The differential impact of observational learning and practice-based learning on the development of oral presentation skills in higher education

Abstract

The present study focuses on the design and evaluation of an innovative instructional approach to develop oral presentation skills. The intervention builds on the observational learning theoretical perspective. This perspective is contrasted to the traditional training and practice approach. Two experimental conditions -learners starting with observational learning versus learners starting with practice opportunities only-were compared in a crossover design. It was hypothesised that learners starting with observational learning would outperform learners in the practice only condition. The results suggest a significant differential impact on the development progress in oral presentation skills. This impact of the observational learning training approach is only found in a limited number of evaluation criteria. Results additionally suggest that students are highly motivated to learn this type of skills. Interaction effects between student characteristics and the instructional interventions were not significant.

Factors that influence the development and performance of academic oral presentations using a blended learning environment

“…Undoubtedly, improvement is needed in areas such as the body language, conclusion, and introduction, but it is promising to see that the participants had processed, understood, and applied some of the learning material. The instructor‐researcher believes that more material and instruction for conclusions, discourse organization, and body language needs to be developed and practiced for future oral presentation courses as university students, especially EAP students, find these difficult areas in oral presentations (Bankowski, ; Chou, ; De Grez et al, ). Furthermore, some participants had problems speaking in front of an audience indicating that despite the revisions for Cycle 2, the material in the BLLE is not enough to assist the participants for public speaking anxiety, so future designs must help students find strategies to reduce public speaking anxiety.…”

“…For example, Tsai () developed effective courseware for novice EFL students, but only a pre and post‐writing test was used to evaluate the presentation skills, so further research is needed to demonstrate how these learning gains are used in classroom presentations. Training in student observational feedback for multimedia presentations resulted in significant gains in the introduction, conclusion, and content, but students were making insufficient eye contact with the audience and not expressing themselves through body language (De Grez, Valcke, & Roozen, ).…”

Factors influencing students’ perceptions of graduate attribute acquisition in a multidisciplinary honours track in a Dutch university

“…The career support units address the development of student awareness of suitable career goals, selection of activities to pursue these goals and to further develop metacognitive and self-regulation skills. These skills are most essential in the development of graduate attributes (De Grez, Valcke, & Roozen, 2014;Nicol, 2010). Type III enrichment comprises a project or investigation intended to solve complicated social or scientific problems that are of special interest to students and that allow students to apply their knowledge and their creative and critical thinking skills.…”

Solving instructional design dilemmas to develop a Video Enhanced Rubric with modeling examples to support mental model development of complex skills: the Viewbrics-project use case

“…The novel approach of this paper supports connecting the contextually rich subskills seen in the video-modeling example with the analytic description of subskills in a textual rubric. The affordances of video modeling examples are shown to have a learning effect on the development of the complex skills of collaboration, presentation, and information literacy skills (De Grez et al 2014;Frerejean et al 2016;Kim and McDonough 2011). In conclusion, we expect the addition of video modeling examples to a rubric to foster inter-task and sub-skill coordination and most importantly, help the learner better imagine how to perform a complex skill, by forming a richer mental model.…”