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After reading the varied posts, I’m convinced we (as an academic discipline) don’t have any evidence for the claims that a live audience is either effective or necessary in online public speaking courses.  Although instructors noted how they handled this issue of a live audience, no one produced any evidence. In fact, I don’t know of any research showing that assembling 6 or more people and presenting a speech to them will improve someone’s public speaking skills more than will delivering it to a camera. If there is evidence, beyond the anecdotal, I’d much appreciate learning about it. Some people report that there is inherent value in presenting a speech to a live audience. This may well be true (though I’m not sure) but perhaps an online public speaking course is not the place for it. We cannot provide students with experience in every type of public speaking situation. After all, the live audience that the speaker recruits is unlike any audience he or she will ever meet again. ...

The following post was sent to the basic course list (Basiccc@lists.udayton.edu) in response to a number of instructors explaining how they incorporated the live audience in an online public speaking course. But, I thought others might be interested in the issue. It's an important one and one that is sure to increase as online courses become more numerous. I’ve read with much interest how various basic course instructors deal with online public speaking assignments. Many (perhaps most), it seems, require the student to deliver the speech in front of a live audience which must be video scanned. This requirement is surely well-intentioned, designed to enable the student to experience presenting to a live audience in as realistic a setting as possible. However, I think there’s a downside to this practice and I’d like to argue that it isn’t necessary and in many ways is counterproductive. Public Speaking is a difficult course for many students, often because of their communication appr...

Reducing Communication Apprehension Here's a novel method for rehearsing your speech and for reducing your communication apprehension.

Here is a brief public speaking exercise built around the theme of distinguishing two things. The main purpose of the exercise is to illustrate some principles of organization and can be used as a regular prepared/researched speech or as an impromptu speech. For this exercise, the speeches should be organized in either of these two ways. Organizational Patterns Introduction A basic orientation as to what will be discussed Body I.                      Item No. 1 (e.g., muffin) A.       Property No. 1 (e.g., ingredients) B.       Property No. 2 (e.g., appearance) C.       Property No. 3 (e.g., taste) II.                    Item No. 2 (e.g., cupcake) A.       Property No. 1 (e.g., ingredien...

Here’s an interesting article that I just ran across while researching trends in public speaking. Lisa B. Marshall identifies 7. I paraphrase these in brief but the article is worth reading especially if you’re teaching public speaking. 1.        Public speaking in the business world is becoming more casual. 2.        Audiences no longer can be viewed as passive recipients of a speaker’s message but are listeners who want to participate. 3.        Speakers are addressing smaller audiences with more focused presentations. 4.        Webinars are increasing but so are live presentations. 5.        Videos are being increasingly incorporated into public speaking presentations. 6.        Technology is playing an ever increasing role in public speaking. 7.        The white b...

In looking over the literature on dealing with pubic speaking apprehension, I searched for less likely sources than NCA journals. Here are some of the things I found, not surprisingly, not that different from what we have in our textbooks: From an article in Forbes: 1.       Begin small, with baby steps. 2.       Organize what you want to say. 3.       Slow down. From Psychology Today : 1.       Don’t expect perfection. 2.       Don’t think of public speaking as a measure of your self-worth. 3.       Avoid getting nervous over nervousness—a wonderful lesson I learned from General Semantics 4.       Don’t memorize. 5.       Don’t read. From WebMD : 1.       Visualize yourself speaking successfully. 2.       Practice. 3.       ...

Here’s an interesting research study by Suzanne Shu and Kurt Carlson— Journal of Marketing , January 2014, 78, pp. 127-139--that argues that 3 claims is the optimal number for a persuasive presentation. They call it the “charm of three.”  When a speaker uses more than three, listeners may become skeptical. 

Here's a great example to remind students to organize and rehearse their speech and to keep their notes in order:  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/11/hhs-sebelius-botches-farewell-speech/

  The current issue of Inc . (October 2013) has a wealth of information on public speaking, persuasion, and leadership that I think students will relate to easily. Among the articles are How to make people believe, How I conquered public speaking anxiety, The pose that’s worth 1,000 words (on rhetorical gestures), Rallying the troops (on motivation), Secrets of a great TED talk, Give the audience more of what it wants: less (on PechaKucha), Both simple and true (on storytelling), What kind of leader are you?