engleski

What makes a good speaker in a virtual environment?

Presentation is one of the most used tools in academic surrounding. It is used both as a teaching and knowledge assessment tool. During covid pandemic, online presentations became a large part of academic and business life since in- person presentations were not possible or limited. Presenting in an online environment will remain an important skill even in post-pandemic times due to many advantages it has, such as flexibility, saving time and money, larger access to a wider audience, etc. But challenges are also numerous. Technical knowledge is only the start, for a successful online presentation, the presenters also need to adapt the presentation's content, their speech performance, and non-verbal communication to better fit the screen and virtual context. One of the biggest challenges according to the literature is divided attention of the audience in a virtual environment (Spanić, Mitrović and Jakšić, 2021). In educational context, this can be connected with research about student’s (lack of) motivation for online classes and low interactivity in the virtual classrooms (Croxton, 2014 ; Spanić, Mitrović, and Jakšić, 2021). To examine what makes a good speaker in a virtual environment (and classroom) a survey via Google forms was conducted among lecturers with experience in online presentations. The survey consisted of yes/no questions, likert scale and open ended questions. First part of the survey covered sociodemographic information and the second part examined habits in online presenting. More precisely, what did lecturers change in presentation content and their non-verbal communication in comparison to in-person presentations and what was the most challenging part of online presenting. The participants (N=50) were lecturers from different educational institutions from Croatia (elementary and high schools, university and lifelong learning institutions), various years of experience in teaching and presenting in a virtual environment and from different fields of teaching. The results will show what can be improved when presenting online and what type of education would be the most useful for lecturers. Naimly, a qualitative study of teaching habits during online classes in Croatian schools concluded that more education on precise teaching methods for distance learning and guidelines on national level are needed (Marciuš Logožar, 2021). Furthermore, results of this research may help lecturers to prepare students’ presentations’ skills for different business contexts that await them in the future workplace (Crosling and Ward, 2002 ; Biočina and Rajh, 2021).

online presentation ; speech performance in a virtual environment ; education ; teaching and learning tool

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