Italy
participants
The goal of the activity was to teach participants how to give an effective presentation.
Participants were told to prepare a PowerPoint presentation about any topic they liked. We gave them some ideas to help them find inspiration: they could talk about a passion they have, Christmas traditions in their home country, tips on how to make the best out of the Erasmus experience and many other topics. Some participants prepared an individual presentation, others worked in pairs. Before letting them start with their presentations, an ESN volunteer gave a quick explanation on how to make an effective presentation, giving tips on how to design slides, how to manage posture and voice during the presentation and also how to manage time, in order to make the presentation attractive and interesting for the audience. Participants were then asked to give their presentations keeping in mind the tips they had just received and they all did an amazing job! After presenting their own PowerPoints, participants were asked to do a "karaoke presentation": those who felt like trying were given a very random PowerPoint that they had never seen before and they had to improvise a presentation in front of the audience. At the end of the event, all participants voted the best presentation.
Outcomes
Participants chose very varied topics for their presentations which made the event even more interesting and fun, plus they really enjoyed being "challenged" to follow the advice for a good presentation and you could see that they were putting effort in the activity. It was also a pleasure to see that they volunteered to do the "karaoke presentation", which was a quite challenging activity.
