Researching your content - fact or fiction?
Featured in the Advanced Presentation Techniques training manual
By Clare Forrest & Margaret Zuppinger
Category: Meetings and Presentations
Credit price: 3 download credits (Single user)
Giving an excellent presentation means ensuring that the content is appropriate and verifiable. Nothing ruins a speaker’s reputation quicker than the information they give being exposed as weak or factually incorrect. These days most business presenters make great use of the Internet to carry out their research, yet few consider carefully the validity of what they find. In addition, many use searching techniques that are slow and/or poor. This activity seeks to improve participants’ Internet research skills by giving them a practical research task and then looking at how the quality of the research can be assessed.
There is a pre-activity briefing session with the participants. They are paired up and each pair given the role of senior research executive of Brasher Inc, a top marketing agency, and the task of competitor research for a potential new client. Their aim is to convince the client to use Brasher for a new recruitment campaign. The training activity proper opens with you adding an extra twist to the brief: the new client also wishes to hold a meeting with the Brasher representatives to discuss their approach to research and their quality control of data. The participants have 30 minutes to research for this meeting, using the PCs and Internet connection you have provided for them. Each pair then presents their ‘buy Brasher’ case to the client. Structured observation and feedback, using a checklist, is used for this part of the activity. Next, the client meeting is convened with all the participants putting forward their ideas for evaluating the quality of Internet data. The conduct of this meeting, which is, of course, only another type of presentation, is also observed either by you or by a colleague. The training activity ends with feedback to the participants at the meeting with the client, and a final discussion on what the participants have learned about Internet research techniques and assessing the validity of the information.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to develop participants’ Internet and other research skills to help them sift through the wealth of information and make informed decisions about the material they use when presenting.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 2 |
| Max Group Size: | 6 |
| Typical Duration: | 02:05:00 |
| No of Pages: | 15 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Additional resources: 2-4 laptops or PCs and printers with Internet connection.
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers for planning and research, presentation skills, team building, and using technology programmes. It can also be adapted for one-to-one coaching.
Download the training activity, Researching your content - fact or fiction? as featured in the Fenman training manual; Advanced Presentation Techniques