Presentation Summit 2024: Conversation with Sheila B. Robinson

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Sheila B. Robinson, Ed.D., of Custom Professional Learning, LLC, is a speaker, educator, program evaluator, and consultant with a passion for the science of teaching and learning, presentations, and asking questions. Through her talks, professional development workshops and university courses, Sheila teaches people how to create their own courses, how make learning stick, and how to ask good questions. She also teaches program evaluation, survey design, data visualization, audience engagement, and presentation design.

Sheila is author of Designing Quality Survey Questions 2nd ed. (SAGE Publications, 2024), and writes a popular blog with numerous articles on learning science, survey design, presentations and other topics. Sheila is also a Certified Presentation Specialist (CPS)™, President of the Presentation Guild, and Senior Design and Facilitation Consultant with Evergreen Data.

In this conversation, Sheila talks about her participation at the upcoming Presentation Summit 2024, being held on location in Oxnard, CA this year from October 20 to 23, 2024, and virtually from November 3 to 6, 2024.

Indezine.com is the official media partner for the Presentation Summit.

Geetesh: You deliver the Curiosity Didn’t Really Kill the Cat session at this year’s Presentation Summit, in which you will unravel the art of asking questions. What can audiences expect from this session?

Sheila: I’ll share the session description with you: What do memories, motherhood, and moonshots have to do with presentations? Discover the powerful impact that effective questions can have on audience engagement and learning. As presenters, we already know we need good content and good stories. This session explores how good questions serve as both tools and fuel for audience engagement. You will journey through compelling real-life stories that showcase the transformative potential of well-crafted questions. Through this process, you will appreciate the importance of asking good questions and the value of planning out specific questions to use during your presentations or training sessions, along with a collection of good question prompts you can employ in almost any context.

Audiences can expect an interactive, engaging session on a topic few of us think about: the questions that we ask (or don’t ask) every day and the power of good questions to create change.

Geetesh: You’ve been a regular attendee at the Presentation Summit. What are your thoughts about this year’s conference being the last season of this event? Also, what has the Presentation Summit meant to you over the last several years?

Sheila: I’ve been interested in the Presentation Summit for many years, and started attending in 2019. I’m a teacher and trainer and most of my career has been dedicated to creating high quality professional learning for others. I appreciate well-planned events that encourage and support learning, and the Presentation Summit is a great example.

People need to be in a comfortable space—both physically and psychologically— in order to learn. I know from my own dissertation research that how people feel about learning in a professional development environment and learning with and among other professionals plays a strong role in what they take away. The particular way the Summit is executed, the range of sessions that are offered, and the people who attend come together in such a special and amazing way that makes this a wonderful event. Not all conferences are planned with both high-quality learning and connections in mind. Of course, I’m sad that it’s coming to an end, but I also recognize the monumental effort it takes to make everything happen the way it does.

Geetesh: There are many presenters, speakers, and trainers. However, you do something different because you help these professionals improve their craft. Can you share some information about what you do, and how can anyone connect with you?

Sheila: In addition to the courses I teach, I’m especially committed to other people who teach and train, or who aspire to become workshop facilitators or trainers. I help professionals who have expertise in their craft turn all that great knowledge into transformative learning experiences in the shape of workshops or courses for others.

I’m a school teacher by trade—that was my first career—so I have all that background in curriculum and instructional design, and moved into creating courses for adults early in my career. Now, I use all of this experience to help people create or improve their own training. People can find me on LinkedIn or through my website. I also write a monthly newsletter with a blog on training, learning science, survey design, presentations and other topics, and I share interesting and helpful resources there too—books, articles, websites, tools, etc. People can subscribe through my website.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.