Traci Nathans-Kelly, Ph.D., currently teaches for both eCornell and on campus in Cornell University’s College of Engineering. As a member of the Engineering Communications Program, she interacts daily to help engineers to hone their technical messaging, whether it be via presentations, on paper, in meetings and teams, or online channels. Dr. Nathans-Kelly has worked with practicing professional engineers, technical experts, scientists, and related field experts for over 20 years, helping them to strengthen their abilities to become impactful contributors in their organizations. She served as the editor for the IEEE Professional Communication book series for Professional Engineering Communication, with 12 books on the shelves for the series. Dr. Nathans-Kelly’s book, Slide Rules: Design, Build, and Archive Presentations in the Engineering and Technical Fields, was co-authored with Christine G. Nicometo. Aside from campus teaching, Dr. Nathans-Kelly conducts workshops and training for such entities as The Boeing Company, Flad Architects, IEEE-USA, Wolters Kluwer, and a host of others. In the past, she has trained practicing engineers and technical experts at At&T, CN Railroad, FedEx, GE, Google, Harley Davidson, IBM, Intel, John Deere, Johnson Controls, Kohler, Kraft, Lockheed Martin, Medtronic, Mercury Marine, Motorola, NASA, Ocean Spray, Sanofi Pasteur, Sirius, SkullCandy, US Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US Department of Defense, the US Army, the US National Security Agency, the US Navy/Nuclear Submarines, and many more.
COURSE OVERVIEW
Since the advent of presentation software like PowerPoint, presenters have been led astray by the design of slide templates. The software applications were originally created to help presenters outline their talks, but the slideware's design did not account for the needs of audiences nor factor in cognitive research. As a consequence, the templates have ingrained poor presentation habits that often confuse and disengage the people who are meant to benefit from these talks.
In this course you will have an opportunity to begin challenging the norm and break this cycle of "slide deck drudgery." By replacing old presentation habits with new best practices that you gain from this course, you can shift your focus to the needs and interests of your audience, and you can begin to use your slides to communicate your ideas more clearly and effectively. You will explore new techniques that will help you to improve the flow of your talk and keep your audience focused on your main ideas. You will then study effective presentation design and development practices as you read various selections from Dr. Traci Nathans-Kelly's book “Slide Rules,” which contains valuable insights and examples that you can apply in your own presentations.
It is recommended to only take this course if you have completed “Redesigning Slides for Impact” or have equivalent experience.
- Eliminate fragment headers in your slides
- Create sentence summary headers to organize the flow of your talk
- Choose the right visuals to convey your idea
- Use new slide rule techniques for a technical talk

How It Works
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Who Should Enroll
- Engineers
- Technology professionals
- Business leaders
- Entrepreneurs
- Educators
- Consultants
- Anyone interested in effectively conveying ideas to a professional audience
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