Shirley Ze Yu

For virtual sessions, there are several ways to better engage with the audience. One, try to use polls at the beginning and the end of the sessions. Two, try to ask an open-ended question to engage with the audience early on in the session. Three, try to use memes, videos, and music to capture attention. Four, frequnetly ask questions, including "Any questions?"

In public speaking, you may want to spend 80% of the time on creating the content and 20% on rehearsing the delivery. In actual speaking, people tend to remember 80% of your delivery and 20% of your content. I usually spend days working on the basics of a speech - facts, figures, logic, writing, and rewriting sentences for perfection. It takes a long time to get to a good draft. Then, spend time rehearsing by recording yourself, no matter how familiar you are with your knowledge. During rehearsal, it is essential to time yourself, measure your delivery speed, and try listening to yourself as an audience for the first time. Lastly, feel energetic and confident during the actual speaking session. Good luck!

As someone who is constantly in the media, my advice is always to listen back to what you say. You are your best mentor. Find areas to improve on, whether it is content brevity, accent, facial expression, or nonverbal communication. My next go-to place will be people skilled in public speaking. Send them my recording and seek advice. But be specific. People will give advice if you ask them for one. Otherwise, they will usually say, "Good job." I think it is also helpful to go to an acting school and take some acting or theatre classes. Skills do get rusty if they aren't practiced often. It is always a good idea to go back to a theatre class occasionally to refresh on the basics.

In my teaching, I prefer the Platonic methods. I often introduce a story of relevance to ignite a debate on a particular subject matter. The professor’s job is not to judge the contributions but to facilitate the dialogue and challenge even deeper thinking with each contribution. I tend to write the key points of the debates on a board for later synthesis and conclusion. Learning is not just about getting the correct answers, but asking the right questions.

In my MBA class, I use Adobe Spark to prepare my teaching notes. The pros of Adobe Spark are many. Among them, I find the links to multivideo assets most helpful. Incorporating interactive and contemporary global affairs to the classrooms are essential in today's teaching, particularly for undergraduate and master's degree students. Adobe Spark also allows a simple link for easy sharing with the students post-class. Rather than the traditional PPT distributions, this allows revisions, additions and linkage to various files much more expediently. I find Adobe Spark's interface easy to use, for busy professors who have no time to learn the technical skills of operating a complicated platform.