The ability to present research effectively is an important transferable skill for doctoral researchers. As highlighted in the Researcher Development Framework, researchers need to be aware of the appropriate channels to communicate and disseminate their research. They also need to be skilled at using these channels to ‘engage, influence, and impact’ a wide range of audiences formally and informally using different techniques and media. In response to this need, higher education institutions often arrange courses in academic presentation skills for researchers. However, teaching generic presentation skills to researchers, from different disciplines, in a classroom setting can pose several major challenges related to academic course content and materials, the diversity of researchers, the danger of feedback saturation, the prerequisites of 21-century digital literacies and the emergence of new presentation formats.

This article reports on a small-scale pilot study to address the challenges experienced whilst teaching presentation skills to researchers in a traditional classroom setting. Based on the challenges, a blended model for the course was created and piloted. Little research has been conducted into academic presentations from the perspective of blended-learning models.