Teaching Public Speaking in a Blended Learning Environment

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide new environment for learning and teaching. Today, apart from a fully face-to-face or online environment, blended learning promises opportunities for teaching and learning to be done in both environments. This paper reports results from an analysis of data collected from students at a Malaysian university. An end-of-semester survey was completed by 40 students taking a Public Speaking course. The survey was conducted to understand students' reactions towards the use of wiki in a blended learning environment. The survey data are being used to inform decisions on the course delivery structure and about adoption of new digital technologies for learning and teaching. Findings from the study indicate that the students found that using wiki facilitated their speech preparation process specifically in receiving feedback and improving speech delivery. Although some had reservation about publishing their speeches publicly on wiki, they understood that it was to their benefit. Therefore using wiki in a blended learning environment was found to be advantageous to the Public Speaking course.

Design Principles of a Responsive Pedagogical Model for Multimodal Skills of Oral Presentation

“…Several students even demonstrated obvious improvement in the use of voice and gestures. The findings on the learning outcomes of RMO2P could complement other intervention designs, such as those that investigated participant perceptions (Balakrishnan & Fatimah, 2014;Murugaiah, 2016) and those that focused on other aspects apart from multimodal skills (Ainol & Zailin, 2012;Hafizoah et al, 2015;Nadzrah et al, 2013).…”

“…Hafizoah et al (2015) designed a Creative Strategy Learning Model which positively impacted students' thinking and creativity. Blended learning was recommended for speech preparation (Ainol & Zailin, 2012). There were also experimentations with video blogging which improved student perceptions of public speaking skills (Balakrishnan & Fatimah, 2014), and Pecha Kucha which was reported to be conducive for collaboration and developing skills by teachers and students (Murugaiah, 2016).…”

“…Although there have been constant developments of pedagogical innovations for various types of oral skills, interventions are still highly anticipated, especially in Malaysian higher education and for multimodal oral presentation skills. At the higher education level, there is a growing inclination towards engaging technologies such as wiki (Ainol & Zailin, 2012) and multimedia courseware (Tsai, 2010). Nonetheless, these studies have mostly been completed in native-speaking and advanced countries such as USA and Canada (Su, 2015) while multimodal oral presentation skills have been generally neglected (Barret & Liu, 2016).…”

The Future of Teaching English in Saudi Arabia

“…Using the Blackboard-oriented, online dictionary-based method for presenting etymological analysis of new vocabulary also proved to be more effective in developing vocabulary building skills and inducing positive attitudes towards vocabulary learning than traditional teacher-centred and paper dictionary-based vocabulary instruction (Fageeh, 2014). It was also reported by Ibrahim and Yusoff (2012) that the use of wikis in an EFL blended-format course improved the learners' speech delivery and speaking skills.…”

EFL Secondary Teaching Practices in Blending Learning: A Case of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia

“…Ellis et al (2006) suggested a similar range of tools for BL such as video and audio files, discussion boards, chats, and email. Ibrahim and Yusoff (2012) recommended YouTube, podcasts, and Wikis. To provide enhanced BL, teachers can combine several different media types (Joshi, 2012).…”