It has been a couple of weeks of pushing myself beyond my normal comfort zone! Training on facilitating then my first time presenting at a conference. No wonder I feel a bit drained. But on the flipside it’s been great to have some time to reflect on the benefits of taking timeto  develop skills that are a bit rusty after the pandemic and realising they are not as bad as I thought they could have been.

First up training! Well I thought it would be all jazz hands and to some extent it was. But, it was also great to have time to learn from an experienced facilitator and trainer (and actor/director). Never a fan of punctuation – in speech or writing, it’s like my brain and tongue go too fast for these marks on a page. It was incredibly useful to have someone say STOP. Pause, use a short sentence. Slow down, give your audience time to absorb what you are saying. It is important.

We can all be complacent and think yeah it’s fine, I can talk to this group. They don’t really care. I just need to rush through it. However, we are an authority on what we are presenting/facilitating on.  We do need to stand out ground, build a rapport, vary our energy and gestures and be congruent. Then they will care. 

Co-presenting with my colleague at the OER23 Conference on Wednesday gave me the chance to put into practice what I had learnt. I confess, I did not walk round the hotel room the night before with my arms held high declaring ‘I’m in charge’. But I did practice. I stood firm and engaged my audience with eye contact – oh yes this info is just for you. I hopefully varied my tone and energy to convey how the University of Edinburgh has adapted their workflows to build open education into the MOOC Production Process over the last 10 years. The message must have hit home as a few participants approached us afterwards for more information. It felt rather good to know, oh you did enjoy that.

Reflecting back, I am so glad the training was before my conference as I really felt it made me a better presenter. While it can feel like training is something we don’t need or don’t have the time for, it is a useful opportunity to take a step back from the daily routine of work, emails, teams and invest in ourselves. Even if is just to reassure yourself I am doing this well, sometimes we all need that reassurance and if nothing else it is great to connect with colleagues and meet new people. 

You Reap What you Sow Presentation CC-BY Lorna M Campbell

Don’t rest on your laurels – even if it is comfortable / Fiona Buckland by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0