Report
SELF FUNDED PROJECT
IMPROVING PRESENTATION SKILLS
STIRLING LAW SCHOOL
ALISON GREEN
TIKUS LITTLE
“Lawyers are not only professionals with the challenge of practising law, they are also business people and one of the most effective ways they have of establishing themselves as experts and creating the “know, like, trust” in potential clients or referral sources is by speaking in public.
Lawyers attend networking meetings, speak at conferences, give talks to the general public and speak to the media. Every time they speak, they are representing their firm. Their listeners not only judge them by what they say and how they say it, they also make up their minds about the firm and whether or not they want to do business with it. A contract, a successful tender or a referral may depend on a lawyer’s ability to address an audience. It makes sense, therefore, to become skilful at speaking in public.”
Moira Beaton Journal of the Law Society of Scotland December 2010
SUMMARY
A 21st Century Graduate should be many things: knowledgeable in their field, articulate, inquisitive, ethical and employable. The employability agenda is more important than ever in today’s challenging economic climate and excellent presentation skills are vital to employability in many sectors.
Our students need to be able to present themselves and their arguments clearly and with confidence and the purpose of this project was to develop a toolkit for the development of presentation skills which can be used as a resource across the University and which can also be used by students to reflect on the development of this skill through Personal Development Planning.
Particularly through their work on the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice, the project leaders identified a lack of confidence and ability to present cases verbally in students who are aiming to become practicing solicitors on leaving the University. The focus of concern was less about the content of such presentations and more about the student’s ability to be a clear and confident presenter.
For this project, staff from Stirling Law School within the School of Arts and Humanities obtained funding of £1000 from SELF in May 2011 to:
1. Undertake a review of current practices within the School on the development of presentation skills.
2. Undertake a literature review on teaching and learning of presentation skills.
3. Undertake a review of products and resources available within the University and on the market to develop skills training (e.g. training videos, public speaking training, voice coaching).
4. Conduct a skills day during the year on the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice which will aim to improve the presentation skills of these students (c20 students), to include videoing students for review.
5. Survey the students and tutors on the success of this skills training.
6. Compare the presentation grades achieved in this year group on assessed presentations as compared with last year’s cohort who did not have this specific training.
7. Review findings and prepare a toolkit to include: lesson plans/guidance for developing presentation skills, feedback sheets for self review, peer review and tutor review and any useful resources identified in the literature and product/service reviews.
Aims and Outcomes:
This project aimed to:
- Develop a toolkit which can be used across a range of subject areas to enhance the employability of students by providing resources which have been tested ‘in the field’ and which can be embedded into modules or programmes or used as informal one off ‘skills training’ sessions as required. This is a sustainable resource which can be sued after the project has been completed.
- Identify and incorporate best practice and resources already used or available across the University to enable all subject areas to benefit from a shared resource.
- Improve the presentation skills of the cohort chosen for this project. This is a measurable outcome.
Links to LTQES:
The University’s LTQES states that Stirling graduates should have certain key Graduate Attributes and in accordance with University strategy, this project aims to develop a toolkit which will contribute to the development of:
‘ learning, teaching and assessment that will enable students to gain the following attributes...
To be employable and
- Posses individual initiative, be confident, have self esteem and the ability to cope with change;
- Posses the quality of being an employable graduate, be professional competent and demonstrate ethical practice;
- Empowered by the Stirling Experience to reach their full potential, ‘be all they can be’;
Review of Current Practices
The Divisions within the School of Arts and Humanities have implemented the Employability Enhancement Theme and the LTQES at Division level over the past six years. For example, in designing the LLB and Diploma in Professional Legal Practice, we have embedded skills development across our programmes through mapping skills to learning outcomes. We have identified that presentation skills are sought after by employers and wish to consolidate and build on our collective expertise in this area. As presentation skills are a transferable skill, this resource can be used across the University.
Review of resources available in the University
Many courses run “presentations” as part of their assessment, however there seems to be little training in anticipation of these events and short guidance notes in module outlines or from class tutors seem to be common.
Housing had developed a very useful package giving both a long and short training package for students who were expected to present their work. These could be done as distance learning modules. (Fiona Russell, Teaching Fellow, Housing Unit, School of Applied Social Sciences) Fiona kindly shared her materials with us to help us produce our own package of materials.
Robert Matthews Director of CAPL (Centre of Academic Practice) also provided us with materials which he had developed previously but which were not actively being used in the University currently.
Resources available outside the University
The Speakers Club ( provide training for presentation skills and there are numerous vidoes and trainers available to provide skills training. Sadly these training options are expensive. For example, due to the funding received in this project we were able to engage a trainer for one day to run a presentation masterclass for our students, but this will not be possible in the future due to funding. In addition, as this skill is learnt through practice and feedback most successfully, it is labour intensive and only works well with small groups.
U-tube provides an array of videos on the subject such as ( though many are American in focus, which is a slightly different approach to the UK approach to presenting. These videos are however very useful as examples of presenting and re-inforcing the points made by tutors.
There are many books on the subject, for example, Joan Van Emden et al “Presentation Skills for Students” (Palgrave Study Skills)2011. However, these are not as effective as practice and feedback but do provide useful additional reading.
Skills Day
In October 2011 we held a Presentation Skills Masterclass for 20 diploma students, which was conducted by Kate Donne, a local presentation skills trainer who was recommended to us by the Careers Service in the University who have worked with Kate on a number of occasions. Kate is a trained actress and has provded training in presentation skills for corporate clients and individuals for many years.
The remit given to Kate was to focus on delivery of presentations rather than content.
The format of the day ran through:
- Understanding how the voice works and focussing on breathing; diction; pitch;pace and energy
- Understanding physical factors such as controlling nervous tension; posture; body language; genstures and eye contact and eliminating bad habits
- Understanding your audience and dealing with audience challenges; reactions and energy levels
Each aspect was introduced and then the students participated in exercises which illustrated these points. They received personal feedback throughout these sessions. In the afternoon the students were all given the opportunity to give a short presentation and receive personal feedback. The students engaged in the process well and their feedback after the session confirmed that they had taken on board a number of personal learning points.
Student comments following the Skills Day
“I do believe my public speaking has improved but there is always capacity to improve. It is an area I really want to work on and I intend to continue this next semester”.
“This week I attended the presentation skills day with Kate Donne. I delivered a five minute presentation and learnt a lot about my style of presenting and how to improve upon it. For example, it seems that my style of presenting lends itself quite well to the use of slides as many of my statements are descriptive and paint a picture for the audience that would have more impact with visual aid. I also have to learn how to control my facial expressions more as I am very expressive and it is a formal lgeal presentation and may not be the best approach.”
“I have learnt to offer eye contact from this course”.
“After our skills day (on presentation skills) I have learned a lot more about making presentations effectively. I found out sometimes I don’t project enough when speaking, speak too fast and that I’ll occasionally play with my hair. I had criminal class after the skills day and it was the first time I wasn’t told to slow down whn giving my pleas in mitigation”.
“Kate Donne's “masterclass” on public speaking had useful elements and constructive feedback that were genuinely positive, but I fail to see the purpose of the Hitler Youth style chanting, the “monkey”; or the Woodstock-esque exchange of energy.“
Tutor feedback following the Skills Day
After the session, Kate Donne commented on the lack of confidence in the group and struggled throughout the day to encourage the students to “be heard”. At one point in the day she asked them to shout as loudly as they could, simply to release that inhibition, which proved a particular challenge for many of them.
As an observer to the day, Alison Green saw clear engagement in individuals challenging themselves to overcome their personal inhibitions. They benefitted from the time spent in the session experiencing the skills and the feedback from peers and tutors. The impression gained was that this was a very personal learning experience and teaching needs to be approached in this way in the future to gain the best results.
As a by-product of this exercise the students also developed their skills in becoming reflective learners. (LTQE 2012 –Graduate Attribute)Throughout the Diploma they are encouraged to keep Learning Diaries of their experiences and learning points. These are reviewed by tutors at the end of the course. This Skills Day produced the richest reflections by students, throughout the course.
Evidence of Improvement of presentation Skills amongst student cohort
Grades / 2010/11 / 2011/121A-C / 3 / 16% / 10 / 67%
2A-C / 8 / 42% / 3 / 20%
2D-F / 7 / 37% / 1 / 6.5%
3A-C / 1 / 5% / 1 / 6.5%
FAIL / 0
The second assessment did include a written element which was missing from the first assessment but overall, performance int eh presentation element was still improved following participation in the day long skills workshop on presentation skills.
Funding
Funding of £1000 was sought and this funding has been used to
- buy out teaching of two members of staff to conduct literature and product reviews, conduct skills day, conduct survey and write up toolkit.
- In addition, an external training expert was engaged for a day long master class in presentation skills in October 2011, which was given to 20 students studying the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice, and was monitored by staff to help design our own programme
Review of Findings
The evidence produced from this project suggests that presentation skills training is effective when provided in an experiential and person-focussed way, when supported by theoretical evidence. This also develops the students as reflective learners. Previous practice of written guidance and limited feedback on presentations in modules is not particularly effective. Books and videos are plentiful but are no replacement for experiential training. There are pockets of good practice in the University such as in the Housing Department but generally there is a lack of teaching materials available. Use of external trainers is effective but extremely expensive.
Toolkit
Following this review a toolkit has been produced which provides teaching materials in several formats:
- A day long session
- As part of a module
- Podcast for distance learning
These will be housed on Succeed and will be available for all University staff to use and adapt as they required.
Alison Green
Tikus Little
April 2012