I recently went through Harvard University's "Advanced Public Speaking and Professional Presenting - SPCH E-120" course, taught by Jill A.Slye. This semester-long course is the most advanced that Harvard has to offer in terms of generic public speaking, and is also part of several Graduate Degrees and Extension Certificates.

There were two main goals that I wanted to achieve:

• I was curious to see what methods, techniques, or activities are used during this course, and see if I could pick any interesting ideas that can be added to our educational program and shared with members. The course costs a whopping $2990, which is prohibitive for most members, so any ideas, methodologies, or approaches that could be incorporated would be welcome.

• Personally, I wanted to have an external, unbiased assessment of my own speaking style and approach. All too often, when you're in an organization (especially if you have a leadership role) you tend to accumulate "cultural baggage" from that environment and begin to speak in a particular way that instantly identifies you as a member. This is something that is very characteristic of other public speaking organizations, and is something that we in Agora try to fight very hard: We encourage you to develop your own style, we have a mandatory speech analysis part for every project of the Basic Educational path so that you can be exposed to other speaking styles, we have a VP of Community Leadership officer whose only mission is to find members speaking and leadership opportunities outside of the club environment, etc.  Still, it never hurts to perform a reality check with a completely new audience, and one that is not particularly impressed with credentials.

Do you want to know what happened?

Well, guess what... Our educational program includes everything that Harvard University does, and then some.   Harvard does speech analysis - we do speech analysis. Harvard does special exercises on sensory words in speeches, we do sensory words activities. Harvard does presentation speeches, we do presentation speeches. They do peer-evaluations, and we're all about peer evaluations. And of course all the regular activities like using vocal variety, emotion, anecdotes, persuasion in speeches. Here are some portions of the assignments, do they ring a bell?

And here's an example of the grading criteria:

Although the Harvard faculty was certainly great, almost the entirety of the course is based on peer comments and peer evaluations. In fact, you get to speak and get faculty feedback only four times throughout the semester. Classes were held using regular zoom sessions - nothing spectacular here either.
 

What about the cultural baggage?

I have good news here as well. The speaking approach that I used was very liked and considered very professional. I had the opportunity to give lots of peer feedback and offer advice to others on how to improve their speeches, and the advice was well received, incorporated, and later praised by the faculty.   Again, this provides a great external validation that we don't accumulate or teach a specific distinctive style, that the system works, and that the end result is considered top-notch in an external highly professional environment.

The moral of the story

Considering that our educational program and activities were developed independently and from scratch, this experience provided a fantastic external validation of our system. Except for the Harvard professors, in Agora, you experience, study and learn using the exact same methodology, approach, activities, and exercises as the #1 university in the world. Except, that you do it for free.

Of course, Agora certificates don't carry the weight of the Harvard  University logo ...yet , but we'll get there.

(Needless to say, Agora Speakers is an independent Foundation that is not endorsed by, nor affiliated, nor in any way associated with Harvard University)