Teaching and assessing multimedia-based oral presentations. (My favorite assignment).(Nanyang Technological University)

Business Communication Quarterly, December, 2001 by Pathak, Anil

AT NANYANG Technological University in Singapore, we expect our students to be trained specifically in professional presentation skills. The multimedia presentations prepared by these students generally suffer from some of the following problems:

1. An overuse of the available effects, colours, and sounds

2. Lack of coordination between the chosen effect and the intended meaning

3. Inability to alter the style to suit the nature of the message and composition of the audience

We devote a complete module (8 hours) for teaching presentations to our students, who come mainly from the School of Computer Engineering. To focus our discussion we selected two aspects -- colour and animation -- from among the many we might address. The short...