Successfully communicating is a critical skill not only for a graduate thesis, but also in the career that will follow. It boils down to this question: Are you persuading, influencing, or communicating your thoughts and ideas effectively, to any audience be it three people or three hundred? In this class, we will systematically work our way through a four-step method to improve your ability to connect with your audience. We will explore the science that explains why stories work. We will tackle a basic framework for what a story is, using a process and foundation to develop any talk or presentation. Now that we have what you are going to say, we will also focus on how you say it, along with strategies to give you confidence to be your best self when speaking in front of a crowd. This is a particularly good class to take in preparation for your thesis in the Spring. This seminar examines and deconstructs verbal storytelling as a discipline in its own right. It is an exploration of speaking and storytelling as a fundamental building block of human evolution and innovation. We will look at the learnings from ancient times through modern scientific research—looking at theories attempting to explain what happens physiologically and psychologically when we are moved by a spoken narrative. This is a contextual approach that will focus on both the theory and the application in the marketplace of developing and delivering narrative as it relates to presenting oneself, a product or a service. As such, we seek to understand what drives current trends toward narrative education and storytelling as a competitive advantage in learning, communicating, persuading and influencing. Students will also contribute to designing a collaborative verbal communication template for the class and for the Final Project: a presentation that applies some of the concepts learned to themselves or their projects, products, ventures and/or service concepts.

ITPG-GT.2157.1 (22567) | Instructor: Adaora Udoji | Tues 3:20pm to 5:50pm | Meeting Pattern: 7-Second Half | Start Date