business school uses technology to polish student presentation skills
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14/04/2015 Business school uses technology to polish student presentation skills
http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=10942271&sponsor= 1/4
Sauder School of Business Professor Cameron Morrell teaches students in a media lab at UBC in Vancouver. With the help oftechnology company Panopto, the school set up popup media labs using old monitors and computers ,and launched a newmandatory course for students. Students, from left: Omri Wallach, Elizabeth Wong, Adrienne Tan, Mikaela Wang, Ernest Fung andFranck Benichou.Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, Vancouver Sun
Business school uses technology to polish studentpresentation skillsUBC’s Sauder School of Business found students were illprepared for realworld business presentationsBY GILLIAN SHAW, VANCOUVER SUN APRIL 2, 2015
When the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business got feedback from alumni and businesspeople that its graduates lacked presentation and communication skills, it turned to technology to fixa problem.
The result?
A system of popup media labs where 400 students every semester deliver five presentations thatare captured on video, indexed and uploaded to the university’s network for feedback and gradingand for the students to review and polish their presentation skills.
Rob Peregoodoff, Sauder’s director of learning services, said when the business school planned themandatory course on presentation skills, it had to come up with a method to assess students and let
14/04/2015 Business school uses technology to polish student presentation skills
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them see their own performance.
“Traditional practice has been you would have some sort of … evaluator who would mark off andmake comments on the presentation, but that was not going to be near robust enough,” he said.
Cameron Morrell, the business communications lecturer charged with designing the course,launched an extensive search for a solution and found it in a video platform by Panopto, a companythat was spun off with technology from Carnegie Mellon University.
“The challenge was each year we have around 800 to 900 students who take this course, it’s amandatory course and how do you get students practising presentations when there are 800 to 900students every calendar year, 400 per semester?” he said.
Morrell said he realized the solution was to have multiple presentations delivered at the same time,with the presentations video recorded for later marking and feedback.
The Sauder team got the hardware on the cheap, using recycled laptops and screens, and buyingmicrophones. This lets them quickly set up six media labs in study rooms, have students in smallgroups record their presentations, and then pack away.
“I can get through 40 presentations in one 80minute class because I’ve got six rooms,” said Morrell.
“Students can log in and see their videos, they can see other students videos. The learning processis they watch their own performance afterwards and I ask them to write diaries each week to critiquehow they went, so they can see their own progress.”
The assessment of the six to sevenminute videos can be done anytime and anywhere by Morrelland his teaching assistants.
Omri Wallach took the course in his third year and, now in his fourth year, he’s helping Morrell as ateaching assistant.
“My background was on the debate side so it was easier in my mind but the first video I saw of myselfperforming, it was, ‘oh my God, there are so many things I could improve on,’” he said.
For business student Irina Costei, who has completed four video presentations, the first videoshowed her habit of making a nervous gesture with her hands after every point.
“It’s useful when you’re looking back at it to figure out what you did wrong and how you can improve,”she said. “I’ve never had the chance to watch myself or hear myself present. Watching it has reallyhelped me.”
The UBC use of Panopto’s technology is only one of many that its customers come up with,according to Ari Bixhorn, vicepresident of the Seattleheadquartered company. The platform wasoriginally created to allow lectures to be recorded, indexed and stored.
14/04/2015 Business school uses technology to polish student presentation skills
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“The idea is that students could then review those lectures to help prepare for exams, to reviewdifficult concepts and also so they could listen more actively in the class itself, they wouldn’t have tobe scribbling notes,” said Bixhorn.
One way Panopto is being used is to create a ‘flipped classroom.’ The learning model is flipped on itshead: Students watch recorded lectures before the class and in class engage in activities,discussions and assignments.
“The flipped classroom model has been catching on like wildfire in the past three years becausestudents are more engaged in class and there’s also a correlation between the flipped class modeland students’ achievement,” said Bixhorn.
Demand has grown with more than 500 businesses and universities around the globe using thePanopto video platform for everything from recording and indexing lectures that students can access,to corporate professional development and training.
Bixhorn said the platform is cost effective: For about $50,000, many universities can equip everyclassroom campuswide with Panopto’s lecture capture and video management capabilities. Forsmaller schools, Panopto starts around $25 per student annually with the price per studentdecreasing with more students.
Sauder has started to expand its use of the Panopto platform, using it to help jobseeking studentshone their interview skills.
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14/04/2015 Business school uses technology to polish student presentation skills
http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=10942271&sponsor= 4/4
Students in a media lab at UBC in Vancouver. With the help of technology company Panopto, the school set up popup medialabs using old monitors and computers ,and launched a new mandatory course for students.Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, Vancouver Sun