For the past four years, I have taught a public speaking and presentation course at an international summer school in the South West of England.

Children aged between 12 and 17 attend the school each July and August. I teach a class of around 25 students from over a dozen countries for whom English is a second language.

We cover preparation and scriptwriting, presenting fundamentals, dealing with nerves, advanced techniques, connecting with the audience and handling questions.

The sessions are packed with games and role-play activities, often completed in small groups or pairs, so that students have a lot of time to refine their skills.

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I do present part of the course and use handouts and video, but practice is paramount.

This focus on participation and teamwork, combined with the opportunity to learn about unfamiliar countries and cultures from smart teens, means the course is great fun to teach.

However, it is extremely unlikely that the school will run in England this year and I have been asked to consider if and how I might deliver a version of the course online.

Teaching public speaking online

In considering whether this is even feasible, given how important practice and cooperation are to the course, I have been pestering my brother for hints and tips: he is a history teacher who has spent a lot of time researching and experimenting with what works and what doesn’t when it comes to engaging online teaching.

I also deliver public relations and communication training to public sector and corporate clients and have, naturally, been trying to untangle some of the knottier problems of online delivery with trainer colleagues.

It is possible to deliver a high-quality online public speaking course but to do so I am going to have to abide by a series of principles:

1. I must avoid trying to “shift” content online in its current form. To make the most of digital opportunities, I am going to have to start from the ground up and design the course to fit the new medium.
2. Design will to some extent be determined by the technology in play. The school group uses Microsoft Teams, so I do not just need to know how to use it well, I need to know how to create a creative, interactive virtual classroom within it.
3. Privacy considerations will be crucial. For the course to work, students will collaborate via Teams in real time, upload videos that they have made individually and sometimes in pairs.
4. New flexibility in timings offers a rare opportunity. The current course is delivered over four two-hour sessions in late July and early August. While the content is planned in detail and timings are precise, student activity is limited to the sessions - there is no preparation or homework. Teaching remotely will, I gather, allow for a more flexible timeline and it is possible we will split each session up into at least two parts. This means there are likely to be more opportunities to engage students in offline practice sessions and the development of content for sharing during the teaching time. I think this is a big plus.

Daunting but exciting

It is quite a daunting challenge but necessitates a creative response and that is exciting.

While there is something counterintuitive about teaching public speaking to individuals sitting in the private sphere of their homes, the principles of great public speaking and presenting - the importance of sharing stories, practice and an understanding of the audience - remain.

Furthermore, the medium means I now have a good excuse to develop a new module: how to master online presentations.

Ben Verinder is managing director of research and communications consultancy Chalkstream