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ASSIGNING AN ORAL PRESENTATION
“the whys
and hows for faculty”
Due
to requests from faculty, the Oral Presentation Assessment Committee
wants to share the following with you, whether or not you choose to
be involved in the oral presentation assessment project.
WHY
SHOULD I ASSIGN AN ORAL PRESENTATION?
Benefits to your
students
•
Oral presentations are ‘student-centered’ classroom activities.
• Students explore their own interests within the
parameters of your class.
• Students are able to better retain and interact
with the content of your class.
• Students get to practice skills in organization
and articulation of thoughts.
• Students enjoy increased learning through peer
research and presentation.
•
Oral presentations develop oral communication skills that employers
seek and demand in the workplace.
•
Oral presentations reinforce research skills.
•
Oral presentations promote creativity in your course, especially in
objective-based courses.
•
Oral presentations allow your students to listen to someone other
than you!
HOW
DO I BEST DEVELOP AN ORAL PRESENTATION ASSIGNMENT?
Increasing the teaching and learning
of your class assignments
Topic Selection and Preparation
• In oral presentations, less
is more when it comes to the audience being able to interact with
and retain the content. Therefore, provide a specific framework for
the student presenter. Focused assignments allow presenters
to clearly plan what they should do and, more importantly, allow for
increased listening on the part of the audience.
Unfocused – “Give a speech on a business topic that
we haven’t had time to cover in class.”
Focused – “Prepare a 5 to 7-minute informative presentation
on a customer service training issue for employees in a medical-related
company.”
Unfocused
– “Give a speech where you take a stand on a current
event.”
Focused – “Prepare a 3 to 5-minute persuasive presentation
that convinces your audience to take action on an issue relevant
to the management of the City of Phoenix.”
• Encourage your students to turn in a one-sentence
summary of their oral presentation. Can they tell what their
presentations are “about” in one sentence?
•
Encourage your students to follow the basic Introduction, Body and
Conclusion format:
•
Introduction – “Tell Them What You’re Going To
Tell Them”
•
Body – “Tell Them”
• Conclusion – “Tell Them What You’ve
Told Them”
•
Set a relatively short time limit for the oral presentations.
If your students cannot say what they need to say in 3-10 minutes,
they most likely have not pared down their thoughts and are beginning
to ramble in a disorganized way. Shorter time limits…
• Force students to prioritize their information.
• Teach students that working within time limits
is a real-world skill.
• Use less of your class time.
• Allow for better listening on the part of the
audience.
Delivery
Encourage your students to abide by the following effective delivery
practices:
• We speak for the purpose of informing or persuading
an audience. Have your students keep their audience in
mind as they prepare their topic, choose supplementary materials
for communicating that topic and choose language with which to
communicate that topic.
• Bring notecards that
contain key words and phrases only. A written manuscript promotes
the temptation to read – and then all eye contact is lost.
• Speak in a conversational tone rather than read
a written paper. Written speech sounds different than conversational
speech and is harder on the audience’s ears.
• Give eye contact to the whole audience (and not
just the instructor). Eye contact is the one true “physical”
connection between a speaker and his or her audience.
Assignment
Format Options
There are three common
formats for presenting the oral presentations:
1)
All students can
present back to back, taking up one to two days of class.
2)
One to three students
can be assigned to present at the beginning of a class period.
You can then move on to other content for the rest of the period.
All students will eventually present over the course of several
weeks.
3)
Break up the class
into groups of about five students. Each student presents to the
other four speakers in his or her group. This way you can have
several groups in action all at once. Of course, this arrangement
will impact your ability to grade individual presentations, so
you will have to have the graded part of the assignment come in
another form, perhaps in an written abstract or a written outline (but not a written
manuscript!).
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