All the training you need to create visually engaging, professional & effective presentations!

👇  

Here's why presentation skills are SO important


After completing this 4-course series, here's what you'll know how to do:

  • Save time

    Design better slides in the same amount of time—or less!—than you're spending now.

  • Beautiful text

    Present slides that are just text (100% text), but in a way that looks great and doesn’t feel like a wall of text to the audience!

  • Perfect photos

    Find and use stock photos effectively, to resonate with your audience.

  • Visual thinking skills

    Design almost any visual they need, from scratch, using nothing more than text design, shapes, and icons (i.e., visual thinking skills!).

  • Dataviz wizard

    Share quantitative and qualitative data in a variety of professional (yet beautiful) ways.

  • Storytelling

    Use storytelling and storyboarding strategies to create a tailored, memorable, and powerful presentation for any audience.

This is more than a PowerPoint course

You're going to learn a new time-saving system for creating better presentations FASTER and EASIER than ever before!

Have you learned about my unique system, The 6 Gears of Creating Engaging Presentations? 

If not, then sign up for my free training video so you can learn all about how this system will help you create engaging presentations WITHOUT needing more time! Plus, you'll get a special offer for my masterclass series if you register. 

This is a series of 4 online courses. Each course in the series is...

  • Short & easy to fit into your schedule.

  • Practical & actionable.

  • Focused on skill development (not just knowledge sharing).

  • Provides a certificate of completion.

  • Most importantly: Fun!

Course Component #1:

The Core Training

Each course starts with core training, which is about 2-3 hours. This covers the “what” to do, but, it’s not just hours of lecture. I worked with an instructional designer to embed quick, active learning components into the training to make it fun and interactive.

Course Component #2:

Hands-on Practice Activities

Each course includes a set of hands-on practice activities. These begin with a set of instructions and/or a PowerPoint file for the participant to design (or re-design). After they’re done, there is a video where I show (and explain) what I did, and why. These provide participants with valuable opportunities to practice their new skills independently, while still getting an “answer” video.

Course Component #3:

Deep Dives and/or Mini Capstone Project

Each course includes “deep dive” lessons and/or a capstone project. The goal of this is to ensure every participant knows how to apply their new skills in a variety of situations. The “deep dives” go into case studies or advanced applications of the material covered in the core training. The mini capstone project involves getting a PowerPoint file with several slides, and instructions for redesigning it using all the skills learned in the course. These are a combination of nuanced training, hands-on activities, and/or a video showing how I designed that specific file.

Course Component #4:

PowerPoint Technical Walkthroughs

The core training is software neutral. Still, PowerPoint is what I recommend for creating slides, so each course includes all the PowerPoint technical walkthroughs to ensure every participant knows how to implement the strategies covered in the core training.

PLUS! You'll earn a CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION after each course!

🎓 yay!

Watch a sample video from course #1!


Course #1: Fail-Proof Slide Design

Course Length: 4.5 hours (Core Training is 1.75 hrs)

Your slides BEFORE this course: 

  • Bad habits that make slide design take longer than it needs to. 
  • Design templates (which make slides look unprofessional). 
  • Too much text. 
  • The incorrect number of slides. 
  • Outdated photos, or photos used in ways that don’t make an impact.  


Your slides AFTER this course:

  • The PPT skills and strategies that make slide design faster and easier. 
  • Uses the correct number of slides for any presentation.
  • Ensures that when slides are just text, they look great and don’t feel like a wall of text. 
  • Uses the perfect stock photos effectively with text, in ways that resonate and make an impact.

Course #2: Visual Slide Design (Visual Thinking skills)

Course Length: 6.5 hours (Core Training is 2.75 hrs)

Your slides BEFORE this course: 


  • We pick up right where we left off after Fail-Proof Slide Design! 


Your slides AFTER this course:

  • The PPT skills and strategies to explain almost anything visually, from scratch. 
  • Uses graphic design skills to visualize just about anything using text design, shapes, and icons. 
  • Uses graphic design skills to visualize qualitative and quantitative data without even needing a graph!

Course #3: Presenting Data with Slides (DataViz skills!)

Course Length: 6.5 hours (Core Training is 2 hours)

Your slides BEFORE this course: 


  • We pick up right where we left off after Visual Slide Design! 


Your slides AFTER this course:

  • The PPT skills and strategies to create beautiful and professional data visualizations. 
  • Shares the most common quantitative data in visually effective ways: Line chart, Simple bar chart, Stacked bar chart, Clustered bar chart, Pie chart, Waffle chart, Icon arrays, and Data tables.
  • Shares the qualitative data in visually effective ways: Speedometers (“gauge charts”), Venn diagrams, how to MILAM your data (advanced), and matrices (e.g., qual tables).

👆 These first 3 courses will transform your slides FROM text-heavy & outdated TO visually engaging & professional presentations.

...but being an effective presenter is more than just slide design. That's why there's another course in this series! 

Once you are fabulous at slide design (courses #1-3), we will pivot and focus on creating captivating presentation content.

👇 

Course #4: Captivate Any Audience

Course Length: TBD; currently in development

You BEFORE this course

  • Share data and facts in a “data dump” type of way. Well-designed, yes, but missing the “storytelling” element that helps the information resonate with the audience.
  • Struggling with choosing what information to include or leave out of a presentation.
  • Unsure how to tailor the presentation for different audiences and amounts of time.
  • Spend a lot of time struggling through the script of the presentation.

 

You AFTER this course

  • Know how to hook any audience within the first 30 seconds, to increase the likelihood they’ll stay engaged for the ENTIRE presentation.
  • Use storytelling strategies to create a memorable script, to keep audiences engaged.
  • Use storyboarding and scripting strategies that speed up the presentation creating process.
  • Close the presentation in a memorable way to make a lasting impact.

Hello! I'm Dr. Echo Rivera & I can't wait to make you an awesome presenter!

I have a PhD in Community Psychology (essentially a degree in community-based participatory research). After 14 years of academic, research & evaluation experience, I founded Creative Research Communications so I could provide professional development training. I can’t wait to help your organization create engaging, professional presentations that make a strong impact regardless of audience, content, or delivery format! I specialize in training academics, state/federal department staff & coalitions, researcher/evaluation centers, and TTA providers.

Here's what others have said about my professional development:



Have a question?

  • When I enroll, am I enrolling in the entire series? Do I get all 4 courses?

    Each course is sold separately. When you enroll in Fail-Proof Slide Design, you are enrolling in the first course only. This gives you the option to take time in between courses, if that is what will work best for you.

  • Can I enroll in all courses as a bundle?

    At this time, only courses #1 through #3 are available. Course #4 is currently in development and is expected to be finalized in 2022. There is a special time-limited offer to enroll in the first two courses as a bundle for those who register for my free training at https://stellarslides.com/free-training.

  • How can I learn more about course #1: Fail-Proof Slide Design?

    In the sections titled "Ready to begin?" There is a course thumbnail for course #1 (Fail-Proof Slide Design). That will take you to the page just about that course. Full details can be found there.

  • How can I learn more about courses #2-4? How do I sign up for those?

    This is a series of online courses that go in a very specific order. Each course builds on the last. After you complete course #1 you will be given the link to the course page with details about course #2 (and the link to purchase course #2)...and so on for each course.

  • Do you offer this training to groups or provide a group discount?

    Yes! We are happy to provide group discounts to our online program. Please email us at [email protected] with information about your group and how many licenses you'd like.

  • I have another question not listed here.

    There is another FAQ section specific to Fail-Proof Slide Design in that page. Be sure to check those out if your question is about that course. Otherwise, please contact us at hello -at- echorivera -dot - com