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Assessment Office, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

2550 Campus Rd, Honolulu, HI 96822

manoa.hawaii/edu/assessment

airo@hawaii.edu

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies

Suggested citation

Hill, Y. Z. & Zaleski, H. (November, 2017). Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies [Workshop PowerPoint slides

and Hanout]. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Mānoa Assessment Office.

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Slide 1

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies

Yao Hill, Ph.D.Facilitator

Assessment Office

Halina Zaleski, Ph.D.Guest Speaker

HNFAS

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies Carefully and strategically designed assignments can lead to powerful learning and development in students. This workshop is designed for faculty interested in developing students' oral presentation skills. In this workshop, participants will learn to apply oral presentation assignment design strategies based on learning principles and oral communication development research; select and adapt tools commonly used in excellent oral communication assignments (e.g., rubrics, scaffolding techniques) and from UHM faculty members; and learn to assess student learning meaningfully and efficiently. Level: Beginner Who should attend: All faculty interested in developing student oral presentation skills, especially faculty teaching Oral Communication General Education designated courses. Format: Presentation + Interactive Activities Date/time/location: Friday, November 17, 1:00-1:50 PM, KUY 106 Before I start today’s presentation, let me ask you two questions? Do you assign oral presentation tasks in your class? From fist to five, show me how many times do you ask your students to present, including practicing their presentations? Let me introduce you to Halina Zaleski, professor from Human Nutrition and Food and Animal Sciences. Let’s hear how she manages to schedule 6 presentation opportunities for her students, among other successful strategies to help students develop oral presentation skills. Image source: http://go.hawaii.edu/GXR

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Halina’s Presentation Slides

ANSC 432 Swine ProductionScaffolding Oral Presentations

Halina M. Zaleski

Learning Outcomes▪ Apply science and practical

considerations to swine production

▪ Present swine farm description orally (O) and in writing (W)

▪ Evaluate and compare

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Six Oral Presentationsand Six Written Reports

▪ Small class size▪ Project-based▪ Extensive laulima

resources▪ Coaching, not lecturing▪ Group presentations

and reports

Team Presentations15 Minutes/Team

▪ Teams of 3 studentsand 1 farmer

▪ Before: coordinate andpractice

▪ During: mutual support▪ After: review and plan

for improvement

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Student Challenges

▪ Facing the audience▪ No reading▪ Language▪ Purposeful gestures▪ Hesitation▪ Use of tone▪ Team organization▪ Missing content items

Scaffolding

▪ Identify key area for improvement for each presentation

▪ Provide general feedback▪ Weigh later presentations

more heavily in grading

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Rubric

▪ Organization▪ Key Points▪ Supporting Material▪ Language▪ Delivery▪ Team Work

Based on VALUE rubric

Student Growth

Most valuable/helpful• Farm visits• Hands-on• Constructive feedback• Small classResult: international conference ready

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Slide 2

Jenifer Winter Hoku AikauJennifer Matayoshi

Contributors

I would like to acknowledge my colleagues who contributed to the ideas in this workshop, who are all experts and experienced in teaching oral presentations

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Slide 3

Practice

The first strategy to enhance students’ oral presentation is very straightforward: giving students the time and opportunity to practice.

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Slide 4

Stephanie

Evergreen

Practice 4 times

Twice infront of other people

Stephanie Evergreen, an expert in visual presentation in the field of evaluation, recommended all presenters to practice 4 times, twice in front of other people in her Presentation Preparation Checklist for American Evaluation Association conferences: http://www.eval.org/d/do/2286

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Slide 5

Practice

Feedback

Reflection

The second is feedback. Halina has students do six presentations, each time, she asks students to improve on one thing: “Face the audience,” for example. She doesn’t give feedback on all six points on the rubric. Focus on one thing at a time. The third strategy is to give opportunities for students to reflect on their performance by themselves, with peers, or with your help.

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Slide 6

Student learning

outcomesRubrics

There are two tools that you may consider to make the feedback and reflection targeted and meaningful. They are: • Student learning outcomes • Rubrics Students learning outcomes are what we expect students to know, to be able to do, and to value by the end of the course.

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Slide 7

Make learning outcomes clear to your students

The first strategy to OC assignment design is to make student learning outcomes clear and explicit to your students. If students are aware of the outcomes, they can make better sense of the assignment and better engage in self-engaged learning.

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Slide 8

Key Student Learning Outcome Categories

Content DeliveryContext

Oral communication competencies can be classified into three categories: • context of communication,• communication content, and• content delivery.

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Slide 9

Context

Purpose Audience

In many oral communication tasks, we don’t ask students to analyze the context. However, analyzing the context should be the first step in making the oral communication tasks relevant and effective. We emphasize two competencies under this category: ability to identify the purpose and ability to analyze and describe the audience. In terms of context, students need to clearly identify the purpose of the oral task. Is it to inform, to persuade, or to entertain the audience. In terms of persuading the audience, specifically, are we trying to convince, inspire, or to advocate? Is there a desired action that we want the audience to take after our presentation? In addition to purpose, understanding the audience is crucially important to making the oral communication task relevant and trustworthy. Very often, we prepare our students to present to an academic audience in their discipline or academic community. If that is the case, citing sources, clearly explaining the project approach and methods can be very relevant and important to establishing your authority in the topic. On the other hand, we also need to prepare our students to communicate with people in the non-academic world. We need to consider their culture, gender, age, and knowledge level. For example, if we ask students to give a class presentation to their peers on the topic of Instagram, they may prepare the presentation very differently than giving a presentation to seniors in a community center. With peers, they don’t have to go over a lot of terminologies and can quickly move from introduction to advanced features of Instagram. With seniors, they really want to

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stick with plain language and using examples relevant to a senior’s life: seeing pictures of grandchildren, and so on. Whether the audience are asked to attend the presentation (like in a classroom setting) or whether they come voluntarily (in community events) would also make a difference in preparing the presentation. For a captured audience, you might be able to provide more in-depth information and provoke deeper thinking. In the handout, you can see two examples of Audience Analysis assignment. One assignment asks students to investigate the audience’s prior knowledge by asking them several interview questions, such as ‘Have you used it before?’ ‘What do you use it for?’ ‘How often do you use it?’ Another task asks the students to clearly identify an interest group (e.g., legislature, building association board, college students) when presenting on their sustainability topic.

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Slide 10

Often times, the audience is students’ classmates, or you, as their instructors. If students are doing a research presentation, can we refocus their audience and purpose so that they can structure their presentation to be more compelling?

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Slide 11

Funding Request

What about reporting your existing research and propose the next research to national funding organizations? Now suddenly, students really need to convince the audience of the significance of their research.

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Slide 12

To potential employers

Ask students to show their skills to potential employers. Describe their ability to design and carry out an engineering project. A professor in Civil Engineering, divides students in teams and asks each team to pretend to be a company. Each student is assigned a role: president, vice president, senior engineer, and a financial manager, and so on. In the end-of-semester capstone presentations, the professor would invite employers to come and judge students’ presentations of their engineering projects. This truly motivates students to do the best that they can, giving students the opportunity to talk to real audience.

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Slide 13

Community Outreach

What about envisioning the community as your audience? Dental Hygiene has a new element added to their existing curriculum: dental health for young children (0-5 years). The curriculum trains the students to reach out to the community, like public schools and provide dental health knowledge to teachers and kids. So how are they going to present? Lots of terminologies that no one can understand? Or using pictures, puppet shows, stories to make it accessible to the young kids?

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Slide 14

Ask student: What change do you want to see in your audience?

Presentations are given to make a change in the world. Presentations should not be given if it doesn’t change something in your audience. Either your audience is inspired or gains more knowledge that they want to act upon. It should make an impact in the audience. So create that change.

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Slide 15

Motivating assignments: Authentic tasks with public audience

However, your students would not be motivated to make a change in the audience if they don’t have an authentic audience. You can help students find that authentic audience. One effective strategy to make the assignment motivating is to use real life tasks with the audience beyond the walls of the classroom. Students can produce a news report and put it on YouTube, make a Podcast, or make a mock TedTalk. On your blue handout, bottom of the first page and top of the second page, you can see two assignment examples from two experts on how to conduct audience analysis so as to gear one’s presentation to the audience. Picture Sources: [PodCast] https://pixabay.com/en/podcast-icon-podcast-podcast-symbol-1322239/ [newscast] http://photosforclass.com/search?text=breaking+news+kermit [tedtalks] http://photosforclass.com/search?text=ideas+worth+spreading

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Slide 16

Content

•Central message•Organization•Language usage•Supporting evidence/material

In terms of content, clear presentation of the central message is very important. What is the key takeaway? Ask students to present it in the beginning, repeat it throughout, and remind the audience at the end. Organization. We all want students to better organize their presentations but we need tell them how. Have a clear introduction, clear signals when transiting from one idea to the next, and clear conclusion. Language use is always a problem. We observe some students in lower level classes frequently using colloquial language in their presentation. When presenting to academy audience, students would need to learn to use formal and academic language. Even when presenting to the community members, the language can be informal, but still needs to be respectful, and demonstrates professionalism. Supporting evidence/material refers to not only PowerPoint or visual aids. It is also about the sources that students use in the literature and the evidence that support their argument. It could even be their personal stories. It could be pictures, cultural artifacts, videos of dance, and so on. One source to check out: Nelson, E. J., & Petersen-Perman, D. S. (2011). Public speaking: A developmental guide. Hayden-McNeil.

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Slide 17

Delivery

•Verbal •Non-verbal•Supporting materials

Last but not least, we should expect students to effectively deliver the oral task using both verbal and non-verbal strategies. Verbal strategies include: using varied pace or tone to emphasize main points and capture audience’s interest, appropriately using pauses, maintaining audible and variable volume of speech and so on. For many non-native speakers, teaching students to use verbal strategies are very important to facilitate effective communication. On your handout, in the middle part of the second page, I listed some techniques to help students with verbal and non-verbal delivery.

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Slide 18

Key Outcomes (handout)Content

• Central message• Organization• Language usage• Supporting

evidence/material

Delivery

• Verbal• Non-verbal• Supporting

materials

Context

• Purpose• Audience

Slide 19

Rubric as key scaffolding & reflection tool

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Slide 20

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa uses AAC&U’s Oral Communication VALUE rubric to judge students’ oral presentations. Faculty can consider adopting or adapting this rubric for their students. The rubric makes your expectations clear to the students. Students can use it to self-assess and reflect on their own progress.

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Slide 21

Student learning

outcomesRubrics

Again, the three strategies are: practice, feedback, and reflection with two assessment tools: Student learning outcomes and rubrics.

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Slide 22

Score Practice 1 Practice 2 Practice 3 Practice 4

Organization 4

3

2

1

Not

es

Self-Assessment Progress Chart

On your green handout, you can see the student self-assessment progress chart. On this chart, students are going to record their performance under each evaluation category or criterion. On the screen, I present the chart for the first evaluation category: Organization.

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Slide 23

Practice 1 Practice 2 Practice 3 Practice 4

Organization 4

3

2

1

Not

es

Self-Assessment Progress Chart

If the chart is filled out, it looks like this. It says, when this student does his/her first practice, he/she scored 1; in the second practice, scored 2; third practice, scored 2 again; and the forth and final time, he/she scored 3. Excellent progress.

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Slide 24

Practice 1 Practice 2

Self Peer Self PeerOrganization 4

3

2

1

Self-Assessment Progress Chart

You can modify this chart by adding more columns or split a column to accommodate self-assessment, peer assessment, and instructor’s scores.

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Slide 25

Practice 1 Practice 2 Practice 3 Practice 4

Organization 4

3

2

1

Not

es

Self-Assessment Progress Chart

Examples Elaborations Explanations Rubric Language

Research on self-assessment tells us that students can be trained to perform quality self/peer-assessment, but they are often poor self-assessors without training. In other words, for students to be able to give themselves and their peers objective and reliability judgement, they need training. And the training doesn’t need to be hard. Simply ask students to give examples, elaborations, explanations and rationales of why they give the score they do. The key is to ask students to use the rubric language to comment on their performance. Something like this: “I have used a logical structure with introduction and conclusion, but I wouldn’t call it skillful”.

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Slide 26

Practice 1? Practice 2? Practice 3? Practice 4?Organization 4

3

2

1

Not

es

Where do I find all that practice time?

At this time, you may be thinking “This sounds like a great idea if only I have all that class time to have students practice. Where do I find all that time?” Do you feel that you are stressed for time in the class? You are not alone. Here are some strategies that other faculty have used.

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Slide 27

Practice at home

One simple way to increase practice time is to ask your students to practice at home. They can be wearing their pajamas for their first practice just to get the organization right, for example.

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Slide 28

Have students record their presentation

Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYGMdEEjuJE

How do you know whether students actually practiced? One tool to do so is the movenote google app. It allows the presenter to display the slides on one side of the screen and the presenter on the other side of the screen. [Movenote image]: https://www.movenote.com/

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Slide 29

You can learn how to use it by following a short online tutorial on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYGMdEEjuJE

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Slide 30

Adobe Spark

Another self-presentation tool is Adobe Spark, which is a free tool to make photo and video stories. It is recommended by a faculty teaching technology media at Tokai International College. This tool makes media integration very easy, good tool for humanities, social sciences, education, and business school students. It is also mobile friendly.

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Slide 31

Present to Peers

Instructor: Cheryl Treiber-Kawaoka

If it is impossible to have individual students practice presentation in front of the whole class, is it possible for them to present in pairs or small groups. Instructor Cheryl Treiber-Kawaoka from Institute for Teacher Education asked students to use their cell phones to record their peer presentations and upload on a private YouTube channel for students to self-assess and for the instructor to give feedback. You can find a 3-minute tutorial on How to Make a YouTube Private Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qZAfcZx6U0

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Slide 32

Make Time

Instructor: Gregg Lizenbery

From the experience of Gregg Lizenbery, a faculty member in SOEST, students will not consider the feedback after they give the final presentation. The learning moment is when they receive feedback on their practice presentation. Gregg borrowed a video recorder from the Assessment Office to record his student presentations. He gave students’ feedback and asked students to view their own presentations to reflect on ways to improve. Students’ final presentations are much improved. The practice time in class made a big difference. As you heard from Halina just now, she had students do 6 presentations (5 practice and 1 final) in her capstone class. As a side note, if you want to borrow camcorder or tripod from our office to help your student practice, you can.

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Slide 33

Student learning

outcomesRubrics

Just now, I gave strategies on how to use student learning outcomes and rubrics to help with student reflection and ways to give your students more opportunities to practice. Using outcomes and rubrics can also make your feedback more targeted. Next, I am going to go over some areas that our students specifically need help with.

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Slide 34

In delivering oral presentation, Mānoa students need most help with __________?A. Central MessageB. DeliveryC. LanguageD. OrganizationE. Supporting Material

This is a question for you. Which area do our students need most help with? It is “B. Delivery.”

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Slide 35

0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

Delivery CentralMessage

Language Organization SupportingMaterial

From the preliminary data analysis of a sample of 40 students institutional wide, we found that students struggle with the delivery aspect of oral presentation the most, especially in their non-verbal body language and in their use of voice. Even though this results may not be generalizable, it does point out the major areas that we can help our students.

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Slide 36

In this video that I am about to show you, it presented 9 bad examples of oral presentation which we also see our students do.

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Slide 37

Presentation Good/Bad Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5c1susCPAE

I once thought that delivery can be easily fixed. Just tell students don’t put hands in their pocket and play with their hair, for example. Yet, after my presentation at American Evaluation Association on this point, my next presenter when he presented, he put his hands in his pocket! Well, behavioral change is hard. Often it is because of anxiety and lack of practice. With expert help, we compiled a list of strategies on helping students deal with anxiety and use verbal and nonverbal strategies to keep the audience engaged. Consider having your students acting out good and bad presentation body language. There are a lot of resources out there. In the handout, I provided a list of YouTube videos on oral presentation tips. You can pick and forward to your students. The most important tips are, again, to give students the opportunity to practice, reflect, and receive feedback. Kid hands in pocket image: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/625277 Playing hair: https://static.pexels.com/photos/75664/lisa-75664.jpeg

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Slide 38

0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

Delivery CentralMessage

Language Organization SupportingMaterial

Among the samples of the students that we have collected, we also found that it is very hard for students to achieve the highest level on the category of language and organization.

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Slide 39

Difficulty to achieve high on Organization andLanguageOrganization Level 4Organizational pattern (specific introduction and conclusion, sequenced material within the body, and transitions) is clearly and consistently observable and is skillful and makes the content of the presentation cohesive.

Language Level 4Language choices are imaginative, memorable, andcompelling, and enhance the effectiveness of the presentation. Language in presentation is appropriate to audience.

My experience as a video-recorder and rater tells me that it is very difficult to achieve the highest level on Organization and Language. To get a score of 4, your organization needs to be skillful. Just presenting a formulaic: introduction, hypothesis, methods, results, and implications in a logical order will get you a 3, but not 4. To achieve the highest level on language seems to be even more challenging. Just deliver a presentation using professional academic language to academic audience will only get you a 3, unless your language choices are imaginative, memorable, and compelling.

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Slide 40

Hoku Aikau

Create a Story Board

Hoku Aikau, the previous director of General Education Office would recommend their students to develop a story board. I think this concept is well illustrated in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i68a6M5FFBc&feature=youtu.be&t=61

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Slide 41

Once upon a time

Tell a story

After you have a story board, why don’t add some techniques to make your story memorable and compelling. Tell a story! Check out this resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_FJAOcFgQ&feature=youtu.be&t=117

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Slide 42

?

Cheryl, as I mentioned before, directly asks students to present a hook on the second slide after their title. What is a hook? A hook can be a question at the beginning of the presentation. For example, at the beginning of this workshop, I ask how stressed for time you are giving practice time for your students to present. The second is to present a quote from famous people or humor. The third is to show data in the form of a visual, like a chart. In this chart, the green part shows the amount of renewable energy, and the white portion is the non-renewable energy. How long do we have before we run out energy to support our life? That is a hook.

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Slide 43

Practice

Feedback

Reflection

To summarize, the key strategies to help students improve oral presentation are to give them practice opportunities, constructive and targeted feedback, and opportunity to reflect.

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Slide 44

Student learning

outcomesRubrics

I provide two specific tools to guide practice, feedback, and reflection. These are: student learning outcomes and rubrics.

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Slide 45

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies

Yao Hill, Ph.D.Yao.hill@hawaii.edu

Halina Zaleski, Ph.D.halina@hawaii.edu

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies (November 2017)

Page 1 of 5

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies Workshop Handout

Audience Analysis Assignment Examples Example 1: Audience Prior Knowledge Analysis (Sample Instructions)

Survey the potential audience on their knowledge of the key points that you want to cover in your presentation. Use the results to determine the coverage of key points and your language choices (e.g., whether you need to provide background information before you introduce the key points, skip certain points, determine the extent to define the jargons).

Inspired by Matayoshi, J. (2016). Technical Presentation Criteria: Enhancing Audience Understanding. University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. Example 2: Audience Description Exercise (Sample Instructions)

Examples of different audiences (there are many more): - college undergraduates at the University of Hawai'i (or some particular branch campus); - members of the Hawai'i State Legislature; - residents of Hawai'i – or some subset such as homeowners, those interested in growing

their own food, inactive potential voters, those in a certain geographical area, etc.) Descriptions should include:

- How this sustainability issue would affect them? - Why they should potentially care about this issue? - Their characteristics that would influence your rhetoric/word choice/communication

style. Examples include: age, education background, power to affect community, people they can influence, etc.

Inspired by Winter, J. (2016). Assignment 3: Audience identification/channel rationale prompt on the Sustainability – A Strategic Communication Workshop syllabus. University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.

Strategies to Help Students with Delivery

Discuss and provide techniques for dealing with stage fright a. Arrive at the venue early and be prepared b. Visualize oneself presenting to the audience beforehand c. Use calming techniques (e.g., breathing techniques)

Discuss and provide verbal strategies (e.g. pace/rate, volume, pitch, tone/animation, enunciation & pronunciation, silent/vocal pauses, fluidity)

a. Articulation techniques (e.g., “red, leather, yellow, leather;” talking with a candy in mouth)

b. Ways to attract an audience’s attention (e.g., quotation, startling statistics, rhetorical questions, humor)

Discuss and provide non-verbal strategies (e.g., posture, gestures, facial expression, eye contact)

Require students to practice presentation at home (including timing) and ask students to self-assess

Practice presentation (in class small group activity) and ask students to give constructive feedback to each other

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies (November 2017)

Page 2 of 5

Oral Presentation Assessment Progress Chart Template User Guide: Use the chart to track students’ improvement over time. Students can color in the level they are at and below after each presentation. Add more columns to include peer assessment and/or self assessment. See example on the second page.

Practice 1 Practice 2 Practice 3 Practice 4 Organization 4

3 2 1

Not

es

Language 4 3 2 1

Not

es

Supporting Material

4 3 2 1

Not

es

Delivery 4 3 2 1

Not

es

Central Message

4 3 2 1

Not

es

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies (November 2017)

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Example Completed Oral Presentation Assessment Progress Chart

Practice 1 Week 3

Practice 2 Week 5

Practice 3 Week 8

Practice 4 Week 12

Organization 4 3 2 1

Not

es

Language 4 3 2 1

Not

es

Supporting Material

4 3 2 1

Not

es

Delivery 4 3 2 1

Not

es

Central Message

4 3 2 1

Not

es

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies (November 2017)

Page 4 of 5

YouTube Videos for Student Self-Development (updated on 11/17/17) HOW TO Give a Great Presentation - 7 Presentation Skills and Tips to Leave an Impression

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnIPpUiTcRc Author: Practical Psychology Features: know your audience, structure your presentation, use visuals, use repetition, have a story to tell, be relatable, build your confidence with practice

10 Tips for Better Presentations: Simple Strategies for More Effective Talks (15:41) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlEJlHAoIYg Author: Barbara Chamberlin Organization: New Mexico State University

How to Give an Awesome (PowerPoint) Presentation (2:53) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i68a6M5FFBc Author: Wienot Films Features: Using story-telling and engaging visuals to introduce the key strategies for effective presentations: tell a story; less is more on PPT slide; practice and rehearse

How to Quickly Design a Beautiful PowerPoint Presentation (5:42) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVYwKXPBb7w Author: PowerPoint Skills Features: step-by-step instructions on how to manipulate images and text to create a beautiful and effective PPT slides

Presentation Strategies by Mr. R.R. Panda (18:03) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3DcT5tddao Features: Knowledge-based presentation on strategies to deliver a presentation

6 Public Speaking Tips to Hook Any Audience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8GvTgWtR7o Author: Charisma on Command Features: techniques to engage the audience’s interest and emotion

How to open and close presentations? – Presentation lesson from Mark Powell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_FJAOcFgQ Author: Cambridge University Press ELT Features: excellent real life examples of good open and close presentations

Presentation Good/Bad Examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5c1susCPAE

Tips on Giving Oral Presentations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKOO99UjsSE

Oral Presentation Assignment Design Strategies (November 2017)

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van Ginkel, S., Gulikers, J., Biemans, H., & Mulder, M. (2015). Towards a set of design principles

for developing oral presentation competence: A synthesis of research in higher education. Educational Research Review, 14, 62-80.