Business
WritingCornell

Certificate Program

Regardless of your industry, you have probably used PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote to report significant data or ideas to others within your organization or beyond. Communicating this way is effective only if the presentation clearly articulates your points. The main points of the presentation, the visual aspects, and structure of your slides have to work in concert to convey your message. If the visuals are distracting, they run the risk of obscuring your insights. The pre-made templates provided by PowerPoint or other presentation tools may, in fact, be extremely visually distracting and inappropriate for many business contexts.

Creating your own template allows you to customize a briefing deck that specifically targets your audience and embodies visual integrity. And creating reading reports, or summaries, to send out to key stakeholders afterward or in place of a presentation, that adhere to the same design principles and best practices, allows you to present a visually appealing summary of your briefing deck.

So how do you create a professional briefing deck presentation as well as a standalone reading report that embodies visual integrity while integrating your key points and visual evidence? In this course from Andrew Quagliata, Senior Lecturer at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, you will discover the visual design principles and content guidelines necessary to curate a professional briefing deck and reading deck report. You will develop your own briefing deck template using the visual standards that specifically target your audience and contexts. You will have the opportunity to develop two supporting briefing deck slides with appropriate message titles and visual evidence such as charts, graphs, photographs, or artistic elements. You will employ the structural components used in briefing decks to create a sound structure that guides your audience through your points seamlessly. Finally, you will convert your two briefing deck slides into a compelling and professional one-page report.

Success in business often depends on the ability to influence others and gain their support for your objectives, but it takes more than charisma to win over your leaders or colleagues. Persuasive writing can help you present your case in a way that will secure critical stakeholder support.

This course will help you gain and strengthen your persuasive writing skills. You will be guided through the process of narrowing your objective to a very specific "ask," analyzing your audience to know how to appeal to their sense of reason as well as their emotions, and then building the evidence that you will use to present your case.

You will examine how to create a one-page proposal, step by step, and delve into basic design principles to maximize your writing's impact. Since electronic communication is so predominant in today's business world, you will also discover how to transform your proposal into an email. Through this course, you'll be on your way to becoming a stronger writer and business professional.

To be an effective leader, you must be able to articulate your thoughts and positions in a clear and concise manner.

Professor Angela Noble-Grange of Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management draws on her own extensive experience as a speaker and communicator to guide students through the preparation and delivery process. She discusses how to identify the communication purpose and analyze your expected audience. She then shares how to formulate and rehearse your message, including how to pay attention to nonverbal communication.

To fine-tune these skills, this course includes interacting with fellow students. Students will participate in discussion forums and will record and share a video of a short presentation that serves as the course project. This provides rich opportunities for students to hone their communication and presentation skills in a practical way, and to learn from the efforts of others.