Grants Showcase
From Passivity to Activity
Story by Jane Roberts
"It's one thing to have ideas; it's another thing to organize and present them," says Diana Rehling, Communication Studies faculty member at St. Cloud State University and the co-author of Presentation Help Online, a website that offers advice to instructors who want to incorporate well-designed oral presentation assignments into their classes.
Rehling and her colleague Paula Tompkins were searching for a way to get students to accept a higher degree of responsibility for their learning and to encourage students to use their communication skills across the curriculum. Believing that oral presentations can be a transformational experience for students, the two set out to create a website which would provide assistance to faculty in creating reasonable, realistic oral presentation assignments and evaluation practices. The result: Presentation Help Online, an 80+ page website, which, thanks to a Learning by Doing grant from the Center for Teaching and Learning, serves as a rescue remedy for faculty looking for ways boost students' participation levels in their classrooms
What's So Great About Oral Presentations?
Rehling and Tompkins make a case that well-designed and well-executed oral presentation coursework provides active learning experiences, adds variety in class sessions, and demands that students exercise reflective, creative and critical thinking. In terms of active learning, these spoken performances allow students to better understand course content and create a sense of ownership of course material. Furthermore, Rehling and Tompkins contend, "effective oral presentations not only improve presentation skills but also build confidence and increase students' awareness of the power of communication."
In their grant proposal, Rehling and Tompkins cited research that argues presentations can help "students learn by giving them the opportunity to orally articulate ideas, by helping them discover how their communication functions in context, and by giving them a chance to further their thinking through continued articulation" (Palmerton, P., 1988. "Speaking across-the-curriculum: Threat, opportunity, or both?" Paper presented at Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago). Further research indicates that passivity declines as students take a greater responsibility for what they and others will learn (Weiss, R., 1990. "The DePauw University Oral Communication Competence Requirement." Paper presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago)
Effective learning through the process of preparing and delivering oral presentations, however, depends on creative, well designed and thoughtfully evaluated assignments. Presentation Help Online steps up to the podium and delivers the materials needed to create and evaluate these auditory learning opportunities and doesn't stop until it clearly communicates how these assignments will effect faculty, students, and the classroom.
Real-World Advice
Rehling and Tompkins acknowledge that presentations can create an anxious situation for the presenter and often for the faculty member responsible for evaluating the performance, content, materials and delivery of the presenter. Therefore, while both professors are clearly strong proponents of incorporating oral presentations into the classroom, they remain objective in their advice. This objectivity is present right from the start as they open the website with a no-bones discussion of issues to help you decide whether adding certain oral presentations to the otherwise controlled setting of your classroom is even something you want to consider. They list the drawbacks, challenges, and issues that will inevitability crop up--such as the certainty of some students delivering weak presentations, the hassles of technology and the element of student apprehension.
One of the biggest issues of having students do oral presentations is the question of what to do if they don't do a good job presenting information that other students will later be tested on, says Rehling. "My solution to this is to allow time at the end of each presentation so that I can clarify anything and let the students know that they can trust the information they heard."
But don't let these issues dissuade you. Rehling and Tompkins arm you with real-world advice that is steeped in the kind of honesty that can only come from the trials and tribulations of their personal experience, the evidence of which you can find in their nitty-gritty section entitled The Devil is in the Details. But your mentors are angels, for their gift to you is the preparedness you gain when reading this section on planning for the use of technology, anticipating students' speech anxiety and knowing in advance the criteria you'll apply in the grading process. In short, Rehling and Tompkins are like trail guides, reminding you to bring a flashlight, a pocketknife and a raincoat on what might be a long hike through the woods
Preparing for technology, for example, your online mentors recommend deciding in advance whether or not you will encourage or allow students to use PowerPoint, video clips, overheads or other technology-related visuals and if so, who will be responsible for making the arrangements for equipment. Hint: If it's you, then give them deadlines for signing up for equipment. And then, they warn, get ready for equipment related problems and know ahead of time how you'll deal with them when they occur, such as whether or not you will reschedule presentations.
In a recent oral presentation of her own on the subject of this website, Rehling reiterated some of these points: You have to budget your class time, she warns. "I tell students, 'You go one minute and 10 seconds over the allotted time and you're docked a full letter grade.' I fudge it a little, but what it means is that they practice out-loud with each other. And the bonus of their working together like this is that it creates a more supportive atmosphere in the classroom. "
"The main thing I try to emphasize is that though this material may be difficult, students are capable of learning something on their own. The question 'How do I explain what I've learned to some else?'-the act of processing that's involved in answering that- is often as valuable a learning experience as the information itself."
"The other thing that I really try to get across to students is that the ability to articulate your thoughts is a highly desirable skill in any profession. For example, you might be a brilliant engineer, but unless you can speak well and express yourself clearly to others, you're going to be sitting in the back of a lab, which is fine if that's what you want to do, but if you know how to communicate your ideas with others, you can go a lot farther," Rehling said. To substantiate the authors' claims that the world values those who have strong presentation skills, the website quotes additional sources that support this idea. For example, one survey showed that ninety percent of executives in the nation's largest corporations recommended that the college courses include a strong emphasis on oral presentations. Ninety-eight percent of these executives regularly use pubic-speaking skills.
Taking the Plunge
Once you are persuaded that jumping the oral presentation hurdle is worth the effort, the website focuses on three main areas: Designing Assignments, Evaluating Assignments and Sample Assignments. From down-loadable samples and customizable forms to tips and criteria for evaluations, this electronic address emphasizes content and organization, underscores the importance of delivery skill and includes examples of detailed feedback to students. The site also points to resources your students can use in preparing their talks, such as links to sites that provide help with organizing speeches and managing stage frigh
Creating Criteria
What goes into creating an assignment? According to Rehling, three of the most immediate questions you need to ask yourself before making the assignments are 1) Will it provide valuable information to the class, 2) Will it motivate others to attend, and 3) How are you going to engage the audience that is the class? In other words, think of the role of the class as being more than just an audience to the presenter. Will you test students on the information presented? Will you allow a question and answer period after each presentation?
Rehling recommends a question and answer period. "Students experience an incredible sense of satisfaction when they are able to answer questions at the end of their presentations. It helps them develop an awareness of just how much they really know and the confidence they come away with is truly empowering."
The web authors suggest that you let the students' know you will be scrutinizing their presentations based on the following: topic, organization, appropriateness and delivery. They also name three additional measurements you may like to include in the assignment: quality reasoning, visual aids and handouts, and Q & A periods
But how will you assess whether the students were able to work within the parameters you set? Not to worry. The site lists plenty of questions you can use to measure success. For example, questions that measure topic relate to the significance and relevance of said topic, such as "Does the presentation make a worthwhile contribution to the audience's understanding of the topic? Was the presentation insightful? a thorough examination of the topic? lightweight? trivial?" Their list of questions covers every aspect of the speech, allowing the instructor to gauge each angle with a consistent tool.
What Do Students Want?
It's no mystery, apparently. Students want information-lots of it. A section called From the Students' Perspective is based on a survey of students conducted by the website authors, and it outlines some of the aspects students would like faculty to address when giving them an oral presentation assignment. They put in a request for clear goals or purposes for the assignment, sought time frames and limits for the presentation, and asked for as many possible samples as imaginable, such as sample outlines, sample topics and videotaped examples of previous successful presentations.
"Students are especially interested in knowing why the assignment is being made and what specifically is expected of them. And they want resources to help them be successful at giving presentations." On the website, they list some examples of websites they've found to be especially useful. One in particular is a site created by the University of Kansas called Virtual Communication Assistants. For APA and MLA style guides for bibliographies or outlines, they point to Literacy Education Online, also known as LEO.
"I've found that if you provide the means, students can do it, and they will do it. I recommend giving them a copy of the evaluation form. I say 'This is what I'm going to use, so here you go.'" More than anything else, however, Rehling emphasizes holding students accountable for what they know and for what she knows they are able to do. "If they've had a public speaking course, and many of them will have, then they know how to do this. You have to insist that you know they know. And then let them do it," she says.
Two-thirds of the way through the development of the site, Rehling and Tompkins encountered a learning by doing experience of their own. "The equipment and software presented us with significant problems, always at inopportune times," says Rehling. The combination of problems and the HTML-editor, Dreamweaver, required re-creation and reloading of the site just as they were preparing for a focus group. Thus, they enlisted the help of fellow faculty member, David Warne. A Communication Studies professor at St. Cloud State University for the past fourteen years, Warne served as their Web-master and an additional editor and contributor to the site.
What Do You Want?
Are oral presentations right for your classroom? Are you searching for the secret to get students out of passivity and into active participation in their own learning? Is active learning the key to greater student responsibility and increased comprehension? Perhaps the only way to know for sure is to learn by doing. But if you do offer the floor to your students, don't miss this website
Related Links:
Presentation Help Online | St. Cloud State Communication Studies
