No matter what course you are delivering, whether it’s a software application, soft skills or something else, chances are that as a Trainer, you’ll use PowerPoint. For many Trainers, their use of the tool is limited to a couple of slides at the start of the course, for example a Welcome slide and an Agenda slide.
However, many courses that I’ve delivered in the past came with a “Trainer’s Pack”, part of which was a large deck of PowerPoint slides. You weren’t expected to deliver the presentation from start to finish in one chunk…the pack contained a few introductory slides, some slides with diagrams that explain concepts, some wrap up slides for each part of the course, then some more explanation slides and so on.
In the days before every training room had a projector, we’d either carry a flip chart with pre-created diagrams and notes on it, we’d use pre-prepared acetates with an OHP (remember those?) or we’d re-create our diagrams and notes live, during the course.
Most of the courses that I run now are delivered virtually. Although tools such as Webex and Connect have virtual whiteboards, I rarely use these because 1. My “on the fly” drawing skills result in diagrams that are non-too-neat and 2. It is time-consuming to keep re-inventing the same wheel. I have reverted back to using the Trainer’s Pack of PowerPoint slides.
The disadvantage of this approach is that you’ll be continually switching between PowerPoint and whatever application you are delivering training on. You’ll also need to adhere strictly to the running order or else be able to quickly switch to the relevant section of the slide deck in order to provide a seamless and transparent experience to attendees.