• Understand the sequence of oral presentation assignment components

• Learn how to develop explanations for assigned material– Listen to lecture on Rowan– Start preparing your slides

• Practice oral skills– Peer introduction task

Learning Goals

Process for Oral Presentation Assignments

Submit slides for professor’s feedback

Do Final Presentation

Make slides on assigned material (check course website for assignments)

Practice: Video record, evaluate yourself, chosen peer evaluates

Read Rowan article (handout)

• Presenting to ‘inform’ or ‘excite’ not for understanding – Emphasis on hooking the audience

• Gain audience attention

• Establish audience’s need for information

• Not contingent on material; too focused on form – Not all material is best explained via examples,

visual aids, frameworks, charts,

The old way

• Emphasis on explaining

• Presentation should answer the question: – How? OR

– Why? OR

– What does this mean?

The NEW way

• Inform – Create awareness of latest information on some

topic (E.g., News reports)

• Explain• Improve understanding of something audience is

aware of but does not fully grasp

• Explaining helps deepen understanding or master a skill

Explaining vs. Informing

• Learning Check: What is the difference between… – Finding

• Similar to informing

– Hypothesis

What explaining is or is not

• View oral presentation as a process of anticipating & overcoming potential misunderstandings– What is the confusion?– What is the strategy for explaining the confusion?

The new way

• Analyze audience’s source of ‘confusion’– What can the audience be confused about?– Why the audience might not understand info?

• Identify good, empirically supported techniques (explanations) for overcoming audience confusion– Rowan article

When presenting to explain

Concepts are difficult

Audience Confusion

Ideas are hard to believe

Processes are difficult to visualize

1. Concept is difficult• e.g., documenting vs. evaluating

2. Processes are difficult to visualize• e.g., Extraversion & non verbal skills

3. Ideas are hard to believe • e.g., pay can lead to decreased motivation

3 Sources of Audience Confusion

• Define concept by listing its essential features– Distinguish between essential & associated features

• Define contrasting concept

• Give examples of concept

• Show how to differentiate examples from non examples by looking for essential features

• Give non-examples that are mistaken for examples

When explaining a concept….

• Documenting behavior vs. Evaluating performance

– E.g. class participation is documented rather than evaluated

– Doing the practice presentation (i.e., submitting video) is documented, not evaluated

– Final presentation is evaluated

Examples of concept & contrasting concept

• Define non-verbal communication skills – Ability to perceive & interpret emotions accurately

• How are non verbal communication skills (NV) different from interpersonal skills? (IP)– IP =Establish relationship with other vs. NV =

convey emotional information with other– IP=Control emotional expression vs. NV=express

& interpret emotions– IP= Higher order vs. NV= lower order skills

Interpersonal vs. non verbal communication skills

C24 fall05 Student Paper

1. Define the concept

2. Identify the contrasting concept (via non examples)

3. Give examples that illustrate the concept

4. Give examples of the contrasting concept (non examples) that can be confused with examples of the concept

To define a concept well, you need to…

1. Concept is difficult

2. Processes are difficult to visualize

3. Ideas are hard to believe

3 Sources of Audience Confusion

• Help audience mentally model or ‘picture’ key dimensions of a complex phenomenon– Have clear main points and connections b/w them

Processes difficult to visualize

• Two main obstacles1. Creating a good general impression

2. Conceptualize parts

Processes difficult to visualize

• Provide a good general impression of phenomenon via….

• Graphics/Models• Verbal strategies

• Structure suggesting titles – Five dimensions of personality

• Organizing analogies – An organization is like a jazz quartet

• Model suggesting topic sentences – Need fulfillment works like a pyramid

• Note: Models/analogies should be commonly shared

1st step to explaining a process that is difficult to visualize

• Help audience conceptualize parts, processes, inter-relations via

• Transitional phrases, previews, summaries & explicit statements of relationships that help in refining mental models

• Do not use short sentences and sacrifice words like “because” and “for example”

• Repeat/recreate initial comparisons

2nd step to explaining a process that is difficult to visualize

• Decide on…1. Why evaluate performance

2. How to evaluate performance A. Who evaluates performance?

– Train rater

B. Method of performance evaluation1. Pick dimensions

2. Pick rating scale

3. Document performance

4. Evaluate performance

Example ProcessBefore giving feedback…(linear)

Before giving feedback…(model)

Why evaluate performance

Who evaluates performance

Dimensions to evaluate Type of rating scale to use

Train evaluator

Document Performance

Evaluate Performance

• Differences in social experiences– Extraverts…

• Seek out interactions which help refine & develop NV skills

• Have more social experience which enables more practice

Why are extraverts more skilled at non verbal communication?

Linear explanation from C24 fall05 Student Paper

Extraversion NV Skills+

Extraversion Social experiences+ NV Skills

+

Social experiences

Practice old skills

NV Skills

Develop newSkills

+

++

+

Extraversion Social experiences

Practice old skills

NV Skills

Develop newSkills

+

+

++

+

• Why GPA–performance correlation decreases after first year on the job?– Chalkboard drawing– http://cnx.rice.edu/content/m11196/latest/

Using a graph to illustrate range restriction

1. Concept is difficult

2. Processes are difficult to visualize

3. Ideas are hard to believe

3 Sources of Audience Confusion

1. State implausible idea– Participation does not lead to setting more

difficult goals

2. Discuss audience’s implicit theory

3. Demonstrate limitations of audience’s theory

4. State the more empirically valid theory and illustrate its effectiveness

Ideas are hard to believe

1. State implausible idea– E.g., Participation does not lead to setting more

difficult goals

2. Discuss audience’s implicit theory – How does it explain the commonly believed idea?

• E.g., Participation results in more difficult goals being set because subordinates want their supervisors to believe that they are highly capable and so choose more difficult goals than those that may be assigned to them by the supervisor

Ideas are hard to believe

C24 fall05 Student Paper

3. Demonstrate limitations of implicit theory– Identify inadequacy with familiar examples or

data• Assumes that all subordinates want to demonstrate

superior abilities to their supervisors

• Assumes that supervisors do not know the abilities of the subordinates and so assign easy goals

4. State the more empirically valid theory and illustrate its effectiveness

• When supervisors know the abilities of subordinates, participation does not result in more difficult goals

Ideas are hard to believe

C24 fall05 Student Paper

• Pay does not lead to increased motivation

• Implicit theory: – Pay reinforces behavior

• Assumptions– Pay reinforces all behaviors

• New findings– Pay does not reinforce behaviors that are

intrinsically motivated

Another Hard to believe idea

• Identify why subject is confusing to audience• Introspect, ask peers

• Classify confusion• Is it a concept?• Is it a difficult to visualize process/structure• Is it a ‘hard to believe’ idea?

• Then generate an explanation that best overcomes the confusion

To formulate a good explanation

Read assigned material

Is it a idea that ishard to believe?

Is it a concept? Is it a process?

Classify the aspect

Focus on one aspect

Examples, counter examples etc.

Identify invalid assumptions of implicit theory etc.

Model to explain processes or parts