Foundations of Professional Communication

Background: Writing and Distributing a Set of Instructions

You have just been promoted from staff assistant in the Human Resources Office at Easy to Be Green to the new position of director of training, and your first project is to oversee the new reading, writing, and math courses. Recently, though, several department heads have complained that many employees do not know how to prepare and deliver presentations. You have begun to put together a short course on this, but the course will not be offered for a couple of months and only a small percentage of employees will be able to take it the first time anyway.

You decide that, in the meantime, you will create an instructions document that can be sent to all employees immediately. For some employees, who just need a refresher, this document will probably be enough. For others, it will be an interim solution until they are able to take the course.

Assignment

1. Drawing on ideas from the discussions and practice assignments as well as your own experiences in preparing and delivering presentations, compose a set of instructions on how to prepare and deliver an oral presentation to a live audience, that is, not for a presentation to be recorded for download. Follow these guidelines in writing your instructions.

• Write the instructions in your own words, though of course you should draw on ideas and information that you have read and discussed for this course. If you do consult any sources apart from those used in the course, include citations throughout the document, placing quotation marks around exact language taken from a source, and include a References page at the end.

• Use headings and bulleted or numbered lists to make the instructions as reader-friendly as possible. You may also use features like color or font changes if you think these would enhance the visual effectiveness. If you do decide to use such features, make sure that they enhance rather than simply clutter the document.

• Use at least two different types of visuals. For example a reproduction of a PowerPoint slide to illustrate how to create reader-friendly slides; a picture to illustrate a point about body language in presentations; a diagram to illustrate where to stand in relation to a slide projector and screen; or a screenshot to show one of the steps. Visuals should be integrated into the instructions, ideally through references in one or more steps of the instructions. For this purpose, you can label the visuals as Figure A and Figure B.

• Remember that the instructions should include preparing as well as delivering the presentation, so they might include a timeline explaining the stages of preparation. Feel free to imagine a particular topic if this will help you write this part of the instructions.

2. Compose an email message that can be sent to all employees with these instructions as a document attachment. Your email message should serve as a brief transmittal message explaining the attachment. For purposes of submitting this assignment, the email message should be composed on a separate page at the beginning of the Word document that contains the instructions.

3. Post the assignment in the Week 7 Procedural Message dropbox no later than midnight Sunday. Note that there should be only one document, which will contain the email transmittal message and the instructions.