Creating effective business presentations/Session 1 Announcement

Dear CCOM102 participants,

Welcome to Session 1. These instructions are for the Developing Business Presentations and the to Inform learning pathways. If you have just joined us, you will find important introductory information at the Start here page of the course.

By now you should:
 * be familiar with the layout of the CCOM 102 course site,
 * have established your learning journal (and registered the URL if using a blog) and tested a microblog post using the WEnotes course feed. We harvest everyone's CCOM 102 contributions in this course feed.
 * have completed the optional new OERu participant survey.

Work through the learning materials and activities of the first Developing Business Presentations learning pathway which looks at how to plan, research, and organize your materials to create effective oral presentations for diverse audiences. Developing strong preparation skills and a positive perception of public speaking are key strategies that will help you build your confidence and public speaking abilities.

Also, work through the Presentations to Inform learning pathway which will teach you how to motivate audiences by framing your topics in relevant, useful, and interesting ways. Understanding your audience, including their diverse knowledge, learning preferences, interests, and cultural contexts, is crucial to developing effective, ethical informative speeches. You will also have an opportunity to apply your learning by creating an informative audience-centred presentation.

Don't forget to post your questions using WENotes or the general course forum. Remember to include the url of the page where you are having problems.

Let's leverage the power of peer-learning by helping each other. If you know the answer to a question, help a friend by responding. Bear in mind that as an international course, your facilitators may be in a different time zone and could be sleeping when you post a question.

Most of all have fun!

Your facilitators