Can I learn public speaking in an online course?

Learning public speaking skills online is possible

Can you learn public speaking from an online course? Good question. Hi, I’m Shola K. I’m a professional speaker trainer and also a professional speaker, and I definitely think that you can learn public speaking skills from online courses.

Online classes are just as affective as in-person lessons

Why do I think that? Well very early on when I started to learn public speaking, I had a speaker trainer who was somebody that I couldn’t visit in person. I had a couple early on. I had one lady I worked with who was in Canada, and then I was working with somebody who was not hospitalized, but wasn’t able to get around very much. And so we had to have classes online and I found those classes just as effective as I did speaking in front of an audience, but I was getting different things. Obviously, once you’re in front of an audience, you’re getting that practice. You’re having all the eyeballs upon you. You’re actually doing the thing, and obviously, anything you want to get better at, you’ve got to physically practice it.

You can take the lessons and then find a place to practice

But when I was working with my coaches, on the other hand, I was picking up on new skills. They were listening to my speeches. They were giving me feedback. And so I was getting a lot of valuable insight and teaching from them that I was then putting into practice in front of live audiences. My answer to, can you learn public speaking online, of course you can, but you must have somewhere that you can practice also.

You can study from anywhere in the world

Let me take one of my own courses, for example. I have an online course, which is called six weeks to speaking success. I also have another one, which is on LinkedIn learning, which is called, I think it’s called something about dynamic, dynamic public speaking engage audience. I’ve had students from all around the world get in touch with me regarding both of those courses and say how helpful they have been and how many useful skills that they’ve learned. However, those students are people who are speaking regularly, whether it’s at work or perhaps even if they’re not speaking regularly, they have opportunities coming up that they want to learn those public speaking skills and applying them too. Okay.

You can use the feedback from the audience and go back to the material to fine-tune your skills

Because of that, that means that they are going to be able to actually take what they’ve learned in the course and then apply it, and there’s that feedback, which you get from the audience and how well you did, and then you might want to go back to the course, learn a bit more revise, something that you perhaps didn’t take in thoroughly. You get this sort of feedback loop going where you’re learning a bit, applying in front of an audience, learning a bit more and so on and so forth.

Once you start learning you can find an audience and rehearse

If you’re somebody who wants to learn public speaking skills, but doesn’t have any opportunity to actually speak to a group, then I suggest that in combination with the online course, you find an audience that you can speak to. It might be a community audience like your church. I’ve even had clients, I was working with one lady who she had a lot of staff that worked for her and I said, well, why don’t you get them together once every couple of weeks, and then they can listen to your speech. They can listen to you present before you go out into the world and deliver at a conference, let’s say.

You can master your skills by practising

The important thing with anything like riding a bike, you might want to watch a video on how to ride a bike, but then ultimately you’ve got to get on the bike, get on the saddle and actually pedal and see if you can ride a little bit without falling over. It’s exactly the same thing with speaking.

Use online learning to elevate your skills

You can learn online. There are lots of skills and things you can pick up. I’ve done many online courses, not necessarily coaching, but courses that helped me get to the place that I am with my speaking. As I say, I created many courses as well on different topics around speaking delivery, gravitas, memorizing speeches, how to structure a speech, all those sorts of things because you don’t need to be in front of an audience or even be in the same room as your speaking coach to learn those skills, but you do need to have somewhere that you can apply them later on because I feel that if you learn something without actually applying that information, then you may as well have done something different and just kind of been sunbathing or watching TV or whatever it might be because knowledge without application, has it helped? Who knows, right?

You can learn online with me

If you are wanting to do an online course, you can check out mine. I’ve got six weeks of speaking success. If you’re going to LinkedIn Learning, you can find me there, dynamic, I think it’s called, how to be a more dynamic speaker. I have my coaching package, which is part one-to-one coaching and also part online training. I’ve got a course for business owners, which is called Get Clients with Speaking. A lot of opportunities for you to learn online with me if you want to, but of course there are many other speaker coaches out there as well who’ve got their own materials. You may want to have a look at those too, but yes, most certainly you can learn public speaking online. Thanks very much. Take care. Bye.

______________________________
Shola Kaye is an award-winning speaker, author and professional speaker coach with clients around the world. Her work has been mentioned in Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar and on the BBC.
Need a speaker to work with your people?
– Get in touch at support@sholakaye.net
– Organisations: need a speaker for your event? https://sholakaye.com/speaking
– Individuals: download a free guide to help you structure your next presentation quickly and easily https://sholakaye.com/shortspeech
– Individuals and business owners: download a free guide to help you find more speaking opportunities https://sholakaye.com/27places

*Shola no longer offers 1-2-1 coaching. Please feel free to contact us for coach recommendations.*