GetAhead In Presentations & Public Speaking

Incidentally, according to the illustrations, the contents of a “cue card” can range from a few sentences to a mini script.

The information on the weighting given to body language, tone of voice, etc. is quite unlike any statistics I've ever seen, and looks pretty weird. Unfortunately, unlike a book, the CD doesn't include a bibliography or references, so there's no way of checking where this, or any other, information comes from, or how reliable it is.

Although the CD does indeed deliver 4 hours or more of content, its usefulness is very limited, as the writer of the blurb on the box insert clearly recognises:

"This 4 hour course is equivalent in scope to a two-day instructor led course."

Notice the catch? It is allegedly "equivalent *in scope*". Not equivalent in detail, not equivalent in interactivity, and certainly not equivalent in content. It simply claims to cover the same number of topics!

Even for someone who knows nothing about presentation skills, this is not a useful product, although it may appear so, particularly for people who learn best by hearing the information.

Although it is described as "interactive multimedia", the visual element is no more detailed or relevant than any well-illustrated book on the subject. The use of graphics, for example, is restricted to different ways of laying out a bar chart, a warning not to "gild the lily", and a line chart. In one of the quizzes we are asked to select which of six faces indicate sadness, false happiness and distrust. The faces in question are not real faces but highly simplistic diagrams with circular heads, lines for mouth and eyebrows, etc.
Worse still, but indicative of the overall quality of the product, if you drag and drop the wrong face you cannot retry (except by going back, coming forward and starting again), and when you've made three selections the programme doesn't show you the right answers, it simply leaves blank boxes where you got the answer wrong.

The rest of the time, much of the visual element of the material is simply computer generated "toy town" figures which add little or nothing to the information provided by the text and audio.

Perhaps my biggest reservation concerns the section on overcoming nerves. Not only does the course repeatedly harp on the likelihood of having nerves, it actually details a series of negative symptoms just in case we aren't fully aware of what we should be experiencing. In the end it effectively tells us THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO *YOU*!

But what about the "interactive" element? you might ask. You can't get that in a book, can you?
Well, you can get as much interactivity from a book as you'll find in this course, since it consists of nothing more than answering quizzes and questions "on-screen" (Wow!) and, VERY occasionally, being able to click on a picture or button to get additional information - which could just as easily have been part of the main action.

Overall I'd guess that this material was prepared by someone with very little practical experience of delivering a presentation and very little knowledge of the relevant psychology. As illustrated by the conclusion of the final self-test.

On completing this item I got the message "Your score [100%] indicates that you have a thorough understanding of the material..."

Thorough understanding nothing!
There were numerous items I didn't agree with and didn't "understand", except as errors.
However, since the final self-test is simply an exact repeat of the various end of session questions, simply *memorising* the answers was enough to give me a perfect final score.

Sorry, folks, this is CBT at its most inane.
So whilst the technophiles will probably love this CD (whilst quietly wondering why their presentation skills haven't improved), more discerning customers will realise that there are still plenty of old-fashioned books (shock, horror!), such as "Powerspeak", by Dorothy Leeds, and "Successful Presentation Skills", by Andrew Bradbury, which provide FAR better value for money.