Improving Student Presentation Skills

Science Research in the High School is a 3 year program taught in many New York State high schools. The program culminates in its third year with students presenting their own authentic research in a 12:00 oral presentation. Winners in competition can advance to state, national and international competition. Students are judged both on the quality of their research and the quality of their presentation.

Throughout the past 6 months I have utilized a FLIP camera to record students and send them their video via an email link made possible by the FLIP software. Students not only watch their videos but evaluate their own presentations using a presentation rubric designed to correlate to both evaluative criteria (quality of research, and quality of presentation).

Students struggled to make dramatic changes to their presentation characteristics (posture, speaking tones, speaking styles, etc.) when we only used peer and teacher feedback given in writing. Once we started self-evaluating through video use students' presentation skills hit a much faster learning curve and their progress jumped immediately.

As a result, I have made the use of video a mandate for all students in the program.