Improving Oral Presentations: Inserting Subtitles in Videos for Targeted Feedback

Abstract

Instructors are increasingly using videotaping in addition to written summarized feedback to develop oral presentation skills, but reviewing videotapes with students can be a time-consuming process. Moreover, students may find that summarized feedback, which is displaced from the video itself, is vague and unhelpful. This project investigated a new way for instructors to deliver targeted feedback within video recordings, and embedded the new approach within other best practices (e.g. rubrics, guided self-reflection). We compared two groups (N=31) across two presentations, with one group first receiving videotapes that included interjected feedback, much like subtitles, in their videos, while the other group first received raw videotapes and met face-to-face with their instructor to review their performance. Despite the significant student perception that face-to-face feedback was more useful, our results showed that interjected feedback was more helpful for developing students’ style skills, and there was no difference in improvement across presentations for content, organization and response to audience. Across both groups, students reported great benefit of video feedback because it provided them with a third-party perspective of their own performance. Furthermore, interjected feedback provided instructors with a substantial time savings compared to the face-to-face meetings.

Keywords

• oral presentations
• feedback
• videotaping
• best practices