Learner’s corner

Introduction

The goal of Speak Up is to provide a self-regulated platform for learners to practice oral presentations with an audience, and perform some guided activities to improve on the learning outcome. To address the natural complexity of the world, in our VR environment, we focus on creating an environment closest to the real world scenario for oral presentations, showcasing live audience whose behavioural characteristics were supported by the literature.

Who can benefit from this application?

Anyone, including students, teachers and working professionals, who seek to improve their oral presentation skills can benefit from this application. The training fulfils the crucial need of exposing the speaker to real audience with guided practices and feedback.

What does a learner do during the training?

The learner starts with filling a personal report of confidence as a speaker, which provide a score on a scale of 0-15. This score becomes a measure of learner’s improvement in making oral presentations during the course of training interventions. Further, the learner delivers a 5-10 min presentation in the VR environment emulating the settings of a distracted audience, a commonly observed audience behaviour. The learner is exposed to specific strategies, such as engaging with the audience, using scaffolds embedded in the system. The learners also carry out guided activities such as filling out a self-report form, recording their presentations for critique and feedback, and performing reflection exercises during the training process.

What pedagogical strategies are incorporated for improved learning outcomes?

The training environment aims at promoting a context dependent and case-based learning experience through a self-regulated training platform. Opportunities for feedback from experts, self-assessment and self-reflection exercises are some of the integral features of the training system (Fig. 1). The situated learning environment and exploration of what works for a particular learner, in context of making a presentation, strengthen the training platform.

Figure 1: Functional blocks of the system including self-assessment, training module and activities

What is the flow of activities in Speak Up ?

Our training solution emphasizes on knowledge building in learners through activities and the environment they are “situated” in. A comprehensive overview of the steps involved in the training intervention has been illustrated in Fig. 2.

Figure 2: Flow of activities in the Speak Up training intervention

1. Self-report of confidence as a speaker: The process initiates with filling out a form on personal report of confidence as a speaker (PRCS) (Fig. 2A and 2B). PRCS provides a measure of learner’s degree of improvement in public speaking during the course of training interventions. A scoreboard is provided to keep track of all learners’ PRCS scores over time to motivate them to reach the learning goal.
2. Oral presentation in virtual environment: This is followed by delivering a 5-10 min presentation in the virtual environment (Fig. 2C). Visual cues are provided as scaffolds inside the virtual environment to aid the speaker in his/her performance.
3. Recording of audio during the oral presentation: The audio of the oral presentation can be recorded and saved. This can further be analysed for self-assessment, and sent to experts for feedback (Fig. 2D).
4. Utilizing scaffolds: Scaffolds as textual hints are also incorporated in the system to aid learning (Fig. 2E) which can be accessed anytime during the process. These scaffolds provide actionable hints that learners can act upon during their presentations.
5. Open-ended reflection activities: Reflection activities are carried out by the learners to translate their experience into effective learning (Fig. 2F). One of the activities provide an open writing space to the learner to record their reflections from the training experience. In addition, specific questions about learners’ experience through the VR training, strategies implemented in the environment or new techniques to learn and implement are probed in these activities.

The Speak Up application is still being refined, and thus not yet available online for use.