Abstract:

The development of core skills, generally termed as transversal competences, is of the utmost importance for degree students. Among these, the ability to clearly and properly communicate to a specialized or general audience plays a fundamental role [1], as it is likely to be required throughout graduates' careers. To meet this demand, the GiDeCien innovation group of the Universidad de Extremadura in Spain has offered a seminar entitled "Public Speaking" to degree and master’s students in their final year. This paper presents this experience and its main results, with a long-term perspective. This project has been developed over a period of seven years, starting in the 2015/16 academic year. Initially the course was offered only to students of the Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry but, in the 2016/2017 academic year, the offer was extended to other scientific disciplines [2]. Since then, students from the degrees in Biology, Biotechnology, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics, Medicine, Nursing, Oenology and Physics; from the master's degrees in Advanced Biotechnology, Research in Science and Teaching; and staff attached to Administration and Management have participated in this course. The main goal is to help students develop their communication skills by preparing and presenting a talk on a topic -usually a scientific article- chosen by the students themselves. Seminars take place every year from October to December, with a duration of 50 hours. The students make an audiovisual presentation consisting of a 10-minute talk in front of faculty members and peers. Right after the speech, the audience discusses the presentation and suggests improvements. All talks are graded using two rubrics, one for the speech, and the other for the slides. According to the comments and suggestions made by the evaluators, students repeat their presentations two or three weeks later in order to assess the degree of improvement. After the second session, results are statistically analyzed. A total of 148 students have enrolled in the course during these seven years, with annual numbers ranging from 14 to 27. The course was fully completed by 63% of the students enrolled and partially completed by 20%.

References:
[1] M.T.M.C. Martins and W.G. Fortes, “A expressividade da comunicação oral e sua influência no meio corporativo”, Rev. Communicare vol. 8, Issue 2, pp. 139-148, 2008.
[2] M.I. Rodríguez-Cáceres, N. Mora-Díez, D. Rodríguez-Gómez, M.I. Acedo- Valenzuela, M. Alexandre Franco, E.M. Cuerda Correa, C. Fernández González, M.V. Gil Álvarez, C. Durán Valle, F. Luna Giles, E. Viñuelas Zahínos, M.E. Martín Navarro, M.L. Sánchez Mendoza, J. Sansón Martín, J.C. Corchado, E. Botello, A. Serrano, M. Palomino-Vasco, E.M. Rodríguez Franco, A. Pérez Pereira, S. Martillanes". Can lecturers help students develop public speaking skills? Reflexions from experience", Proceedings of the Innovative and Creative Education and Teaching International Conference (ICETIC) 2017, pp. 233-237, 2017.
 

Keywords:

Public Speaking, Transversal competences, Communication skills, HEA students.