Without a doubt the best online course you'll find for Public Speaking. Teaches proper tone, presentation and speech writing styles. Phenomenal, I've recommended it to my coworkers and family.

This is great course to take to get the idea and structure in producing a key point speech. A solid foundation to follow through in other areas in public speaking. I took this course to help in my public speaking presentations for self help topics in running a self development group and it helped tremendously. The concept are easy to grasp and the actual practice and having your actual speech reviewed by your peers and having you review speeches is powerful. The next level to the course would be to have a teacher involved to critique your review and your speeches. Finally, a little more engagement in the discussion forum could be included in the course work as the course introduces very interesting concepts. However, it was adequately fulfilled and paced.

As said in the beginning of this course, Public Speaking is the one competency that you need to choose if you can keep only one.

2 weeks after starting this course, I presented a speech (that I had prepared with the learnings I had so far) in front of 100 persons. I was happily surprised by the quality of my preparation & delivery. Afterwards, several people from the audience told me they really enjoyed this moment.

I especially appreciate the fact that that this course offers a structured approach about speaking, as to me, it was quite difficult to imagine such concepts existed.

Matt is doing a great job at teaching, this course almost made me feel like I was in the class listening to him.

The course is very helpful for all of us that have no idea of how to speak in front of public. Very useful technics and well teached by the professor in order to strategically speak and orginize not only the speech itself but also other activities. My deep thankfulness to Professor Matt McGarrity, to the University of Washington and of course to Coursera for this MOOC and for allow us to learn by this way. Now I'm engaged with the topic and I'm sure I'm going to take the other courses related with.

This course helped me practice my public speaking while giving me lots of extra theoretical knowledge I did not know. Amazing course for beginners and experienced public speakers.

Great course. Small steps really helped me become more confident.

This course has been an eye opener for me, I truly enjoyed it. It gives you basic knowledge of what it takes to be a good public speaker, and you can apply this knowledge not only in presentations, but also in your daily life. The most difficult part for me was to make the videos and watch myself, but it really helps in your improvement. Also, the feedback of your classmates makes you see things you haven't caught. Try it out, you won't regret it.

This was a very informative course that helped me to come out of my shell and be more confident while speaking in front of the camera/audience! I feel like I took away a lot of important points from the course and would definitely recommend it!

This course is great. You simply learn a lot in an easy way. The teacher is really good and knows how to teach and engage you in the lessons. I am looking forward to next courses in the specialization

The course was perfect for me. Though the assignment should have been graded as they were fun to do. Even it was expensive for me to buy it.

The lectures were organised clearly and smoothly.

The professor is amazing. He brings fun and energy to the class. The material will help you learn the form needed to succeed in public speaking.

Excellent course. Very organized and engaging. Even as someone who speaks in front of people all the time I learned a lot.

Very useful and practical. Thank you!

I was finished with assignments two weeks in advance with the belief that I could complete the course and receive the certificate early; that is not true. They make you wait until the end, which is very frustrating and inefficient.

A bit boring

so bad

This is my 1st MOOC experience. Let me share with you 5 skills I learned from this course: 1) I learned to craft and evaluate a speech project by using the rubrics;

2) In order to keep my speech delivery within the time limit, I applied the speech structure and practiced a lot to deliver my message succinctly.

3) By understanding that writing is different from delivering speeches, I learned that I do not need to memorize each word . This allayed my fear of forgetting what I was supposed to say.

4) By recording myself in video format, I was able to conduct a self assessment on areas of improvement in terms of body movement, gestures, mannerism, voice, pitch, rate based on the lecture and what was modeled by Prof Matt on top of peer evaluations .

5) I learned to create an unlisted you tube video.

Thank you so much Dr Matt McGarrity and to the University of Washington for offering this online course! I enjoyed learning from this course and I recommend that you to take this too!

A really big thank you to Dr. Matt McGarrity! This was a very interesting, very informative and very enjoyable course. I wasn't sure what to expect so it was a pleasant surprise to find it so useful and at the same time fun. I have already recommended it to several people (likely many more). It is well worth the time and probably not just for public speaking; I think it is valuable on even a basic communication level. For me, I sought out this course to try to help myself tackle speaking apprehension and I think I struck gold in finding a course that did that and so much more. Do not hesitate to do this!!

I am fortunate to get trained by excellent trainer Dr. Matt McGarrity. Earlier I was not able to follow his too fast speech but later on ai started enjoying his pace and intonation. His sense of humour made all the session so interesting that I watched many videos twice or thrice. I would love to join another cours under his mentorship. This is one of best courses I ever attended on public speaking. The quality of content and references are unparalleled. I will recommend everyone mu students, my colleagues and to my friends to join this course. Thank you excellent training session and course material.

I really liked this course - this is one of the best that I have taken. The content and lectures were brilliant. The quizzes and assignments were also really well thought out too. Having to write, prepare and deliver speeches really pushed you to improve.

The only slightly disappointment was that some of the peer reviews are abit weak. I felt that in the first few weeks of the course I received good constructive feedback. Near the end of the course I would only get feedback like "good" or "adequate", which isn't very helpful.

Nonetheless, this is a fantastic course and one that I thoroughly recommend.

Professor McGarrity demonstrated great energy and I really enjoyed his use of humor throughout the course. The course materials are some of the best I have seen...easy to follow, comprehensive, smaller video segments to keep the viewer engaged. Summaries were helpful in preparing for the quizzes. Lots of optional pieces and definitely worth completing for the full experience. I look forward to putting into practice the skills I learned from this course. Definitely recommend this course if you are aspiring to be a better public speaker or just interested in public speaking.

Throughout all of high school, I attacked public speaking class as an unnecessary class, but I did so because I actually feared it a bit. However, this course, after being a bit hesitant to take it at first, was incredible. Although it was only an introduction to public speaking, it gave me valuable insight into what it really is and practical skills that I put to use immediately (I noticed results instantly in the way people listened to me). I plan on taking the rest of the courses that come after this one!

A long hand salute to the Professor.Dr. Matt Mcgarrity for just training me in Public speaking and its essential canons like Invention, Arrangement, Style and Delivery .This course made me evaluate where i am doing wrong since years in most of my speeches and debates. Peer graded assignments were really helpful and hard to evaluate and mark some of the really good fellow orators around the world. Thank you University of Washington. Eternal Sagacious Learner - Bhanu Siva Krishna

To be very honest, my experience in this course was highly enriching. Professor Matt McGarrity is simply great to listen to. Looking forward to do few more courses in future for Public Speaking under him. The only thing I think I should reveal is that the feedback from the peers mayn't be that great; so, whoever joins this course need not feel disheartened on receiving an unanticipated feedback. Therefore,tiding over peer group reviews are exciting as well as challenging.

Very good course. In my case, I never took a course in PS before, neither in high school nor in university, so this was a great chance to learn about it. I learned very good things about the KeyPoint speech, that I consider very helpful when preparing a speech. The professor also provides us with tips on how to deliver the speech, how to use gestures, breath control, and so on. The peer-reviewed assignments are also helpful!