Andy Churchill,  phd, mba

Hone Communications

I work with individuals and organizations to help researchers present better. I start with helping them find their story and then coach them to deliver it in the most effective way.  Since Covid, my work has focused around helping people navigate the shifts to presenting online: 
👉 your voice (tone, pace, volume, pausing) remains your most important tool, and embracing the attitudes and feeling you want to convey is your most critical skill.
👉 stories still rule: tech interaction tricks are useful, but don't get sucked too far down that rabbit hole because stories are still the most effective driver of deep engagement, learning and memory.
👉 understand the impact of body language: while it has become less impactful on the audience, it still influences your own confidence and energy.
👉 the movement of visuals in person competes with your ability to engage your audience, but online, that same movement helps capture and retain attention: adjust accordingly.

A short selection of past companies & organizations with whom I've worked:
MY01
Engineva
McGill DeSautels School of Business
Research Institute of McGill University Health Care
Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec
Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress
MUHC Foundation
Bio-Sync
Integrated Program in Neuroscience

Co-Founder

Sounds of Science live

Co-Host

McGill University - Teaching and Learning Services

PROGRAMS INCLUDE:
3MT Training Developer & Director (100+ student competition)
Pitch Coach: McGill Hakim Family Prize (2x$50,000 winning grants)
Training Director, Lister Family Engaged Science Initiative (500 students/year)
Pitch Coach: Surgical Innovation Program (2-3 successful start-ups emerge each year)
Presentation Coach: TISED Changemakers (annual conference keynote speakers)
Pitch Coach: MI4 / McGill Advancement Collaboration (prepare professors for donor meetings)
Video Training (prepare professors for the recording studio)

Presentation Skills Training Manager

The McGill Writing Centre

COURSES INCLUDE: Fundamentals of Academic Presentations, Communication in Engineering, Cornerstones of Academic Writing, Communication in Management
👉These undergraduate, graduate and professional level courses all share communicating more effectively as their common thread.  Spanning from traditional academic writing (e.g., research papers and dissertations) to professional writing (e.g., cover letters & project proposals) to start-up needs (pitches & business plans) this work bridges the academic and professional spheres in ways that have come to define my career.

For this work, I have received the prestigious McGill Distinguished Teaching Award.

Sessional Instructor

Engineva

I work with clients to write the technical documentation needed for Science Research and Experimental Design (SR&ED) funding from federal and provincial governments. This work involves transforming technical texts to accessible, engaging narrative.

Technical Advisor

turn your audience into your champions: ignite curiosity 🔥 scaffold understanding ✔ maximize impact 🚀. The PresentBetter Program for lab research groups & academic institutes -now over 7,000 researchers served.

Every piece of research, when effectively communicated, can spark change. 

In academia. In careers. In society.

But too often, important findings remain hidden, their potential unrealized. 
The importance/impact of research gets:
●	Buried under layers of complexity
●	Communicated without connecting
●	Overwhelmed by scientific terms and processes

This is why I created PresentBetter: 
To transform how your researchers share their ideas with the world. 
Together we distill years of complex study into clear, compelling narratives that resonate with and inspire audiences.
By amplifying researcher’s voices, we elevate the ability to communicate research in ways that:
●	Moves people
●	Propels careers forward
●	Bridges the gap between academia and society

Through PresentBetter.org, I offer tailored solutions to meet diverse needs:
1.	Individual Coaching: One-on-one sessions crafted for your specific presentation challenges.
2.	Lab and Department Workshops: Small group training to elevate your entire team's communication skills.
3.	Institutional Programs: Comprehensive, scalable solutions for universities and research institutions.
4.	Conference and Event Preparation: Targeted coaching for high-stakes presentations that can define careers.
5.	Online Courses: Self-paced learning for researchers seeking flexibility.

We aim to create a future where every researcher's voice resonates with clarity and impact.



PS Wondering if too good to be true? Here's a link to the talk I coached that was voted the best 3 minute research presentation in North America last year. Scroll through the flipbook for the talk, key lessons, minute by minute breakdown, and a description of the program that I used to train the speaker: https://www.presentbetter.org/post/international-award-winning-talk

Andy Churchill, phd, mba

"You know you weren't sharing any slides?"
"No, I thought you could see them"
 An hour later the judges returned with their verdict.
The professor had won the McGill Clinical Innovation Pitch Competition.

Simple lesson: The presentation is better when it's not about your slides.

Don't get me wrong, I like slides, I work hard helping people improve their slides. I even have a slick "7 rules for better slides."

But before I do that I teach people to change their relationship with their slides. That's the root of most visuals problems, and fixing the root of problems is the way to help people actually improve.

And when you're no longer slide dependent, you make better slides and you give better presentations.


My newsletter this week shares 3 tips to fix the relationship problem most researchers have with your slides. If you're not signed up, join over 1,000 of your research colleagues here: https://lnkd.in/eb9kYBmx 

PS: you might have noticed: there's no visual here. Sometimes we're just better off without it.

Andrew Churchill, PhD

Amplifying the voice of researchers | Founder of PresentBetter | 10+ years & 10,000+ researchers trained | Currently booking with universities for winter/spring ’26

In my work with PhDs and postdocs, here's 1 thing I've noticed you often miss about your next presentation. 

It's not really like what you've mostly seen and often done before: in-class oral tests and classroom lectures. 

Neither of those are good models for the ones you now have to do:
 1. conference presentation
 2. dissertation defense
 3. job talk
 4. presentation beyond academia
And each of these is uniquely different from each other.  

That's the reason my digital course will start with the choice of 4 videos from the list above, each a deep dive into that particular genre.

Curious: if you could ask a question about just one, what would it be?  



video here is a cell phone recording of the intro to the 4 videos mentioned above.  Thought would be fun to share this behind the scenes look at the McGill University Telestudio when I've been recording the program.

Season 3 of my newsletter brings you stories of putting the research behind presenting better into practice.

Tomorrow's talks about my work with Dr. Jen Ronholm and her graduate students in the One Health Against Pathogens (OHAP) program supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). I explain how Jen and I integrated presentation training into lessons and assignments the students were already doing rather than as external workshops.

How'd we do it?
What was the result?
I’ll let you read for yourself tomorrow. 

Newsletter sign-up next to profile pic.

Berkeley College

Chair of AI Academic Integrity Committee

I teach writing, reading, and the humanities. I also specialized in incorporating Artificial Intelligence into the college classroom.

Professor of English

Member of AI Task Force

I coach faculty members and administrators about how to work Artificial Intelligence into their courses and their work.

Chair, Artificial Intelligence Council

Jason Gulya Consulting

I work with colleges, professors, school districts, and students to:
 - Optimize their use of AI
 - Weigh the ethical considerations with AI
 - Learn specific AI programs 
 - Boost efficiency with AI
 -Become more effective with AI

Past clients include: Hudson County Community College, York University, Five Towns College, Lecture Breakers Network, Sacramento City College, Union College, and Seton Hall University.

AI Consultant & Keynote Speaker

American Association of Colleges and Universities

I mentor faculty and administrators on how to incorporate Artificial Intelligence into their colleges and campuses.

Mentor for AI Institute

VKTR.com

I contribute articles on Artificial Intelligence and education.

Contributing Writer on AI and Education

Higher Education Digest®

Expert Columnist 

Union College - NJ

Lecturer, ChatGPT for Professionals

Brookdale Community College

Adjunct Professor

Raritan Valley Community College

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Rutgers University

Lecturer

The AI Guy for Higher Ed / I help colleges create human-centered, AI-enhanced learning experiences / AI Strategist and Coach

My life changed when ChatGPT was released.

I remember playing with the platform, and then turning to my wife to say "I just found the most awful thing. I found the future of plagiarism."

I'm not particularly proud of that moment, now. But I share it because it gives a sense of where I started.

Since then, I've spent hundreds of hours on ChatGPT and similar AI programs. I've come to a different conclusion: AI is the future of education.

AI allows professors to:
→ Personalize instructions
→ Design better lessons 
→ Focus on the student-facing part of their work

AI allows students to:
► Learn more effectively 
► Save time and hassle
► Manage their workload

And lastly, AI allows colleges to:
➢ Streamline their operations 
➢ Improve the student experience

But to do any of these things, we'll need to use AI intentionally and strategically. 

Over the past year, dozens of colleges and conference committees have trusted me to train their faculty members, students, and administrators. 

I've taught hundreds of people on higher Ed how to use AI in their lives and work.

Please reach out if you want to talk, have a collaboration in mind, or anything else.

I'm open!

Jason Gulya

I don’t know if this is controversial or not.

But here it is…

I think it’s perfectly okay to ask if/how a student used GenAI to create something.

I talk to a lot of professors, and often get some version of this:

“I read through the submissions and most were fine. But I had some that sounded like they were simply written end-to-end by ChatGPT. I can’t say anything unless I’m almost certain about what happened. So, I look at past submissions and see if there is a history of doing this sort of thing…”

Suddenly, the faculty member is creating a mental portfolio of misconduct for the student, even before they ask the student what they did and how they did it.

The problem right now is that even asking about AI use makes everyone’s hair bristle. Students often see it as an accusation that automatically brings with it dire consequences. Faculty know this.

Fear and distrust end up controlling the relationship, even if no one says anything.

Here’s my policy (which I tell everyone).

If I think the student and I would benefit from a discussion of their process, I’m going to ask about it.

We need to normalize the question “how did you build this?” not because it helps us police better, but because it helps us support our students on their learning journey. 

There can also be no process-focused pedagogy without that question.

Exploring the Connections Between GenAI, Alternative Assessment, and Process-Minded Teaching | Professor of English and Communications at Berkeley College | Keynote Speaker | Mentor for AAC&U’s AI Institute

I think that — in many ways — we’re entering an age of chat.

(I think that actually may be closer to where we are right now, than an age of AI. These systems hardly seem intelligent at the moment.)

The expectation is that our texts, our art, and our shows need to chat back to us.

Instead of reading a physical book (gasp), we engage with an etext that chats back. 

The spaces where we can just listen and observe, without the noise of something talking back, are becoming less and less.

I worry about this.

I worry that we’re going to forget just how valuable it is to slow down and engage with a text that doesn’t talk back to us.

(Clarification: we need to remember that it’s not the text talking back. It’s some corporation that has created something that *seems* like it’s chatting. If we talk to Scout when reading To Kill A Mockingbird, it’s not an extension of Harper Lee’s vision.  It’s the corporate, often sanitized and less nuanced version. Talking to an AI version of Scout is not the same thing as reading Harper Lee’s novel.)

In education, we need to preserve the value of this exercise. 

Losing it would be a travesty.




———
Image: the first page of my chapter on the age of chat, for the book “Teaching and Learning in the Age of AI” (Routlege).

Here are some of the ways I use annotation in my classroom.

*****

I use individual annotation to boost divergent thinking.

I give them a text and tell them to “Go wild.”

I want them to ask as many questions and make as many observations as they can.

——

I use social annotation to encourage students to converse with others, with a text as the focal point. 

Reading is a platform for community-building.

(I do this sort of annotation through Google Docs. I love seeing a passage with literally hundreds of comments.)

——

I use self-annotation to build self-awareness.

Sometimes, I ask students to annotate their own work and identify the strongest and weakest moments.

Or I have them do “explain what you did” notes, in which they identify their moves and explain why they made them.

*****

Annotation is a chance to slow down and actively build ideas and ask questions of someone else’s work, creating a conversation between the individual, a community of readers, and a written product.

I use annotation to teach divergent thinking.

It’s really simple.

I provide a text.

I tell students to mark it up as much as they possibly can. I encourage them to just write, write, write.

I want questions, highlights, random observations, creative ideas, connections to our lives…

They can make short notes, long discursive notes, and anything in between.

The directions: “Here’s a text. Go wild.”

This treats annotation as a way to explore, creating a “living product” that offers insight into how students think and connect with written text.

“Nothing we do in this class is finished.”

The foundation of process-based teaching is that there is always more to iterate, improve, and reflect on.

Portfolios (or process-folios or process clusters) should be open-ended, or they risk becoming disposable artifacts that prioritize compliance over learning.

AI & Learning Design | CEO / Co-Founder PBL Future Labs | K - 9 STEAM Curriculum Writer | Blogger | Author

Too many schools rely on 'disposable' artifacts, work that loses all value the moment it’s graded.

As I develop scalable 'Student Portfolio Creators' with Claude skills, I’ve been analysing the "evidence" we collect in schools, and how to approach this incredibly complex challenge.

The biggest challenge of PBL is the evidence collection, is showing parents what learning looks like and what 'grade' their child is at, is proving to traditional mindsets we are not crazy, yet when you take a moment to analyse 'the evidence', it shows a larger problem within learning and design.

We rely too heavily on work that fails the "Trash Can Test," low-level tasks that students complain about doing and teachers complain about grading.

These are "disposable" artifacts that lose all utility once they are graded.

Portfolios allow us to shift the focus, but they have to be developed in reverse.

It's now possible to create a 'master Claude skillset' that will enable instructional leaders to help students create "renewable" artifacts.

I believe that levelled Student Portfolio assets (pg6) are the way forward.

Very interested in people's thoughts about this.

Do you think that this could be the way forward for 'capturing a student portfolio?'

PBL Future Labs Thom Markham, Ph.D. Vera Cubero Ashlee Russell, M.Ed. Joanne McGovern Nicole Archer Lori Stratton Dan Thomas Michelle Ament, EdD Austin Levinson, Ed. M. Marcia Powell Cynthia Knight Tom Millinchip Dr Nick Jackson Patrick Dempsey Danny Scuderi Kelli Erwin, EdD

The Biggest Flaw In Education

On Tuesday, December 2nd (4-5pm EDT), I’ll be presenting on how to conduct research with an AI tool.

I’ll focus on SciSpace.

The goal is to:

- Model how to engage with an AI research tool’s output critically. (For example, make sure you take note of whether the tool actually has access to the source or if it’s guessing based on a title or abstract.)

- Think about the larger implications of what happens when AI is embedded in our research tools.

Here’s the link for the free webinar:

https://lnkd.in/eTipAxge

I learned so much about my students as prompters (and as thinkers) this week.

Last week, I had my AI-Powered Communication students at Berkeley submit the following things:

1️⃣ AI Run #1

- Students laid out the vision and the process.
- They created a pre-prompt, prompt, and post-prompt process.

They tried out their workflow.

------------

2️⃣ AI Run #2

- Students did the same thing.
- They designed a project and a process.
- They engaged in a post-prompt workflow.

------------

3️⃣ They engaged in a discussion of their own Prompt Process.

- I know I'm a broken record at this point.
- I think we need to focus on process as much as product.
- I extend that focus to my students work with LLMs.

***********

For feedback, I uploaded a short video covering their process and how we might change things to (a) lean in on follow-up messages and (b) guard our voices.

The point is to get students past the "this is how you prompt" phase, so that they are going through actual personalized workflows.

It's about the back-and-forth with AI systems, rather than the prompt engineering frameworks my students see so frequently.

Next week, they'll do another run and assess:
(a) their own role
(b) the AI's role
(c) how they worked together

Next semester, I’ll be teaching Writing & Research (our Comp I) for the first time in a while.

I’m restructuring the whole thing.

We’ll examine 2 rhetorics modes: Personal and Persuasive.

Here’s the breakdown I have right now.

*******

1️⃣ THE PERSONAL

Students will do individual and social annotations of examples.

(Remi Kalir, PhD’s work informs my approach.)

I’m thinking of popping all of the links to social annotations (which I use Google Docs for) into an Annotation Portfolio, so that students can see their progress as annotators throughout the first half of the course.

Students will create a process cluster for their personal writing.

They’ll design a project, a process, the evaluation criteria, and will do a self-assessment.

Students can use GenAI to help themselves out, and will analyze their use if AI using out Transparency Statement (built for metacognition) and become familiar with the AI Assessment Scale (Leon Furze and Dr Mike Perkins) for self-describing their use of AI. 

For their drafts, we’ll get feedback using the PAIRR | Peer & AI Review + Reflection method.

In other words, students will stitch together their self-assessment, a peer’s assessment, my assessment, and an AI tool’s assessment.

——

2️⃣ THE PERSUASIVE 

I’m going to restructure this around debate, using some of the ideas presented by Stefan Bauschard and Anand Rao on here.

Students will create a second process cluster, but this time it will involve more research-oriented skills.

They’ll do a personal persuasive topic, around something they care about. 

They’ll do something similar to Process Cluster #1.

They’ll design the project, the process, the evaluation criteria, and so on.

As they work on their personal project, we’ll spend time working on a social project.

That social project will be a debate around a topic we choose.

(I’m still working out the specifics.)

The final assignment will be an experiential one: students will engage in a debate, using everything they’ve created and annotated.

 *******

No individual assignments will get grades or numbers. We’ll do formative feedback and students will get completed or Incompletes.

(Completes mean they hit the assignment objective. Incompletes mean I want them to try again.)

Every class, students will be completing a Project-Based Learning task (Phillip Alcock). They’ll create something every class. 

The goals are to:

- create a discipline-tied notion of AI Literacy (Jeanne Beatrix Law, PhD).

- focus on process, as students design and implement entire processes rather than submitting one-and-done products.

- realign grades with learning, while also de-emphasizing grades themselves. If I think a student would benefit from trying again, I’m going to ask them to give it another shot.

At what point does a human dialoguing with a computer become a creative exercise?

(Or maybe it never becomes creativity. I’m open to that argument.)

I think it’s an important question when we talk about AI and the classroom, especially if we agree that classrooms can be creative spaces.

In this clip…

Charlie Puth creates an entire track out of a short voicemail left by Jimmy Fallon.

He gets main vocals, supporting vocals, a beat, and so on…

At a certain point, does Puth dialoguing with a machine become creative?

When and why?

At what point can we locate the creativity in Puth himself, even though he doesn’t sing a single note or play a single instrument?

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