This is indeed a very good course for a beginner since it discusses all the ways of preparing and delivering a proper speech with necessary theoretical as well as practical classes and assignments.

Excellent course! I got so much out of taking this course. I only wish I had taken this course sooner, as my prior speeches and presentations would have been so much better, with this knowledge.

Excellent course for who are starting to speak in public or who are already a public speaker, no matter you join this course to get more tools & ideas to make your speech interesting to the audience.

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.

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

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 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!

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.

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!

Great! I didn't think that I had to upload a video of myself but it helped a lot. Got me out of my comfort zone. Only thing is, it is so hard to get to Course part 2 with the ID verification. I'm already behind three -4 weeks because I had to push it back because of work and videos. Get the videos in early and do it right the first time.

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.

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.

Beginning was too theoretical. Towards the end was ok. Should have shown more examples.

In this course we can gain the basics of public speaking and the ability to speak before the audience. Under guidance of the professor Matt Mc Garrity we can easily gain public speaking skills.

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.

Very useful and practical. Thank you!

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

Easy to follow and Dr. Matt McGarrity was an awesome instructor.

Despite being an introduction to the PS, the course is sometimes too conversational - some areas are a very elementary and boring.

Difficult to understand

good for learning

average

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.

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.