Business and professional communication is an essential skill, but it no longer takes place solely in person. An important component in preparing students to segue to a professional career is ensuring that they have a plethora of experiences—today, this should include working in a virtual space.  

Many industries offer telecommuting options, require global Web-based presentations, etc. Students who are charged with working in these organizations must understand the etiquette when communicating synchronously and asynchronously.

So developing an online course in public speaking must include a myriad of opportunities to create experiences that enable students to hone communicating in an online context.

As the instructional designer for this type of online course, I spent countless hours researching what strategies other institutions (higher education and professional industries) employ when teaching a public speaking course online (one of the more popular online courses) or communicating in a professional setting.

After sifting through several examples, I created sample projects segmented by synchronous and asynchronous solutions. It was important to distinguish between the types of solutions to ensure that students get experience working with each. See the sample projects listed in the table below.

Each of these examples lends itself to creating different experiences for students to communicate professionally in a virtual space.

As technology becomes more ubiquitous in global work settings, students who are acclimated to presenting in multifaceted formats are better equipped to deliver on-demand and work with a variety of technologies.