Presentation (PowerPoint) Work

My presentation skills have been of great importance in my first semester of the degree, having used them twice in the last few months for both the 'BC1001 Roles and Processes' and the 'BC1003 audio project' modules. I have always been quite accustomed with making PowerPoint's and have become quite used to presenting them, having done quite a lot of them during my BTEC course over the last few years and even doing a good few back in my school days. That said however whilst I believe my presentation skills have always been quite good, it's when I present them that I let myself down. Having the ability to create something nice to look at yet not being able to talk about it obviously comes with it's problems, something of which I have definitely realised during this semester.


In BC1001 roles and processes we had to do a PowerPoint of an aspect of media that we had learnt about on the course so far. This was to be part of a portfolio of research that would account to a final grade in this module and would be presented in front of the class (which in our case wasn't so daunting considering there are only four of us). I wasn't so worried about this presentation considering I'd done a few like it previously in my time as a student, and likewise wasn't too uncomfortable presenting it in front of our small class who most I'd known for a while anyway. My chosen subject to present was 'Job Roles in Broadcast television', which I'm not particularly sure why I chose considering my more explicit interest in film. I believe a trend may have been set as the rest of the class also chose the same subject, luckily however I believe almost all of our presentations involved something different. The research side of things is always tedious and to work on a subject that I wasn't particularly interested in may have meant I wasn't as fussed with it as I could have been. Presenting it to the class wasn't too bad at all, although as per usual my nervous stutter and confidence may have got in the way a little bit as did the paper I was reading my script from. Ironically during feedback after finishing, It wasn't my presenting that was commented on but instead a little negativity towards my PowerPoint, which understandably was due to the lack of information on it for people to read. Whilst I had given out a lot of information personally, the audience had little too keep them occupied in between me presenting and I had just used the PowerPoint as a reminder of what to say. This was also rather daft considering I spent most of the time reading my script off of paper anyway, and barely acknowledged the board behind me during the presentation.


For the BC1003 group project we were required to do a pitch for our radio show in front of a 'Dragons Den' style panel of 'commissioners' (who in this case were three teachers from around the college). This would reflect a large portion of our final grade and whilst we weren't particularly sure we'd do well, we were pretty confident leading up to it. This unfortunately was not the case and to cut a long story short, It's fair to say that our first attempt wasn't particularly great. We were less than confident presenting it, hesitated on questions, had very little paperwork to show and didn't even seem to have a good idea what our own show was actually going to involve. It was obvious that we hadn't prepared well enough for it and had therefore presented a fairly poor pitch, not only wasting the panels time but our own as well. Fortunately the panel did agree on the idea behind the show being rather good and they decided that we could have a second chance at presenting it the following day. After some much needed criticism and advice we all powered on and set to work making sure that it would not happen again the next day. We discussed and decided on various details of the project that we had not previously been sure of, before separating to each work on separate parts of the new improved pitch. My role in this was to create a PowerPoint to display in the background whilst we pitched, as well as doing a few bits of valuable paperwork (e.g. budget etc.). With all our efforts we came back the next day and after a good amount of rehearsing we pitched our radio show for a second time. Luckily, this time it was a lot better received and we were finally given the go ahead to make create our group project.

Dragons Den, BBC Television

Whilst my confidence issues can't necessarily be helped, I shall most certainly be taking all the problems I've had with the presentation work into account for future projects on my degree. I should keep in mind that I do need to prepare for them beforehand, will need to know my research findings well and will most obviously need to know the exact details of what I'm presenting stored in my head beforehand. Its clear that my presentation skills will definitely need working on in the future though and I'm sure there's no doubt that I have plenty of chances to improve on them yet.