Development of Presentation Skills for Asian Students through a Guide Book and Integrated Videos

Abstract

Making professional presentations is an important skill that students need to develop in business communication courses in preparation for their careers. This skill can best be taught through the use of both written and visual materials. Students study principles of successful presentations then relate these principles to examples in the videos before applying the principles to their own performance. Our search of the literature indicates that effective presentation teaching materials have not been specifically developed for Asian students. In this Teaching Development Grant, we will develop a teaching package consisting of a guide book and videos that aims to fill this void. An effective teaching package for professional presentations will be tailored for Asian students. Existing commercial teaching materials have fallen short of providing authentic, student-based examples. Existing packages without videos are overly abstract while those with videos using hired actors are perceived as being artificial. The purpose of the guide book is to explain the principles of professional presentations. Students view the videos to analyze and critique the examples by applying the learned principles. Students then incorporate the learned principles of a professional presentation into their own performance through a series of step-by-step tasks building up to a complete presentation. To complete the learning cycle, students constructively reflect on and critique their own presentations and that of peers. Our videos will be based upon gold-winning student presentations from the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Youth Entrepreneurial Award competition (HSBC YEA). Presentations from contemporary, authentic contexts, will illustrate good presentation practice in contrast to ineffective presentation practice. Students will have the take-away of being able to develop presentations based upon both examples of successful peers and the underlying theoretical principles."