Running the risk Tweet
Sometimes I may lament the lack of drive or learning techniques of some of my students. Those who do the bare minimum to get by, know how to use the ingrained “Hochschule” education system and really do not appreciate the learning curve. In both the academic and the business world you may come across individuals averse to learning.
This last two weeks I have been pleasantly surprised by the way my students have approached the tasks I gave them. Being misinformed about the level of the students and the lack of a common background made me take an approach to challenge them, and myself. They did not fall short of my expectations.
I challenged myself by revamping some of my approaches to training, using tired and tested techniques in new ways or trying fresh ones. More on this in a later blog, for now lets concentrate on them.
The core to the challenge was me throwing down the gauntlet early on with one task. They were NOT to die by powerpoint, but bring fresh blood to the game with an Elevator Pitch, Zoom presentation and Pecha Kucha. Most coped with this well and moved away from the ingrained techniques of the norm.
As I myself am new to the presentation techniques above I learned a lot from them during my observations. Here is what came up, some may just be a re-emphasis of what is already known but to see it in practice had a larger impact for me:
An open question is a good teaser with non native speakers who may not find it natural to bounce ideas around.
We become reliant on the remote control, but physically going to the laptop allows for pauses, and time for the audience to digest, absorb the information.
Culturally you must tread carefully with over familiarity with a known audience.A tried and tested technique in your own culture may not work in another regardless of how much you know them.
Elevator Pitches with no “bangs” but very clear messages and language usage are just as effective.
Humour directed at oneself encourages a sense of audience well being and mutual respect.
Give students a choice of methods rather than a single one produces diversity, and conviction.
Do not exert too much pressure on presenters but give them space to pursue ideas within a set remit.
Moving from a fixed spot can prevent the bodies urge to sway or rock back and forth on the spot.
A sense of integrity or invested worth comes from allowing choice of topic from a quite general theme.
And as someone once said “all artists, writers and poets are thieves” I am gonna have fun stealing the guys ideas for my prezi at the end of March.
On a tangental note, this blog was written in the same time frame as the above students had to include learned words from their course in a comment essay on modern trends in risk, team , project or inter-departmental management or relate it to the theme to their own experience of being managed in this context.
I would be intrigued to see if they can find the words and have retained them?
What have you learned from your observation of others or your students?
How have you found putting into practice the above presentation styles?
Tags: British English, business skills, Elevator Pitch, ESL, Germany, language, management, Pecha Kucha, presentations, prezi, zoom presentation
