CRITERIA FOR ASSESSING ORAL PUBLIC PERFORMANCES OF STUDENTS

In this paper we consider a system of evaluation of oral communication students of secondary vocational education. Given the specificity of speech defined criteria for assessing public speaking: work with the information content of an utterance, compositional alignment of, possession of text, language standards compliance, technology and speech sounds, nonverbal meansВ статье рассматривается система оценивания устной коммуникации студентов среднего профессионального образования. С учетом специфики устной речи определены критерии оценивания публичного выступления: работа с информацией, содержание высказывания, композиционная выстроенность, владение текстом, соблюдение языков норм, техника речи и звуковое оформление, невербальные средства

Comparison Between Brief Acceptance and Cognitive Interventions: Assessing Public Speaking Performance in Socially-Anxious Individuals

Social anxiety disorder is one of the most prevalent psychological disorder to date and it is associated with impairments in multiple domains, such as in occupational and academic settings. Although, traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), aims to reduce distress by altering maladaptive schemas, this approach is not always successful. Recent research has shown ambiguous support for cognitive restructuring as a mechanism of change. Therefore, further research is needed to discover effective treatments. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), emphasizes psychological flexibility and values rather controlling negative thoughts. The current study compared brief acceptance and cognitive control based interventions for increasing performance on a public speaking task. It was hypothesized that participants in CBT and ACT conditions will exhibit greater reduction of anxiety following the speech task compared to the psychoeducational control group. It was also hypothesized that the acceptance based intervention will lead to greater increases in performance compared to other two protocols. Participants were college students at a Midwestern public university and were then randomized to receive an acceptance, cognitive-control, or psychoeducational-based protocol. Participants then prepared and gave 5-minute autobiographical speech in front of an audience of two research assistants. Results indicated that participants in either ACT, CBT, or Control conditions did not significantly differ in public speaking performance, nor did differ on physiological anxiety, subjective distress and experiential avoidance. These findings promote the utility of brief interventions and promote the importance of continuing to develop techniques that increase public speaking performance

A Review into eHealth Services and Therapies: Potential for Virtual Therapeutic Communities - Supporting People with Severe Personality Disorder

eHealth has expanded hugely over the last fifteen years and continues to evolve, providing greater benefits for patients, health care professionals and providers alike. The technologies that support these systems have become increasingly more sophisticated and have progressed significantly from standard databases, used for patient records, to highly advanced Virtual Reality (VR) systems for the treatment of complex mental health illnesses. The scope of this paper is to initially explore e-Health, particularly in relation to technologies supporting the treatment and management of wellbeing in mental health. It then provides a case study of how technology in e-Health can lend itself to an application that could support and maintain the wellbeing of people with a severe mental illness. The case study uses Borderline Personality Disorder as an example, but could be applicable in many other areas, including depression, anxiety, addiction and PTSD. This type of application demonstrates how e-Health can empower the individuals using it but also potentially reducing the impact upon health care providers and services.Comment: Book chapte

AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN PUBLIC SPEAKING AT UNIVERSITAS PGRI PALEMBANG

The objective of this study was to know factors thataffect the emergence of fear of public speaking of students’ English education at Universitas PGRI Palembang in terms of experiencing panic and dread, fearing at the fear itself, and negative beliefs about themselves and the audience.The method of this study was descriptive qualitative analysis.The participants of this study were 40 students of English Education at Universitas PGRI Palembang in the Academic Years of 2017/2018. The data were analyzed by checking the respond of the questionnaire and calculating the percentage analysis. Results of the study showed that those factors were experiencing panic and dread in categories feeling shame and feeling being alone, and then perceives something to be a significant danger or threat;fearing at the fear itself in categories pounding heart, trembling/shaking, lightheaded, numbness, and fear of losing control; andnegative beliefs about themselves and the audience in categories negative beliefs about themselves and the audience. Keywords: students’ ability, and public speaking

The Assessment of Engineering Student Public Speaking Ability : What, How and Issues

This paper discusses the assessment of public speaking as a generic skill in engineering students. The assessment is far from a new topic however there are a few fundamental questions surrounding this generic skill that remain unclear and subject to a number of measurement issues. The paper commences on the premise that public speaking is actually a meta competence which sits in the middle of a hierarchy of skill definitions under the general umbrella of communication. Below it are skills such as: the ability to convey a technical subject to a lay audience; the ability to convey a technical subject to a technical audience; and a number of other variants. The paper then considers some of the issues with measuring it as a skill starting with why, as academics, we should measure it and what any statement of ability means. It looks at issues of measurement reliability and validity and some of the common sources of conscious and unconscious measurement bias. The paper will draw on the findings of 3 years experimental research at the University into the use of a marking rubric and how effective this is compared to the more common overall assessment methods. It will also report on the need for assessment of how well the student can defend their presentation and the more controversial question of whether, if a student shows complete incompetence in being able to defend their presentation whether they should pass or fail the overall presentation

Development and Validation of the Public Speaking Attitude Scale: A Theoretical Approach to Assess Student Performance in Public Speaking Courses in Higher Education

Although anxiety is an important component of individuals’ relationship with public speaking, it only represents a portion of the story. Specifically, understanding attitudes toward public speaking can help instructors develop improved methods for teaching and assessing student performance in speech classes, and on oral communication-based university-level learning outcomes. This study addresses our lack of understanding of attitudes towards public speaking by collecting and examining data from 1,112 college students to develop a Public Speaking Attitude Scale and examine the scale’s ability to predict students’ intent to leverage skills learned in introductory speech classes in their future endeavors. Initial item development and validation are described, and the scale is compared against existing measures to determine which scale accounts for more variance in students’ intent to leverage public speaking skills. Findings suggest that Public Speaking Attitude accounts for significantly more variance than public speaking anxiety and shyness in a student’s intent to leverage skills learned in the basic speech course. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed

What do job adverts tell Higher Education about the ‘shape’ of Biomedical Engineering graduates?

Higher Education Institutions are required, at least in some Countries, to design their curricula taking into account the needs of relevant industry. Use of Industrial Advisory Committees is a common way of demonstrating this input. This paper explores an additional window to industry needs through the textual analysis of job advertisements. 36 internet published adverts using the “Biomedical Engineering” search phrase were downloaded and textually analysed to identify the mentioned technical skills, generic skills and the adjectives used to describe the required level of proficiency in them. Results of the analysis of these adverts, using qualitative re-search analysis software starts to reveal a relevant technical skills hierarchy that Higher Education can use to help inform curricular designed for this employment pathway. The analy-sis of the generic skills reveals those rated important by em-ployers for different levels of jobs, again of potential use to curriculum designers. Finally the results reveal the adjectives used to show the level of ability employers seek of their gradu-ates. Herein lies a significant difference across the supply and demand side of the first employment transition. The difference can be rationally explained but does not help in closing the gap between what Higher Education provides in terms of gradu-ates and what Industry seeks. The paper concludes that dia-logue between Industry and Higher Education could usefully focus on the way skills are defined and claims of ability war-ranted as a means of closing the “Higher Education is not gives us what employers want” claims

Assessing Student Public Speaking Competence in the Hybrid Basic Communication Course

Public speaking remains one of the most sought-after skill sets by employers. However, a method to accurately assess these public speaking skills has long been debated by educators and scholars alike (Morreale, Hugenberg, & Worley, 2006). This study sought to ex-amine the assessment tools used to demonstrate student learning of public speaking skills in the hybrid orientation of the basic communication course. Statistical analyses were conducted to determine the validity of two assessment instruments (Informative Presentation Assessment Form and Persuasive Presentation Assessment Form) measuring student public speaking competency. Results established concurrent validity of the two assessment instruments used to measure students’ public speaking competency for the informative and persuasive presentations. Another goal of the cur-rent study was to assess the change in student public speaking behaviors after receiving public speaking training. A pre-post design was used to determine whether trained or untrained students would improve more throughout the course of the semester. Results revealed the trained group experienced a greater increase in competency than the untrained group. Discussion and implications for future research are included

IMPROVING PUBLIC SPEAKING SKILLS AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL THROUGH TED TALKS SHORT SESSIONS

For English learners, being able to speak English in public circumstances is a crucial thing in the process of delivering and retaining ideas both from speakers and listeners. Nevertheless, this course is one that is often shunned from the other language skills like listening, reading, and writing. It also creates feelings of anxiety toward learners. Even scholars argued that students studying English as a second or foreign language are having higher rates of experiencing problems. Thus, the researcher was eager to implement digital short supplementary material to university students to improve their performances in public speaking classes, namely TED Talks short session videos. This research aim was to investigate the effect of TED Talks on college students’ public speaking performances. The study took one month and a half to be finished and involved 40 participants as the sample from English Education freshman of Universitas Negeri Surabaya. The students were divided into two groups, which are experimental group and control group. Under experimental pretest-posttest research design, the students were assessed on their speaking performances based on the components set in a speaking rubric. The data were analyzed using independent sample t-test using SPSS 26. The results of the study showed that there was a difference in the outcome scores between the control group and experimental group which was significant. This was evidenced in the Independent Sample t Test with significance value of 0.00. Then, it was confirmed on the mean data in the experimental group which is 89.10 and the control group which is 83.60. The finding of this research revealed that TED talks short sessions can be contructive and beneficial to improve college students’ public speaking performances. Keywords: public speaking, TED talks, digital video, university level. &nbsp