Developing Speeches and Presentations

Develop speeches and presentations that highlight institutional strengths and encourage students to enroll or convey crucial information to other stakeholders on or off campus. These should include a variety of formats that can be delivered to students, parents, counselors, and others, from individual and small group settings to large assemblies.

Content knowledge requirements: Institution-specific knowledge, familiarity with the college search process and admissions models and terminology, understanding of financial aid, basic understanding of marketing to perspective students and parents.

Skill requirements: Public speaking, technology necessary for developing visuals, audience awareness, content knowledge, writing skills, basic grammar and etiquette.

Ethical requirements: Honesty and integrity, adherence to national or international standard guidelines including not speaking negatively about other schools

Expertise Levels

Entry level: Delivery of a prepared presentation or speech with: minimal or no verbal disfluencies (like, uh, you know, etc.); appropriate eye contact with audience; stays on topic; illustrates points with examples; does not read from paper or screen; few or no distracting body movements (swaying, pacing, etc.); appropriate responses to questions; covers all material in time allotted. Creation of a basic presentation with appropriate font size and background color.

Intermediate level: Delivery of a prepared presentation or speech at entry level and: adjusts content based on audience reaction or characteristics; handles questions skillfully by turning negatives into positives or refocusing to stay on message; avoids being drawn into highly personalized responses not pertaining to most audience members; engages with audience. Creation of a presentation making use of a variety of media as appropriate, including video, audience-response technology, or similar as appropriate.

Expert level: Delivery of a prepared or impromptu speech or presentation at intermediate level and: highly engages all audience members no matter what the size of the group; uses props or similar as appropriate to illustrate points; conveys material in an entertaining manner that is memorable and convincing; anticipates audience needs and objections and counters skillfully without appearing to do so.