The room was laid out in a horseshoe setting, with me in the middle next to the desk. I chose to set the room out like this to optimise audience participation and to help them feel relaxed. This meant everyone was roughly an equal distance to me so no one felt left out. This improves the probability of them feeling comfortable to join in and ask questions. By not having more than one row, I could hold eye contact with all members of the audience to keep them engaged in what I was saying. This was evident in my questionnaire as the modal score out of 10 for eye contact was 8. I did however have a range of 6-9, which suggests I was favouring some members of the audience. This may be due to where I was standing (Figure 1) and was less able to maintain eye contact with those on the outer edges due to the restriction of standing near the computer as I did not possess a wireless mouse. This worked well to an extent to keep attention on the PowerPoint and me apart from the few who were located behind the desk.
I decided to use a PowerPoint rather than a flipchart, as it was easier to edit at a later stage and also provide a more visual way of presenting my information such as the image of a concert to help them visualise the scene. It was also a more modern technique of displaying a presentation, which the audience would be used to. Also the technology was useful for creating my prompt cards as it converts the sides into note form.
I decided to use prompt cards mainly to give me confidence when I was talking, knowing that I could refer back to my points if I get lost. I tried not to look at the cards too often as this appears unprofessional and the audience may loose focus on what I’m saying. On my PowerPoint I used very little summarising text e.g. ‘May miss social cues’ so I used these points on my prompt cards. I used two highlighting colours: green to highlight the key points that were also on the slides e.g. ‘Avoid pauses’, and orange to highlight the phrases or sections I frequently forget to mention in my practice talks. While the cards worked well, I found myself relying too heavily on them and not giving enough eye contact, as I would have liked. While the majority of the audience thought I maintained good eye contact, one only rated me a 6 out of 10 for ‘On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the lowest, how well did I maintain eye contact with you through ought the talk?’. This means they may have noticed my lack of eye contact while looking at the prompt cards. If I had more confidence and time I would memorize what I wanted to stay without the need for prompts, but I did not have the time to prepare on this level.
I tried to use the paralinguistic skills in a professional manor to portray a formal approach to the subject. While I didn’t use humour, some of the audience members found this a positive thing. For example my teacher said ‘The tone was varied and conveyed your enthusiasm for the topic’. However contrastingly one audience member said I was ‘too sharp’ in my tone. While I found the serious tone helpful for being formal, if I had used a humour as well it may have not come across so aggressive to some of the audience. However the target audience was trainee teachers, so perhaps the formal tone was more appropriate than I originally considered. I tried to avoid pauses at inappropriate times, to maintain audience concentration. I did however slip up on a minor occasion, and forget where I was but none of the audience reported noticing this in the questionnaire. This made me loose confidence and I relayed even more on my prompt cards afterwards. 100% of the audience either agreed or strongly agreed with ‘pausing only when appropriately’, so I am confident that they failed to notice my slip up or chose not to mention it.
The modal response to ‘I understood the definitions of the paralinguistic skills. How well do you agree with this statement’ was Agree on all of the different skills. I did also have 16% of the respondents strongly agree with the statement. I explained them in a simple manor e.g. ‘Keep tone appropriate to emotion’ then with a simple explanation of why this useful and an example in a school setting to help reinforce the skill.
Considering the similarity between how I presented the examples in both verbal and non-verbal skills and the exact same format of question having the same result did not surprise me. However this may cause them to loose interest if I was repeating how I explained things. To improve this putting more variety in my explanations may have proven to be a stronger method of talking.
For the question ‘How could I improve the explanations of barriers?’, only 2 people actually answered this question. This proved hard to analyse as 2 is a very small sample size to draw conclusions from. One of the respondents answered ‘explain in more detail the different treatments’. They did not specify what ones so it could be either a lack of detail in all barriers or simply not explaining how it affect s the child. In the question ‘Name two barriers that apply to ADHD children’ no one managed to name two barriers that do apply, even though it was the last section I covered, meaning it was fresh in their memory. The majority did however manage to mention at least one barrier, which means I managed to explain them well enough, but perhaps too quickly. What was interesting however is that the audience drew from previous knowledge I had given them on problems for these children and used them as barriers. For example a very common response was ‘Unable to interact with people’. This was given previously and mentioned quickly that it can cause communication to be hard, but I did not use it my actual barriers section. Although they failed to identify all the barriers I was more impressed on them picking up on things they had learnt earlier and actually processing and putting it into context of a barrier.
Unfortunately I failed to include a question on overcoming the barriers so cannot accurately assess my explanations of this. However in the question ‘name two barriers that apply to ADHD’ many of them identified overcoming them within this for their answer. For example ‘talking too slow – talk at a steady pace instead’ where they identified it and then went on to expand and explain.
I thought that my examples were my most effective explanation. I used both a case study of Joe, which my teacher thought was very useful ‘ I was able to visualise the situations and apply these to Joe’. I used this to add a visual and imaginative element to my talk, as the majority of the explanations were very ‘wordy’. This is because people learn better with multiple inputs e.g. visual and audio. A common response was ‘it was a lot easier to understand what you were explaining’. This is good because my aim of the case study was to further reinforce the explanations and make the talk more fun. One respondent also mentioned my analogy of the concert, which was used to help them imagine what it’s like for the child. Overall I was very pleased with this section and the audience responses were similarly pleased in aiding them understand and enjoy the talk.
I chose not to use humour as I was too nervous and thought it may come across quite faked. I regret this decision now as it can make the talk a lot more light hearted and engage the audience to listen and participate. This serious tone did not go down so well with some of the audience members ‘it was too sharp’; I did manage to make the serious tone. My teacher even suggested I could do it for living, which shows that I came across confident, and my formal method was effective.
Generally I was pleased with the design of the PowerPoint as I used a fresh and clear design to help them read what was on the screen. I was also pleased with how I presented the information on a simple form and expanding upon them verbally. In the last question ‘overall how could I improve my presentation?’ only 32% of the respondents answered. They both mentioned my presentation style ‘be less sharp’ and ‘smile more!’ with a conclusion of ‘talk was excellent – informative and well presented’.
Overall I think the main improvements I would focus on were smiling, using humour and walking around more. All of these factors help the audience feel relaxed, more confident to join in when asked questions and concentrate on what I’m saying. I was pleased with my performance and the accurate information and how I presented it in my talk, and the audience seemed to agree with this.
Conclusion –
By using various sources of information such as talking to a teacher, Internet, books and observing children with ADHD, I accumulated specific effective communication skills. By doing a 14 minute presentation in a formal way to an audience, I was able to collect data through a questionnaire to assess how they perceived my performance and information I provided.
