1.Imparting Presentation Skills through Participatory learning Employing Activities - Mr.K. Venkata Ramana

Introduction

At the present time, information technology made the world a global village. The industrialists and business people want to take the advantage of this situation and enhance their businesses. Therefore, there is a need for the job aspirants to equip with presentation skills for global business expansion. The necessity of the presentation skills increased on various accounts. Firstly, it helps the undergraduate students to present their Mini and Major projects for partial fulfillment of their curriculum. Secondly, it helps the students to communicate better and present themselves in the better manner possible and win offer letter during campus placements. Thirdly, it helps the employed to get a better opportunity and pay package. Under these circumstances, tailor made activities help students to learn presentation skills quickly and effectively through participatory learning method.

Tailor made activities involve the students to participate intuitively. Their participation helps the faculty to identify and present their weaknesses and strengths to give necessary inputs and the students to improve their weaknesses and enhance their strengths. Activities are employed as tools to attain the following objectives.

Objectives

1. To motivate the students to take up presentations confidently

2. To employ group and individual activities for practice

3. To identify the strengths and weaknesses of the students and to give appropriate inputs

4. To evaluate their performance and to suggest for further improvement

The following methodology is adopted to attain the objectives mentioned above.

Methodology

A video presentation, and couple of activities such as Presentation practice within the group and individual presentation to the class are planned to infuse the presentation skills and shed inhibitions of the students.

Subjects

First year students of B.Tech. Electronics & Communication Engineering of Batch-4 are identified as subjects for the study to infuse presentation skills through activities.

A Video Presentation

A video of around # 12 minutes presentation made by Mr. Nitin Gupta Rivaldo on “2G, CWG and Madam G” on various scams at SP Jain College, Mumbai on 27 April, 2012 retrieved from You tube is presented to elicit the various aspects of Presentation from students. The video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIudxeqFuz8. Based on the points elicited from the students, faculty shared and explained the guidelines for effective presentation extracted from www.englishclub.com written by Josef Essberger(2011). The points are:

Important aspects of a good Presentation

• to allow plenty of time for preparation

• to ask the all-important question-words, why? who? where? when? how? and what?

• to structure the presentation into introduction, body, conclusion and questions

• to write notes based on keywords

• to rehearse the presentation several times and modify it as necessary

• to select the right equipment for the job

• to use equipment effectively

• to make use of clear, powerful visual aids that do not overload the audience

• to use clear, simple language, avoiding jargon

• to use active verbs and concrete facts

• to explain the structure of the presentation at the beginning so that the listeners know what to expect

• to link each section of the presentation

• to signpost the presentation from beginning to end so that the listeners know where they are

• to say what you are going to say, say it, and say what you have just said

• to overcome the nerves

• to establish audience rapport

• to be aware of the body language

• to understand cultural differences

• to control the quality of the voice

• to maintain interest by varying the speed, volume and pitch of the voice

• to deal with listeners' questions politely

• to respond to the audience positively

On completion of the discussion on the tips for effective presentation, hand-outs are distribution among students to take up the next two activities namely, Presentations within the group and individual presentation to the class.

Brief description of the Hand-out

The hand-out helps the students to open up and share their thoughts, opinions and ideas on day-to-day issues to begin with.

Furthermore, it helps the sociable students to continue the discussion on one hand and to enhance their ability to communicate on the other which in turn helps all the members of the group to pop-up new thoughts and ideas. The following is the handout (‘know thyself’) taken up to impart Presentation Skills to undergraduate engineering students from the book ‘Communication Skills for Technical Students’ (Farhathulla, 2002).

‘Know thyself’

Activity

Divide yourselves into groups of five or six. First, individually write on a sheet of paper the details required for each of the items given below. Then speak about the reasons for the choice in your group. Now reassemble and give a short presentation of about ten sentences on any item to the whole class.

1. Three favourite persons: a friend /a relative / an actor / actress

2. Three dishes: a favourite dish / an unusual dish / a dish you dislike

3. Three films: a favourite film / a dull film / a foreign film

4. Three teachers: the most admirable teacher / a teacher you dislike / a teacher who became your friend

5. Three books: the novel you read first / the book you recently read / the book you will never forget.

Students are informed to complete the hand-out reading within 2-3 minutes and to take up the presentations within the group.

Presentations within the Group Activity

In the group activity 30 students are divided into 5 groups. Each group consists of 6 students. At the end of specified time for reading, students are instructed to identify one topic of their choice and are suggested to speak within the group giving reasons for their choice and also on the topic chosen for about ten sentences fixing a maximum of 5 minutes to each student for presentation. Students are instructed to accomplish the task within the group in about 30 minutes of time.

Observations of the faculty

· Students of sociable nature found the activity simple and started presenting within the group on the topic chosen.

· Motivated by the peer group presentations, reticent students started sharing their thoughts within the group.

· This practice helped them to give and receive feedback on one another and to get new thoughts and ideas which helped them to enhance their thinking horizons.

The faculty shared the observations and gave a demonstration on the activity sheet. Students are informed to make individual presentations to the class on the topics chosen in the hand-out making use of their experience of presentation within the group.

Individual Presentations to the Class Activity

Students hesitated to make individual presentations initially owing to the nervousness and lack of practice. On the explanation of importance of rehearsals in the presentation with motivating words of the faculty, students of sociable attitude shown enthusiasm and started to make individual presentations to the class on the topic chosen. Inspired by the presentation of the peer group, the reticent students picked up the support and morale and started coming out one after the other without any call or force by faculty. The activity moved on without any break till the completion of presentations by all the students.

Observations and tip by the Faculty

The faculty informally started discussing aspects of presentation and gave suggestions and feedback on the presentations made by the students in between. This feedback helped the students and reflected in the presentations made later on by the rest of the students.

Conclusion

This paper focused more on participatory and outcome based learning employing activities as tools to impart presentation skills to engineering students to equip themselves and to meet the requirements of the corporate sector and industry. Faculty employed a video presentation, Presentation among the Group and individual presentation activities with the help of tailor made hand out given by the Professor Farhatulla (2002) in his book titled ‘Communication Skills for Technical Students’. The Video presentation gave them the mood and brought down the nervousness. Group activity helped the faculty to motivate the students to come forward to make their presentation at the same time to identify their weaknesses and strengths. Followed by the group activity, demonstration of the faculty on the aspects of good presentation on the activity sheet undertaken helped and prepared the students to take up individual presentations to the class. Practice of individual presentations gave them the practical exposure to the presentations. To their surprise, some of the students found that they are not only comfortable making presentations to the class but also it is their strength to address the gathering confidently and effectively. ‘Know thyself’ hand-out helped the faculty on one hand to take up both group and individual activities in one go and enthused and motivated the students to take up practice of presentations both in group and individually to class as part of participatory learning resulting to meet the objectives of this paper to impart the presentation skills employing activities.