce the risk of bias [ 23 ]. The population included neurological physiotherapy, the condition of interest or intended audience, were left open. The concept was the demonstration and instruction of TST that a novice could use for skill acquisition. The context included rehabilitation. Refer to Table  1 for the initial search terms.

The inclusion criteria included videos with the stated purpose to teach TST and included an element of physical skill demonstration and instruction. Videos had to be freely available online via a device with internet capabilities, in English, without subscription requirements to access, and within the scope of neurological physiotherapy practice [ 25 ]. There were no restrictions on the rehabilitation setting, date of upload, duration of video, or country of origin (Table  2 ).

A pilot search was carried out as suggested by the JBI guidelines [ 23 ] and following discussion between authors; search terms and the eligibility criteria were refined to reduce ambiguity regarding the definition of TST, and the level of instruction required for the video. For this review, TST included practice of meaningful tasks. Tasks were considered part-task if they were linked to a whole-task reconstruction; virtual reality involving the upper limb was considered part-task as it lacked the manipulation of physical objects and were included. Instructions needed to be provided during TST with sufficient detail to allow a novice to apply it. These could have been in the form of subtitles, voice-over, or directly to the camera.

Google video search engine and YouTube were searched due to their high use, free access and relevancy ordered results [ 26 ]. YouTube has 2,562 million active users, while Google is the dominant global search engine, with an 84.08% worldwide market share [ 26 , 27 ]. Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and being logged into Google accounts have been found to contribute 11.7% to variation in results [ 19 ]. Therefore, searches were performed with personalised search off, in Google Chrome incognito browser, with relevancy sorting on, to improve the consistency of the search results. To reduce the effect of algorithmic searching, all preliminary searches were conducted on the Firefox search engine, with official searches performed in Google incognito, from the same IP address, on a single day in Auckland, New Zealand.

The searches were conducted from Auckland, New Zealand (NZ), on the 16th of December 2022 by KS. The complete search strategy used in Google video search engine and YouTube is in Appendix 1 . Ten searches were conducted on each search engine with the first 10 pages of each search (representing 100 results) screened for relevance. This number was chosen to capture a wide range of the most relevant results, while still being feasible to screen [ 24 ]. Potentially relevant videos were bookmarked in a folder named after the search engine and in a subfolder with the search terms used [ 24 ]. If a video was embedded within a website, it was followed to its source and then bookmarked, to reduce duplicates.

Finally, a series of YouTube channels were hand searched to identify missed videos. Consistency was maintained by the same reviewer (KS), using the same IP address, applying the same method as the primary searches, on a single day (22nd December 2022).

Video selection

Videos were selected using the following process. Duplicates were removed and KS screened all the videos against the eligibility criteria. A second reviewer (NT) independently cross-checked 20% of videos, to check for consistency and appropriate application of the selection criteria. Any discrepancies were referred to NLS to be resolved by consensus.

Data charting

Data charting was used to synthesise and interpret the data [ 21 ]. KS and NT independently viewed the selected videos and summarised the data in a Microsoft (MS) Excel spreadsheet, based on the JBI guidelines [ 22 , 23 ]. The data extracted for this review were the video title, upload date, duration, number of views, likes/ dislikes, the presenter(s), the participant(s), source, country of origin, intervention, the key components of TST (practice structure, specificity, repetition, modification, progression, feedback) and how they were presented (instruction and/or demonstration).

Summarising and reporting results

To address the extent and characteristics of the selected videos, we identified trends using data analysing tools and pivot tables in MS Excel and presented the data descriptively.

Scoring of videos

The suitability of videos to guide skill acquisition was assessed using a pragmatic scoring system developed for this scoping review. Although previous studies have developed scoring systems to evaluate online material [ 28 , 29 ], none were appropriate for the purpose of this study. The scoring system was developed after reviewing pertinent literature [ 30 , 31 ] and seeking expert opinion. It evaluated video content against the agreed key components of TST for motor learning (practice structure, specificity, repetition, modification, progression, feedback) and whether demonstration and instruction were provided on each component. Videos were scored from 0 to 2 for each of the six TST components for a total possible score of 12. Components scored 2 if both demonstration and instruction were provided, 1 if they provided either one, or 0 for a missing component. Those videos scoring 0–4 were considered unsuitable, 5–8 moderately suitable and 9–12 very suitable to guide skill acquisition. Data analysis was conducted by KS, and NT and NSW, physiotherapists with extensive clinical and teaching experience in neurological physiotherapy.

Identification and selection of material

Google Video and YouTube searches resulted in 2,000 videos. After initial screening of titles and thumbnails, 179 were bookmarked as potentially relevant. Hand-searching YouTube channels identified an additional 12 videos, resulting in 191 videos being manually inputted into a MS Excel spreadsheet.

All 191 videos were screened against the eligibility criteria by KS, with NT cross-checking 20% between January 11th, 2023, and January 13th, 2023. The agreement between reviewers was high (95%), exceeding the PRISMA-ScR guidelines requirements of 70–80% agreement [ 22 ]. A third reviewer (NLS) adjudicated any discrepancies (7%) with reference to the definition of TST and the inclusion criteria. Of the181 rejected videos, seven were duplicates, four were unavailable in English, 74 did not meet our definition for TST, 47 did not explicitly state that the purpose of the video was to teach TST, six had no skills demonstration in the video and 43 did not have sufficient instruction to allow a novice to repeat. Only ten videos fulfilled the eligibility criteria (0.4% of videos identified, 5% of videos bookmarked) and were included in the review, as represented in Fig.  1 .

PRISMA flow diagram

Description of included videos

Videos had been uploaded to the platform a median of 30 months prior to our search date (range: 7–79 months). The median length of videos was 5.32 min (range: 3–20 min), with a median of 1386.5 views (range: 181–21950). The median number of likes for a video was 11.5 (range: 2–581), and the number of dislikes for all videos was 0. Occupational therapists were presenters in five of the videos, physiotherapists in two and the professional status of the presenter was unidentified in three videos. The focus of most videos was stroke rehabilitation (9) with cerebral palsy rehabilitation presented in one. Only two of the videos included people with the selected condition as participants. Seven videos were uploaded by universities, two by clinicians in a private practice and one by an unidentified contributor. Most videos were created in the United States of America (USA) with one each from Australia and India. A range of interventions were presented including upper limb training (7), bicycle training (1), constraint induced movement therapy (1), and balance training (1). A summary of the characteristics of the included videos is provided in Table  3 .

Only 10 videos explicitly stated that the purpose of the video was to teach TST and therefore had their content assessed for its suitability to guide skill acquisition. The videos were assessed in relation to the key components of TST (practice structure, specificity, repetition, modification, progression, feedback) and how they were presented (with instruction and/or demonstration). All videos included demonstration and instruction about manipulating practice structure to promote motor learning. Specificity was demonstrated in all videos using physical objects relevant to the task, while only three videos provided instruction in addition to demonstration. Nine of the videos provided demonstration and instruction on the use of repetition, with one video providing instruction only. Five videos provided demonstration and instruction on how to modify the activity, three provided instructions only and two failed to provide modification. Seven videos provided demonstration and instruction on progressions, with two videos providing instruction only, and one failing to demonstrate or provide instruction on any form of progression. None of the videos demonstrated the provision of feedback to promote motor learning and only one video provided instruction on how to provide feedback. The scores for videos ranged from 6 to 9/12 with five videos being considered moderately suitable and five very suitable to guide skill acquisition. Only one video included all the key components of TST and none of the videos provided demonstration and instruction on each component. A breakdown of the TST components and suitability scores is detailed in Table  4 .

This review was the first, to our knowledge, to examine the extent, characteristics, and suitability of freely available online videos that guide skill acquisition of TST for neurological physiotherapists and students. Despite a wide and comprehensive search strategy, only ten videos met the eligibility criteria. This suggests that despite over 2000 videos being available, there is a lack of suitable material to address the skill acquisition of TST for neurological physiotherapists and students.

This review highlights a fundamental problem when searching for educational videos online. Namely, it is difficult to find the few suitable videos amongst the array of videos of variable educational quality. It is unlikely that everyday internet users would be prepared to screen so many videos to find those ones related to TST which provide adequate information for training skill acquisition. Several authors have suggested mechanisms to improve the identification of educational videos. The use of a domain based ranking system, that ranks videos from trusted sources (universities or health organisations) higher up in the search results may make identification easier [ 32 ]. The use of inbuilt educational filters, with a strict criterion for labelling content as educational, might also improve identification [ 32 , 33 ]. In addition, organisations with an interest in educating physiotherapists could identify and disseminate existing online videos that are suitable to guide skill acquisition.

During our review of the characteristics of videos, we noticed that physiotherapists and occupational therapists created the majority of TST videos using a range of interventions, mainly featuring the upper limb, and the condition of stroke. None of the videos demonstrated the use of TST during walking, which would be particularly useful for neurological physiotherapists and students, as this is often their focus in rehabilitation. People with a neurological condition used as participants were found in only two of the videos. One of the strengths of video is that it can depict authentic, real-world experiences of people with neurological conditions during rehabilitation sessions. The lack of involvement of people who have real impairments means subtleties in using TST skills for people with a neurological condition will be overlooked. Time constraints and ethical considerations may have been factors in the reduced involvement of people with neurological conditions, however, overcoming these issues to include people with real impairments would enhance the learning experience.

The suitability of videos to guide skill acquisition was assessed in relation to the key components of TST and how they were presented (with demonstration and/ or instructions) and were found to be variable. None of the videos provided demonstration and instruction for each component of TST, and only one video included all the key components. The use of instruction and demonstration has been found to optimise skill acquisition [ 34 , 35 ], therefore, its omission would impact users’ understanding of the components and their ability to perform TST effectively. Feedback was omitted in all but one video, which was concerning as feedback is essential for motor learning and an integral component of TST [ 36 , 37 ]. These results support the findings of previous studies, which found videos created for health professions to be of low educational quality and missing key information. Videos on surface anatomy omitted key aspects related to upper and lower limb anatomy, such as vessels, nerves, cubital fossa, wrists, and hands [ 28 ]. Videos by physiotherapists on shoulder joint mobilisation techniques failed to describe or illustrate vital aspects of techniques such as patient and therapist position, force of application and dosage [ 17 ]. Online videos have also frequently been found to contain inaccurate, contradictory, or misleading information [ 28 , 32 , 38 , 39 ] with no reference to sources or evidence; this is in part due to the lack of peer review processes to monitor quality [ 38 ]. This highlights, that users need to critically evaluate the content of videos, and that improvements need to be made before they can be recommended as a valuable learning resource.

It has been suggested that the quality of video content for education can be filtered by evaluating variables such as the uploading source, video duration or the subjective estimation by viewers, expressed as likes/dislikes. The uploading source in particular has been found to be valuable for discriminating and predicting the quality of video content. Those uploaded by professionals, professional associations, and credible health care organisations are often of higher quality and are more suitable for education than those uploaded by individuals [ 38 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ]. In contrast, video duration and the likes/dislikes ratio were found to be unreliable as a predictor of quality [ 14 , 40 , 42 , 43 ]. These results are consistent with the findings from our study which found that the videos sourced from educational institutions or private clinics were more suitable to guide skill acquisition. Neurological physiotherapists and students should consider the source of online videos to assist them to assess the educational quality of video resources.

This review highlights the importance of evaluating the content within freely available online videos. There are several tools available for assessing the quality, flow, and user friendliness of websites [ 44 ], evaluating health information on the internet, and the credibility of websites [ 45 ]. Although these tools are somewhat useful, they do not assess the content of the video in sufficient detail to help users determine if they are a suitable learning resource to guide skill acquisition. The development of content specific quality tools is required to assist learners to critically evaluate the quality of video content. In addition, guidelines based on sound teaching theory and practice are required to assist creators of online videos to create high quality resources that meet the needs of neurological physiotherapists and students.

This study was the first, to our knowledge, to examine the extent, characteristics of freely available online videos, and whether the content is suitable to guide skill acquisition of TST for neurological physiotherapists and students. Previous studies [ 38 , 39 ] have evaluated the quality of online videos using various gross assessment tools [ 44 , 45 , 46 ]. However, these tools do not evaluate the video content; our study assessed whether the content of freely available online TST videos is suitable to guide skill acquisition. This review has identified difficulties neurological physiotherapists and students face in sourcing relevant videos of good educational quality without subscriptions to specialised domains. Attempts were made throughout the searches to reduce the impacts of search engine personalisation; and consistent reporting of the search strategy and methods, maintained rigour and transparency.

Limitations

The criteria used to evaluate the suitability of the video content for skill acquisition was developed by the authors, was subjective, and may have been affected by observer bias. To reduce the risk of bias, two authors (KS, NT) assessed each video independently. The use of American spelling was used as it resulted in the most search results however, it may have influenced the identification of videos and resulted in the higher prevalence of videos from the USA. Forty-seven videos were excluded as they did not fit our inclusion criteria of explicitly stating that the purpose was the teach. It is acknowledged that some of these videos may have been videos teaching TST.

There are very few suitable online videos that are freely available and specifically designed to support neurological physiotherapists and students in the skill acquisition of TST. The development of a standardised and validated assessment tool, that is easy to use and assesses the content of TST videos is required to support learners to critically evaluate the educational quality of video content. Guidelines based on sound teaching theory and practice are required to assist creators of online videos to provide suitable resources that meet the needs of neurological physiotherapists and students.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

• Task-specific training

United States of America

Constraint Induced Movement Therapy

Joanna Briggs Institute

New Zealand

Internet protocol

Population, Concept, Context

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Acknowledgements

Melanie Grant (Senior librarian) contributed to the design of the search strategy.

Kelvin Sasse was funded as part of a student summer scholarship funded by the School of Clinical Sciences, Physiotherapy Department, Auckland University of Technology. Auckland, New Zealand.

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NT, NLS, GA and VS conceived and designed the study and contributed to manuscript preparation. KS collected, collated, analysed the data, and contributed to the writing of the manuscript. NT, NLS, GA and VS also contributed to data collection and analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Towersey, N., Sasse, K., Stavric, V. et al. Freely available, online videos to support neurological physiotherapists and students in task-specific training skill acquisition: a scoping review. BMC Med Educ 24 , 603 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05545-5

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