Presentation Trainer: what experts and computers can tell about your nonverbal communication

Abstract

The ability to present effectively is essential for professionals; therefore oral communication courses have become part of the curricula for higher education studies. However, speaking in public is still a challenge for many graduates. To tackle this problem, driven by the recent advances in computer vision techniques and prosody analysis, multimodal tools have been designed to support the development of public speaking skills. One of these tools is the Presentation Trainer, a research prototype able to provide learners with real-time feedback on a set of nonverbal communication aspects. Despite initial positive evaluations, the application still lacks grounding in a valid assessment model for nonverbal communication aspects in the context of presentations. To come up with such a model, we conducted semi-structured interviews with experts in the public speaking domain. Furthermore, the objective of these interviews was also to have a formative evaluation of the Presentation Trainer, analyzing how it suits with common practices for teaching and learning public speaking skills. The results of this study identify 131 nonverbal communication practices that affect the quality of a presentation, and summarize experts' points of view regarding multimodal public speaker instructors.

The added benefit of an extra practice session in virtual reality on the development of presentation skills: A randomized control trial

“…Heavy course loads leave instructors little time to teach oral presentation skills, forcing many students to acquire the skills through self-learning (Bankowski, 2010). Thus, creating more opportunities to practice and receive the needed feedback through more human assistance is neither feasible nor affordable (Schneider, Börner, Van Rosmalen, & Specht, 2017).…”

Beyond Reality—Extending a Presentation Trainer with an Immersive VR Module

“…Second, it allows learners to look at the development of their performance, based on the objective measurements (percentage of time spent on mistakes) tracked by the PT. Third, it allows learners to rate their performance because according to experts in public speaking ultimately only the presenter is the one who can assess if the presentation went as planned [37].…”

A Review of Public Speaking Coursebook: A Product of English Language Center Curriculum Research and Development

“…The eight chapters of coursebook and those features such as learning objective statements, material overview, useful tips, summary of lesson and student practices have been presented. The organization of the material uses bottom-up teaching approach in which students study from the most fundamental skill into the complex units [7], [15], [23], [24]. Bottom-up approach is applied to deal with existed situation which students have low understanding and competence in public speaking pre-test.…”

“…This underpinning purpose refers to students' speaking and listening competence. Although those two productive skills are required to succeed the standard from the university, critical thinking analysis competence is essential to shape the ability of conceptualizing, analyzing, applying, and synthesizing the information or ideas to the audience [15], [16]. From this perspective, public speaking course is selected as the suitable program to meet the institution expectation.…”