Blog Post 4.15

I really enjoyed being an audience member of the class’s presentations. I liked how I could hear people talking about risks that they found interesting and how they related those things back to their own lives and experiences. I found it crazy how much pop culture participates in risks, some of which we aren’t even consciously aware of.  After seeing all the members of the class’s presentations, I learned to appreciate being an audience member.  Through class discussions on keeping eye contact and maintaining non-verbal cues, such as nodding to show that I was interested, I saw the importance of a supportive audience. When I was presenting and looked up at my audience from my note cards, I found it comforting that people were nodding and keeping eye contact. I think I succeeded in keeping eye contact and making sure that the presenter felt supported in what they were talking about.  One thing I experienced as an audience was that when a presenter became monotone or was speaking too low I found it hard to remain engaged. For presenter’s emotion and showing that you truly care about what you are speaking about is vital in order to gain the attention of the audience.  We had a guest professor who spoke to us about connecting values to our presentation, and I think that when presenters did this, it kept me more interested because I related more to the content, even if I hadn’t explicitly dealt with the risk. We also had another guest professor who spoke about confidence in presentations, and for a presenter to get their point across to their audience it is important that they appear to be confident and sure of what they are speaking about to their audience.