Eva Rudolfová leads the Masaryk University Language Centre team at the Faculty of Informatics and teaches ESP and EAP classes there. Her early teaching interests focused on Soft Skills and how these can be used in and for language learning. Later, her focus shifted more to Emotional Intelligence and also Learner Autonomy, as the Language Centre opened an English Autonomously Course for its students. Since then, she has been a passionate member of the English Autonomously team as well as a counsellor and ardent ambassador of life and transferable skills. Her latest challenge is bringing all these skills to computer science students as part of their language classes.

Marcela is a member of the Masaryk University Language Centre member. While she focused on English literature during her studies, she now teaches ESP and EAP classes at the Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University. Her main area of interest is the soft skills necessary for student and professional success. She is also interested in learner autonomy and self-directed learning methods in language learning.

Introduction

Computer science students often believe they will not need to present much in their careers. They see themselves sitting behind the screen of a computer at night, programming, dealing with bugs, and solving problems. Therefore, the teacher’s first task is to make them realize they will have to communicate with customers and stakeholders and be able to put their innovative and creative ideas across. Having done that, we proceed to discuss what makes a good presentation, what the building blocks are, and what makes people listen and pay attention to the speaker for the entire presentation. At this point, we often deal with students having acquired “secondary school-style presentation habits”, such as simply summing up a topic and monotonously delivering it to the audience with no functional language to help the audience’s understanding of the topic. Thus, the teacher’s second task is to make students understand what is expected from them in an academic or professional presentation (here at the Faculty of Informatics, we often consult and cooperate with professionals from various local IT companies). Surprisingly, students struggle most with the right choice of topic, and it takes time for them to understand that they are expected to add value to already-known facts about the area they have decided to cover. This being clarified, we can then proceed to the more classical presentation skills connected to delivery and language. As all of this seems to be quite challenging for most students (often even for those very proficient in English), we need to seek efficient ways for the students to internalize the principles in the few sessions we have with them during the semester so that they are ready for the exam. Engaging the students themselves in giving feedback to their peers seems to be the logical solution.

Performance feedback, we can all agree, is highly valuable and constitutes a significant part of the learning process. Students seem to accept this more and more, not taking feedback too personally and often even directly asking for it. However, one aspect they are not yet quite used to is getting feedback from their fellow students. Yet, these are the people who can teach them the most as peers can step into the learners’ shoes much more easily. In presentation classes, moreover, other students from the audience can provide many useful tips and insights that a presenter is unlikely to learn from a real-life audience.

On the other hand, providing feedback does not come naturally to students. It has to be taught just like any other skill, and students need to learn many new things: what feedback is and is not, what a peer’s role is when providing feedback versus what the teacher’s responsibilities are (e.g., language issues), what structure the feedback should follow, how to proceed when preparing for and while giving feedback, and finally what precisely the feedback should focus on (what the criteria are). Naturally, it also helps when they see good examples of giving feedback (typically from their teacher but perhaps also from a teaching assistant or experienced fellow student).

Therefore, in the following description, we would like to share how we reflect on and implement the abovementioned presentation features, which appear to be crucial for computer science students or any other STEM-oriented students (STEM = science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).  

 

Method and method and its implementation in the class

Before the presentations

What you need: 

• A group of students who have undergone introductory presentation skills training.
• Assessment criteria: you want to start with a discussion of presentation criteria with your students, e.g., good/bad examples of presentation skills, or, if you have a particular focus (such as presentation structure, signposting or concluding), discuss examples of those.

At the Faculty of Informatics, the following criteria are taken into consideration for the presentation part of the exam: relevant content and clear message, clear structure, strong introduction and conclusion, usage of signposting, correct usage of English (self-correction is possible and welcomed), relevant range of vocabulary and accurate pronunciation (avoiding irritating mistakes), stress and intonation, quality and language of visuals and references, eye contact and interaction with the audience, proper body language, timing, handling of the Q&A session, and overall impression (fun, passion, expertise, effort..., fluency).

Various studies (Rademacher et al., 2014; Scaffidi, 2018) show that graduating (computer science) students are lacking in many different areas, including personal skills (oral and written communication, teamwork, etc.). Our own experience reflects these findings. We have noted the following deficiencies in students’ presentation skills: inability to formulate a clear message, no use of signposting language, lack of eye contact and interactivity, flat intonation and pronunciation problems in general, poor introduction into the topic, total ignorance of how to conclude, and absence of a final message.

Therefore, we ask our students to choose an aspect or criteria they would like to concentrate on (could be individually or in small groups) during their presentations and learn more about.

During the presentations

Students watch their peers’ presentations and take notes on the aspects they have decided to focus on.

After the presentations

There are two lines of action in the class:

1.Teacher–presenter: We consider this part to be a crucial one. It is most practical and beneficial for the students as they learn to question their own performance and internalize their self-assessment process. As a result, they are active participants in and have ownership of their own learning, their learning is purposeful and challenging, when they are willing to take risks, and they are provided with opportunities to apply their new understandings to authentic tasks (Grahame and Someh, 2018). 

In this part of the feedback procedure, we heavily focus on the presenter’s abilities to reflect on their performance and to assess not only their presenting skills but also all the skills they employ in the research and preparation phase. As mentioned in the introduction, computer science students tend to underestimate the variety of skills they are expected to perform in their future careers. Therefore, they need to become aware of the relevance of planning, critical thinking, time management, problem-solving, researching one’s target audience, preparing visuals and scripts, anticipating questions, formulating the key message and arguments, and other crucial aspects. Consequently, the questions used in this part target students’ use of these skills in the presentation preparation and delivery.

It is essential to start the feedback with a set of questions targeting the presentation experience (try to include not only the execution but also the preparatory phase) to encourage a growth mindset as well as learning autonomy, e.g.:

What went well during your presentation? What are you happy about?

What did you learn about yourself when preparing the presentation? And during the execution?

What could have been better concerning your presentation? How could you make it better next time? How do you want to make it better?

What do you want to remember from the experience (both preparation and execution) and how will you use this information?

Did you use any strategies or methods when researching, preparing and giving the presentation? Did they work well? Are there any other methods or strategies you could have employed?  Are there any methods or strategies you will use in the future?

After the discussion, the teacher provides formative feedback. The teacher must provide constructive, manageable and motivational feedback addressing the positive aspects of the presentation first and only then suggesting improvement in specific areas. Formative feedback means the student can take control over their own learning. Moreover, it provides the student with the opportunity to improve. The feedback should be both oral and written, providing understandable and actionable directions for revision.

2. The group: The rest of the group work independently, ideally in small groups (around 3 students). Students share their comments on the presentation. Firstly, ask them to address things they liked/would like to remember/would like to use themselves. Secondly, students suggest areas for improvement. Ask them to be specific in their comments and offer a concrete course of action for the presenter to improve. To make the process even more effective, students (in their groups) could be asked to provide written feedback for the presenter. Again, students should provide constructive feedback addressing the positive aspects of the presentation first. Each group should also choose a speaker who will present the feedback on behalf of the group. 

Peer feedback is another skill that students are able to learn and improve. Without relevant training, peer feedback tends to remain rather trivial as students are not generally able to exploit learning opportunities well. Typical examples of feedback are: “I liked it …; It was great …; I liked the visuals …; It was within the time limit …”. When students receive peer-feedback training, they quickly and effectively learn to identify the specific features that distinguish a good presentation from a bad one.

Once the teacher–presenter discussion is finished, the speakers give feedback to the presenter. The class shares the feedback, and the teacher puts the main points on the board. 

 

Conclusion

Our experience shows that students are not only able to learn how to give effective and constructive feedback but also often pinpoint crucial issues and provide helpful tips to their peers and even seem to enjoy the process. Also, and perhaps most importantly, while giving feedback students engage in their own learning much more than they would if the feedback was only provided by the teacher. As a result, the presentation skills of all students improve as the class proceeds even if an individual gives only one presentation per semester.   

 

References

Grahame, Kathryn Schulte and Leila Keyvani Someh. "GIFTS: Preparing First Year Engineering Students for a Career where Communication Skills Matter!" 2018 FYEE Conference: Glassboro, New Jersey, 2018.

Radermacher, Alex, Gursimran Walia and Dean Knudson. “Investigating the skill gap between graduating students and industry expectations.” Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering 2014, 291–300.

Scaffidi, Christopher. “Employers' Needs for Computer Science, Information Technology and Software Engineering Skills Among New Graduates.” International Journal of Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology, 8 (1), 2018, 1-12.

 

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