When delivering a training session - whether it's in a corporate setting, a classroom or online, there’s one thing that’s super important - presentation. Your session will, quite literally, live or die by its presentation and so you need a well-structured slide deck to help you stay focused and guide your audience through your content.
A chaotic or cluttered presentation or one with tons of text will quickly turn your audience off and have them scrolling through their phones and so, in this article, we’re sharing our 12 slide training presentation deck to help empower your learners through professional, engaging and educational content.
Slide 1: Tell ‘Em What You’re Gonna Tell ‘Em
This first slide is your first impression and should contain your title and the topic of the training session. You may also want to include the name of the facilitator, the date and any relevant organisational branding. Keep it clean and professional and don’t go mad with the text as this tends to overwhelm people.
Slide 2: Managing Expectations
Once the session is up and running it’s time to let the participants know what to expect by laying out the agenda or outline of the course. This slide should therefore give a clear overview of the topics to be covered in your
training presentation as this provides a mental roadmap and helps to manage the learners’ attention.
Break the training down into between three and six chunks or time blocks and make sure that the agenda flows logically and smoothly as it moves from foundational concepts to more advanced applications. This visual roadmap helps learners know what to expect and is also useful for those latecomers who may find themselves feeling a little disoriented.
Slide 3: Learning Objectives
Our third slide is also about managing expectations as well as letting students know what they’re expected to know by the end of the session. Because of this, you should keep objectives specific and actionable, This means avoiding vague goals like “Understand the importance of leadership” and replacing them with “Identify three leadership styles and when to use them”. The learning journey is important, but your audience also needs to know their end goal so they can keep it in sight.
Slides 4 To 8: Getting Down To The Content
This is where the magic happens! Slides 4 to 8 are the
heart of your presentation because it’s here that we get to the actual teaching bit. Again, we need to be clear and concise with this so each slide should focus on a single key point or idea to keep your audience engaged.
There are a number of things you can use to drive your points home including visuals, diagrams, process charts and examples and these can be much more effective than chunks of text. As we’ve mentioned, nothing turns an audience off quicker than a presentation that’s too wordy so make sure that you pepper your written words with visuals and / or speaker narration. Layout is super important for holding people’s attention and your design should be vibrant and engaging and, where possible, divvied up into modules or chapters. As a guideline, we’ve set this section at five slides but you might want to tweak this depending on your content.
Slide 9: Activity Or Discussion Prompt
Passive learning is part and parcel of any training but it's not the whole story. Deep learning happens when people get involved so make sure that you have a slide that encourages reflection, discussion or hands-on participation.
A really effective way of doing this is to use this slide to facilitate group work, mini-brainstorming sessions or real world application exercises. Keep instructions clear and be sure to make the task relevant to the learner roles or environments.
Slide 10: Getting Quizzical For Better Retention
A quiz or knowledge check is a great way to reinforce learning and assess comprehension. This doesn’t have to be a big old formal test, just a few multiple choice questions or a short “what would you do here?” scenario to reinforce key points. This slide can also serve as a little pause or break which helps to keep your audience interested.
Slide 11: Tell ‘Em What You Told ‘Em - Summary And Key Takeaways
This penultimate slide should be used to summarise and consolidate the messages imparted during the training session and should restate the most critical points. By providing a handful of memorable takeaways, you guarantee that your learners are leaving with the most important information implanted in their minds.
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Slide 12: Feedback And Next Steps
Your final slide is all about wrapping things up and should provide a
sense of closure whilst also giving your learners a sneak peek of the wonders that now await them. You can also use this slide to plug another training session including an outline. The most important thing here though is to provide a link for feedback as this shows that you are committed to providing the best training possible. You can include contact information, additional resources and even a QR code to encourage your audience to let you know what they thought of their session.
Conclusion: Building Smarter Training
Just like a good joke, a training session is only ever as effective as its delivery. And this is where a great slide deck comes in. As we’ve shown in this article, a 12-slide structure which is visually engaging and learner-focused will keep your training organised and your audience engaged. A good training session is designed to help participants to absorb, retain and apply what they’ve learned and so, whether you’re designing your first training presentation or looking to supersize your existing ones, this 12 step template is the only blueprint you’ll need to create sessions that shine … and make you do the same!
