How you organize the body of your presentation is up to you, based upon the knowledge you acquire as you prepared to teach this topic.

prepare for and teach the rest of us about your topic in HRM, with an emphasis on the ethical issues involved. Your end product is a PowerPoint presentation, which MUST have a fully written-out narrative of what the presenter is to say. Your written narrative, embedded in the Notes section, is to be of professional quality, with sentences fully written out and expressed according to generally accepted standards for English in academic writing. (Two good guides for this are the APA Manual, now in the 7th edition, and the US government website named plainlanguage.gov.) In addition, you and your peers formulate two questions over your topic, for the discussion that week. Your presentation will be the primary learning content for the class for a given lesson.
The Presentation
As you approach this assignment, think of yourself as the Human Resource Manager in a company or corporation. You are highly respected, and the organization looks to you as the authority on matters like ethics in the workplace. You are tasked by the CEO to present on your topic to the top corporate leadership and stakeholders at the annual stockholder’s meeting. (How’s that for a high-stakes situation with implications for your career?) For this assignment, every presentation is to follow one, common 4-point structure:
I. Introduction to the issue
II. Explanation of the issue
III. The ethical challenges of the issue
IV. The recommended course of action
V. The discussion questions
The purpose of the introduction is to announce the topic to the audience, to gain their attention, and to get them on board with where you are going. There is nothing so powerful in gaining audience attention as a story or anecdote; almost all effective speakers know and use this approach. However, the story must be relevant. Learning, by definition, is the transition from the knowledge the audience has at the outset, to the knowledge the audience needs to have at the conclusion. It is always good if the introduction can express something like, “This is where we are … and this is where we are going.” Most speeches, lessons and presentations are organized on some framework (such as the 4-point structure required for this assignment). It is helpful to the audience to hear the structure … something like, “We being with an explanation of XYZ. We then focus on the ethical challenges of XYZ. Finally, we conclude with a recommended course of action.” In effect, this builds a contract with the audience as to what you agree to discuss, and what they agree to hear. It is a contract, by the way, that you don’t want to violate by staying off on irrelevant matters! If you have specific learning goals or outcomes, there is no reason to keep those a secret from the audience. The introduction is the perfect place to announce that, “By the conclusion of this presentation, you should be able to … .” At its end, the introduction smoothly segues into the body of the presentation. (Here is an example of a person who “gets it” about introductions. You only need to listen to the first 20 seconds.)
Part II, the explanation of the issue, is the body of the presentation. This is where you showcase your artistry and creativity as an expert and communicator. How you organize the body of your presentation is up to you, based upon the knowledge you acquire as you prepared to teach this topic. Did you research important journal articles? Tell you audience what you found. Did you uncover an important history behind the topic? Tell the audience the story. Are there important ideas or names or events associated with the topic? Teach your audience these things. Are there positive or negative examples to share? Is there a case study that bears on the topic? These can make for effective learning content. By the way … the five topics we will cover in Lessons 6 through 10 were derived from consultations with HR practitioners and experts. They know from experience that these are important issues in HR, with some thorny and complex ethical issues attached. Your job, in the body of your presentation, is to inform your audience about the issue at hand, so that they join you in understanding the problem. You may recall the scenario of this assignment was that you are speaking to corporate leadership and other stakeholders at the annual stockholder’s meeting. You may find it helpful to assume that they begin with informational naivety. Assume they know little or nothing about the topic, and that they think everything is fine. You are there to dispel their darkness and enlighten them about the challenges and implications of your topic with respect to the health and prosperity of the organization.
Part III, the ethical challenges of the issue, is where you apply your knowledge of ethics (derived from this course, I hope) to the topic of your presentation. To be sure, there may be some overlap between Parts II and III. As you explain the issue in Part II, you may have occasion to mention the associated ethical problems. But Part III is your opportunity to distill the ethical issues, dilemmas, or conundrums explicitly for your audience. You may have occasion here to use some of the jargon you have learned from your study of ethics, which is fine, as long as you help your audience understand the terms you use. Your job in Part III is to make crystal clear what will happen if your organization does or does not respond to the issue in the appropriate way.
Part IV, the recommended course of action, is where you take a stand. You are the expert. What you recommend is entirely up to you. It is implicit, I hope, that you will recommend an ethical course of action. Your recommendation may have multiple parts. Your recommendation can take the form of a policy adjustment or even a new policy. Your job in Part IV is to have the audience agreeing with you and ready to back your plan, whatever it is. You can, if you wish, close with a slide asking for questions, as if there would be an opportunity for you to take audience questions on your presentation.
Part V, the discussion questions, is the place for your group to present 2 questions for the class to discuss that week. A good discussion question does not ask us to give back information already in the presentation. A good question asks us to think about the presentation. As a rule, good discussion questions begin with “How …?” or “Why …?” You can ask a “What …?” question, but doing so is trickier. “What is the importance of …” would lead to discussion; asking, “What are the two criteria for sexual harassment?” would not. It is not that the latter is a bad question in and of itself, but it is a poor discussion question, because there really is nothing to discuss. It asks for facts, not thinking. As you prepared for your presentation, you undoubtedly came across the stickiest, trickiest questions related to the topic. Ask us those kinds of questions.
The full narrative presentation of the lesson should take about 20 minutes. A commonly accepted speaking speed for American adults is about 150 words per minute, so 20 minutes works out to a lesson of about 3000 words. For a frame of reference, a 3000 word double-spaced paper is about 12 pages. I am not interested in counting words or slides, but as a general guideline and estimate, the main body of your presentation should be no less than 10 slides and no more than 20. The aesthetics of your presentation are entirely up to you and your group. There are many guidelines for PowerPoint presentations you can find through web searches. In general, you should minimize verbiage on the slide face, expressing on the slide face only the main ideas, succinctly and as bullet points. In the Notes section, however, you include the complete, accurate transcript of what the presenter should say. When your group’s topic lesson comes up, I and the entire class will learn about the topic from the presentation your team has done.
One reason for this assignment has to do with recent court rulings with respect to section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In brief, educational institutions that accept federal funding for grants or student financial aid MUST make all educational materials 508 compliant. We will fulfill that requirement here by including the transcript in the Notes section accompanying each of the slides. By the way, be aware that similar court rulings may soon place similar 508 compliance responsibilities on organizations in the private sector. This may have far-reaching implications for your organization’s media, web-presence, forms, and many other areas. The consequences of non-conformance can be high-dollar lawsuits! These are obviously matters of vital interest and relevance to HR professionals.
A second reason for this assignment is that you may be asked to create and deliver just such a PowerPoint presentation in your HR job. The college classroom is the ideal place to learn and practice the skills required to do this. An ancillary but similar issue is to hone and assess your ability to follow directions. It is important, grade-wise, that your group frame your presentation on the prescribed 4-part structure, and that you include an accurate transcript of the presentation.
A third reason for this assignment stems from the conviction that the best way to learn a topic is to teach it to others. You and your team members will almost certainly become quasi-experts on the topic you develop.
I would like to share a related anecdote. There is a team of instructional designers at Sullivan University. These are people with backgrounds in Human Resource Development, an area of HR. Among other things, they create Sullivan’s online courses on Blackboard. Several years ago at an ID team meeting, the topic of 508 compliance arose. None of the team members knew much about it, so one person volunteered to do some research and come back to inform the others. At that time, a class action lawsuit was pending against Harvard University. Among other things, the suit wanted to force Harvard to close-caption all its video lectures, etc. Harvard refused. In 2019, Harvard lost. Big! (Google “Harvard ADA lawsuit” to learn more.) In any case, when the team member reported her findings, the ID team sensed the importance of 508 compliance for our own courses. This team member expanded her research and wrote an internal document called, “The Road to 508 Compliance.” It set forth a road map for Sullivan online courses, to ensure our own compliance. When the news of Harvard’s loss in the lawsuit hit the news in late 2019, the top administrators at SU summoned the ID to give them an overview of what she had learned. In short, her document has become a model for a university-wide initiative to ensure 508 compliance. As you can imagine, it is a very good thing when the CEO, Vice Presidents, Provosts and Deans of a university look to you for your expertise.
So you see, the hypothetical scenario of of this assignment–you teaching the leaders of your organization about an ethical issue–is not far fetched at all! I offer this as an example of the kinds of big things that can grow out of small beginnings like your preparation for this assignment this term.
The Written Take Away
Finally, for each presentation, you write a 100-300 word reflection, or about 1double-spaced page, that begins, “From the presentation on X, my take-aways are … .” This captures and reflects your own thoughts and reactions. This is not meant to be a formal paper, and APA formatting is not in play. You will receive full credit if you do the paper as stipulated; the only way to get a zero is not to do the assignment.