Students, Presentations, and the Pandemic: Restructuring Assignments and Assessment Free

In the spring of 2020, educators were catapulted into the facilitation of distance learning due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and, in many cases, without being afforded the time and resources to fully prepare in advance. Out of necessity faculty, such as myself, adapted curriculum, assessment methods, and modes of teaching to achieve educational goals and prioritize the health and safety of our respective learning communities.

As part of assessment, I require college students in communication courses to deliver oral presentations, which allows them to demonstrate their content knowledge and ability to effectively impart information verbally and nonverbally. Before the pandemic, the undergraduates in my introductory-level public speaking and interpersonal communication courses would be asked to deliver presentations from a focal point in the classroom. However, the quick shift to distance learning required that I assign virtual presentations to students in online courses. The process of restructuring oral presentations to fit the online modality allowed students to deliver organized presentations with enhanced communication skills learned in the course. Examining my teaching practice and students’ experience has led to identifying benefits and limitations.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many colleges and universities have created opportunities for students to learn remotely; some institutions offered individual courses online, while others ran fully remote degree programs. Educators have experimented with computers to facilitate learning since the late 1970s and early 1980s (Harting & Erthal, 2005). As technology has advanced, higher education institutions have adopted various forms of distance learning. Synchronous learning allows faculty and students to interact in a virtual classroom in real time, using conferencing techniques (McBrien et al., 2009). Asynchronous learning is not designed for real-time connection. Instead, it allows a learning community to access educational resources and complete coursework at independently selected time intervals. For many asynchronous courses, discussion boards are essential for engagement (Ringler et al., 2015). Discussion boards allow learning communities to exchange written messages and embed or link to other mediums, such as videos, audio clips, images, and more.

Another form of distance learning allows students and educators to combine elements of both synchronous and asynchronous modalities. Some educators know this format as the blended modality, which offers face-to-face and online learning (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004). The blended or hybrid model’s in-person component can occur in the same physical setting or virtual learning spaces. Fully remote blended courses are designed with synchronous class meetings and asynchronous class discussions (Yamagata-Lynch, 2019).

Due to the pandemic, colleges and universities shifted to distance learning in the spring of 2020. This shift resulted in a collection of educators and students who both experienced and unfamiliar with remote teaching and learning, respectively. One international study found that faculty who previously instructed students online, taught in higher education, and facilitated learning using synchronous modalities showed the most engagement and ability to deal with the shift to distance learning due to the pandemic (Jelińska & Paradowski, 2021).

The fear of public speaking has been identified during adolescence and adult years (Comadena & Prusank, 1988; Rolls, 1998; van Dis et al., 2021; Vevea et al., 2009). This fear is also the experience of many college students, who worry about addressing public audiences (Dwyer & Davidson, 2012; Marinho et al., 2017). There are several causes of speech apprehension, and some students develop physical symptoms associated with their fear (Grieve et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2005).

When academic course work requires the oral delivery of assignments, students are challenged to tackle their fear of speaking to a group of listeners. Many students want to work on the craft of effective oral communication; one study found that just under 90% of undergraduates desired courses that aimed to improve their public speaking skills (Marinho et al., 2017).

When college students, preparing to enter the workforce, acquire the skills needed to communicate with remote professional audiences effectively, there are many benefits (Briant & Crowther, 2020; Wolverton & Tanner, 2019). One of such benefits is securing employment by succeeding in virtual interviews. Before the pandemic, virtual career fairs and interviews were on the rise (Kirkwood et al., 2011). After the start of the pandemic, in addition to meeting with job recruiters remotely, many professionals are working outside of brick-and-mortar office spaces. By the fall of 2020, more than 70% of employed adults were performing job duties remotely (Pew Research Center, 2020). For many working professionals, it is essential to obtain communication skills that allow for clear and concise messaging with internal colleagues and external audiences, such as clients or customers.

Researchers have found that one of the top skills that convey a candidate’s job readiness is speech communication (Baird & Parayitam, 2019; Stevens, 2005). When students can first develop effective oral communication skills in an educational setting and later demonstrate them in job interviews, they enhance their chance of securing employment.

This inquiry aimed to determine if undergraduates, who were required to deliver oral presentations to remote audiences, would succeed in conveying organized content with effective verbal and nonverbal communication skills, following the required shift to distance learning. Due to the pandemic, my courses in the latter half of spring 2020, fall 2020, spring 2021, and summer 2021 were all online. Over this period, I taught (N = 214) students in 11 sections of interpersonal communication and public speaking to community college students in the northeast. Two sections switched to an asynchronous modality in March of 2020. The subsequent semesters were taught online for the full duration; seven sections were taught asynchronously, and two were taught synchronously. Students were required to deliver one oral presentation in interpersonal communication, and those enrolled in public speaking were required to deliver three presentations of varying type.

To effectively help students strengthen their oral communication skills and confidently navigate the technology required for virtual presentations, I took two approaches, including teaching the students about the applications they would be required to use for delivery and scaffolding the assignments.

Before students delivered a formal presentation, I first developed and shared guides on using the required application(s). I followed that with simple, lowstakes assignments or activities that allowed my students to utilize the basic application functions required to later deliver presentations. For example, students in asynchronous classes gained experience by first recording themselves sharing their presentation topic and summarizing the sources of research that they planned to incorporate. Similarly, students in synchronous online courses summarized their topics and resources, but on screen in real time.

To ensure that all low-stakes assignments successfully complimented upcoming formal presentations, students were to identify one visual, audio, or audiovisual that they intended to feature in an upcoming presentation. They practiced sharing their presentational aid with a virtual audience to gain familiarity with the functions of the platform they would soon use to impart their content knowledge.

Through scaffolding, in courses that met in real time on camera, I provided students with the experience of sharing messages both synchronously and asynchronously as preparation for formal presentations. This experience provided them with insight on the virtual modality that felt most comfortable, helped them to sharpen their technological skills, and allowed them to identify any challenges that they could encounter based on the device, audio equipment (headsets and microphones), or internet connection they had while working remotely.

About 62% of students expressed a fear of public speaking. Those who shared their apprehension cited various causes. These reasons include previous negative experiences, a fear of not looking one’s best on camera, having presentations shared on social media sites without consent, misspeaking, and talking to an audience in a non-native language. The most reoccurring concern was that students worried about being judged by others.

Students also experienced technical problems. Twenty-four percent of students encountered at least one problem as they attempted to share presentations with their academic audience; some problems were self-reported. Others were identified when there was difficulty accessing the student’s presentation. The cause of students’ technological challenges includes limited access to devices due to sharing a single computer with multiple members of a household, the inability to record a large video file on a device with limited storage capacity, owning a mobile device that was incompatible with applications required for the completion of assignments, and difficulty navigating the learning management system (LMS). Issues with Wi-Fi also stifled the completion of some presentations, which resulted in out-of-sync audio as students attempted to address audiences in real time. Students in asynchronous classes reported the inability to upload large video files due to weak and unavailable Wi-Fi signals.

Those enrolled in asynchronous courses expressed an appreciation for being able to re-record their presentations to their satisfaction. Forty-seven percent saw this as an opportunity to maximize their ability to meet the requirements of an assignment. However, the downside was that this added advantage led to an increased amount of time devoted to a single presentation.

Teaching communication courses online to undergraduates, while utilizing virtual presentations as one assessment method, led me to identify three areas that required careful consideration to help students effectively address virtual audiences.

When assigning student presentations, I first had to consider which platform would be optimal for sharing. The platform I used for asynchronous courses was Blackboard, the college provided LMS. My students’ familiarity with Blackboard, prior to the pandemic, was a key factor in this choice. Blackboard allows faculty to set up assessments where a student’s recorded presentation can be accessed by the instructor or by classmates. As an educator, I find it imperative that students in asynchronous courses share their presentations with classmates to receive constructive feedback from peers, just as they would in a campus classroom, so I requested that students submit their recordings to the discussion board. Sharing ignited engagement regarding the subject matter of the presentations and the students’ oral communication skills. For students who experienced technical difficulty uploading large video files to Blackboard directly, I suggested YouTube as a vehicle for sharing. I found that many students appreciated the reduced upload times on YouTube compared to the LMS. Students would then share the YouTube link or embed the video in Blackboard. When teaching two synchronous courses, I taught one with the LMS and the second with a combination of the LMS and a videoconferencing platform. Using Blackboard’s Collaborate Ultra tool in one course, my students and I could appear on screen in real time while using a single application for all coursework. In the second synchronous course, I chose Zoom for student presentations. While

Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate Ultra functioned primarily the same by allowing users to meet in real time and share presentational aids, Zoom offered individuals an option to alter their background by blurring or replacing it with an alternate visual, which afforded privacy to students as they worked remotely. However, since Zoom did not function like an LMS, I also required the use of Blackboard for the submission of all other academic work.

Furthermore, there were reasons that I opted not to use other available videosharing applications in synchronous courses. Although YouTube offered users the ability to share in a live mode, this video-sharing and social media site presented challenges for a community of learners in a synchronous course. This challenge was because I, as the instructor, could not moderate when needed. Instead, only the person speaking in real time on their YouTube channel could share a message. Attempting to hear from multiple student speakers in one class period would require navigating from one YouTube channel to the next, using only one-way communication, so I did not conduct class using this platform.

Some textbook publishers have recognized a need for students to capture and share oral presentations in recent years. Some have developed software that enable students to share live or prerecorded presentations. I have used a publisher-provided sharing platform before the pandemic; I found the array of grading options, which allowed faculty to align commentary with specific parts of a recording or provide general feedback to be helpful. However, using these features required faculty to select supplemental packages when adopting the textbook prior to the start of the semester, and this feature is not available for all texts.

The second area that required careful consideration was the rubric used for assessment. I altered the rubrics used for in-person delivery to grade virtual presentations. I took this approach because while the physical classroom allowed for equitable use of space and technology, there were inconsistencies with these criteria when students recorded or presented live off-campus. When students delivered an assigned speech in a classroom, I had a full view of their nonverbal communication while assessing their efforts, but this was not always the case in a virtual presentation due to the type of recording device and placement of the camera. Students with a supplemental mounted webcam were able to adjust the angle in a way that one relying on a tablet could not, due to the design of devices. At a minimum, I was able to see a portion of the speaker through a headshot or bust shot, which highlighted an area above the abdomen to the top of a speaker’s head and limited the view of gestures. I was also keenly aware that requiring students to present while standing in full view of the camera could result in low volume, as speakers move away from their devices to offer audiences a wide or medium-wide shot. Therefore, I had to consider the way volume was assessed. While volume is an important component to consider when grading a student presentation, the use of devices and microphones could drastically impact the quality of audio. Students who recorded presentations for asynchronous courses could potentially use video editing software to raise the naturally captured volume. At the same time, those delivering live presentations in synchronous classes needed to troubleshoot the audio levels to sync their equipment to the platform or move closer to the microphone to ensure clear audio.

Furthermore, I revised the rubric to reflect what it means to establish eye contact with a virtual audience. Moving one’s head from right to left periodically in a virtual presentation is ineffective, unlike when speaking to an audience face to face. Instead, I assessed students’ ability to look into the camera’s lens to connect with virtual viewers. In addition, I had to adapt rubrics when students were required or encouraged to use presentational aids. Doing so allowed me to compensate for the obstacles that may be out of a student’s control when delivering virtual presentations and displaying objects, sharing audiovisuals, or using other supplemental items. For example, if a speaker held an item with writing up to the camera, the words were inverted from the audience’s perspective. Also, since many of the videoconferencing applications have nuances, I had to consider this while assessing student work. When slideshows were shared in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, the virtual audience could advance slides, whether intended or unintended by clicking another slide. While screen sharing in Zoom, audiences could have an obstructed view of the presenter’s screen depending upon settings and a secondary application tool, like the chat box. Therefore, I remained available throughout the semester to aid students with navigating ways to optimize their performance with their devices and applications.

The third area that required thoughtful consideration was student privacy. The recording and virtual sharing of presentations with an entire class was not something I could avoid while teaching a communication course. So instead, I approached it mindfully. Some students could feel uncomfortable that classmates could access their likeness and academic efforts with a few clicks on a device. As faculty, I felt it was important to empower students to make decisions about access to their work. In part, this was done by requesting consent to record student presentations in synchronous classes. If students did not grant consent, I solely relied on taking notes on presentations in real time, like the process I used in campus classrooms. For students sharing their presentations in an asynchronous format, I recommended that students who opted to upload their videos to YouTube, opposed to the LMS directly, used the “unlisted” feature, which allowed only those with the URL to access the content. Furthermore, to empower students, I announced that they could remove content from a sharing platform after the assessment was graded. Although many students belong to the demographic known as digital natives, due to the lifelong use of digital technology, empowering students allowed me to give them control over digital access to their work and create a supportive and respectful learning environment.

The students in my online courses delivered organized presentations while demonstrating content knowledge and effective verbal and nonverbal communication skills. However, to achieve this objective, students had to confront the fear of public speaking. While the COVID-19 pandemic may have changed the educational landscape, it did not change the likelihood that students can experience apprehension involving public speaking. The pressure to deliver content confidently while navigating technology skillfully has added to the gravity of the assessment for many students. Scaffolding assignments allowed my students to gradually build the knowledge and confidence needed to develop effective oral communication skills, which will help them achieve both their academic and professional goals.

Several variables are involved in preparing and delivering student presentations in online courses. The modality of distance learning (synchronous or asynchronous), LMS, video-sharing applications, individual recording devices, and Internet quality can create unique obstacles for educators and students. In some areas of the United States, Wi-Fi connections have been unreliable during the pandemic, and receiving equipment to provide access was delayed (Khazan, 2020; Richards et al., 2021). Locations with weak Wi-Fi signals have been barriers for students who attempted to deliver live presentations due to image distortions and poorly synced audio. Weak signals have also impeded the progress of uploading an asynchronous recording to the LMS or video sharing site. With preplanning and consideration of potential obstacles, faculty can help mitigate challenges by identifying how to best utilize the LMS to deliver presentations. Considering the mode of instruction can help with the decision to incorporate the use of additional applications and video sharing sites.

Although challenges exist for faculty and students, when assessment requires the delivery of oral presentations online, undergraduates are gaining valuable experience that will help them to succeed in the modern-day workplace. Learning to complement organized information with body language and vocal technique will help students achieve academic success in subsequent academic courses and enter the workplace ready to adapt to various communication channels and modalities.