Fostering Oral Presentation Competence in Higher Education

Samenvatting (Engelstalig)

On the 23th of October at 11:00 hours exactly, Stan van Ginkel (Wageningen University) will defend his thesis “Fostering Oral Presentation Competence in Higher Education”. Presenting is considered as a core competence of the higher educated professional. However, it remains questionable how effective learning environments fostering presentation competence should be constructed. This thesis focuses on formulating evidence-based educational design principles. Further, research questions explore effective feedback processes within the context of realistic presentation skills courses. These studies verifies the potential impact of feedback sources, such as teachers, peers and the self, on developing students’ presentation competence. Besides studying the quality of differing feedback sources, Virtual Reality is studied as an alternative feedback mode fostering students’ cognition, skills and attitudes towards presenting. The constructed VR-tool, based on the principles of this thesis, is already implemented in secondary education, higher education and the corporate sector.