Cohort 2

Practical and proven strategies for technical experts to build slides that enhance your credibility by elevating cognitive ease. 

Pramoda Vyasarao

CEO & Founder of Changesmith

Becoming a Slidesmith

Oracle

Are you a technical expert who struggles to build appealing slides?&nbsp; Do you have more than 6 bullet points on your slides?&nbsp; Do you take long hours to create presentations? If you want to add a professional touch to your slides without investing hours in training, this course is for you! In this 3-week online course (90-minute live session each week), you’ll learn practical and proven strategies for building slides that enhance credibility by elevating cognitive ease.&nbsp; In the first week, you’ll learn the core principles behind cognitive ease and understand the style &amp; structure of business presentations. The second week is focused on reducing text on your slides and writing impactful titles. You’ll learn information chunking and visual hierarchy to influence your audience. During the third week, you’ll master the 4-step process for creating an appropriate and appealing graph or chart. You'll also hone the art of eliminating distractions and orienting attention from your visualizations.&nbsp; The last week is dedicated to reviewing your work slides and working on them to give a “Slidesmith” touch. As a group, we will apply all the strategies from the course to real-life slides. You'll connect with other cohort members to accelerate your learning through examples, others' insights, and implementation in breakout rooms. Prerequisite: Working knowledge of a slideware of your choice (PowerPoint, Google slides, or anything similar) Alumni:Personas: Engineers, Engineering Leaders, Product Leaders, Program Managers, Entrepreneurs, and Consultants.Companies: Oracle, Nvidia, Salesforce, Nationwide Insurance, EY, Dell, Appzen and Taulia. Bonus material:- Video recording of all live sessions available via the Maven platform- Class slides as a PDF- 50+ PowerPoint templates to bootstrap your work slides (covers most scenarios in the tech world) PS: See this LinkedIn post about how a Tech Lead at Salesforce uses the Slidesmith principles on his slides.https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pramodavyasarao_its-great-to-see-people-change-in-4-weeks-activity-7158509082209931265-a3p-?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop

Engage, influence, and impact your audience

Senior Engineers, Tech Leads, and EMs who create high-stake presentations to communicate with their leadership &amp; cross-functional partners.

PMs, TPMs, and other functional team members who aren't yet comfortable building presentations or take a long time to build one.

Anyone whose role involves building presentations and they have more than 6 lines on several slides on your deck! That's a good indicator.

Who is this course for

What you’ll get out of this course

You'll learn a framework to brainstorm your presentation goals to ensure your time and effort matter and make an impact on the audience.

How to put your audience at the center?

You'll learn strategies and proven tools to use text, color and visuals effectively to lead the audience on your story path.

How to design slides that reflect cognitive ease?

You'll reduce text on your slides by using the concept of information chunking and leveraging pre-built content types and layouts.

How to reduce the terror of text on slides?

You'll learn a 4-step process for creating an appropriate and appealing graph or chart. You'll also master the art of eliminating distractions and orienting attention from your visualizations.

How to create effective data visualization?

What you learn in this course is applicable to anything you write: documents, emails, web pages, and many more. Your team will have a common language to discuss these strategies with your audience at the center.

A mental model and vocabulary for elevating cognitive ease

Provide a brief description for each module as a way to sell the value of what students will be learning throughout the course.

First Module

Second Module

Third Module

Course syllabus

What people are saying

Meet your instructor

We'll work together as a group to polish your slides from the strategies you learned during each session. We'll have breakout rooms to learn from other participants' slides and understand their perspectives.

Weekly Live Session

Course schedule

You bring your slides to this course. Start making changes immediately while watching recorded videos and polish your slides - you'll apply theory to practice in minutes!

Active hands-on learning

You'll review your slides and embellish them in two 60-minute "Slide Dojo" sessions. This is an opportunity for deliberate practice with feedback on your work.

Interactive and project-based

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you. You'll interact with the community during and after the course for feedback on your slides. In breakout rooms, you'll see how others apply the Slidesmith strategies on their slides.

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About this course

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