Reference no: EM133808012

Homework: Communications- Outlines and Visual Aids and why

Learning Objectives:

1) Determine when to effectively use visual technologies and speaking aids.
2) Habitually revise and edit work before making a presentation.
3) Produce examples of spoken and visual communication that are engaging, clear, professional, evidence-driven, ethical and persuasive.

As we move towards our first major speech, we are going to work on the skills and process that provide the backbone to almost all successful speeches. Any discussion of public speaking inevitably stresses that preparation is the key to success. Strong speakers can succeed without preparation, but they often struggle or perform much worse than they could. A well-prepared speaker, even if they are nervous or don't consider themselves a "good" public speaker, will tend to outperform an unprepared speaker. Preparation for a speech typically involves constructing an outline of some sort (discussed in detail in Chapter 12), choosing visual aids, and practicing. Your task for this week is to prepare your outlines and visual aids for week 3's speech.

To complete this, follow these steps:

1) Begin by reading chapter 12, reviewing the lecture on informative speaking, checking the homework, and choosing your case study.

2) Then, using either the working outline or full-sentence outline modeled in Chapter 12, plan your speech. What will your thesis be? What's the most important takeaway from the case? Remember that this will necessarily involve emphasizing some elements of the case and downplaying others.

3) Develop your outline until it is finished enough that you can give a rough version of the speech from it (it is a good idea to time that speech as well to see whether you need to add or cut material)

4) Once your outline is ready, create a slide deck for your visual aids. Make sure that you have watched the lecture on visual aids and read chapter 15 before doing this.

5) Review your slide deck (after at least a 1 hour break), and make sure it is following the principles of strong visual design.

6) Finally, submit both your preparation outlines and visual aids to Blackboard by the due date.

Purpose:

This class moves quickly, so there is not space for us to develop extensive outlines for each speech. However, learning to put together a strong outline and develop visual aids after you outline your speech are both crucial skills. With just those two practices, you can set yourself aside from the majority of other speakers. So, we're taking this entire week just to work on developing outlines, creating speaking notes, and crafting strong visual aids. Then, we'll fine-tune them and practice next week for our speech. Not only does this help us ramp up into the term, but it also gives you space to really prepare and fine-tune your speech so it can be really successful.

As comparable to basic exercises or conditioning for upcoming speeches. We will not do this entire process together for each speech, but if you continue to practice preparing like this, then your speaking will improve. Build the skills and conditioning now, and you'll find preparing each speech to become progressively more familiar and easier.

Evaluation:

The outlines and visual aids each account for 50 points of this homework. Outlines will be graded on completion, clarity, depth, and preparation. Minor formatting and mechanical errors are much less important than seeing an outline that reflects preparation, a good understanding of the case study, and clear organization. Visual aids should reflect the standards from the visual aids lecture and the reading in Chapter 15. They need not be perfect, but they should have a proper number of slides, avoid walls of text, and use images carefully and effectively. Homework Sheet: Informative Speech

Task:

Our next speech gives you an opportunity to inform your classmates by summarizing and presenting one key element of an MIT Case Study. You may choose one of the case studies listed here, most of which are available: Any case studies not available there are hyperlinked on this homework sheet. Other MIT case studies may be allowed at the discretion of your instructor.

1) Managed by Q
2) Athletes Unlimited
3) Boeing's 737 Max 8 Disasters
4) Mud Bay's Good Jobs Journey
5) Scaling Sanergy
6) Zipcar and an Inconvenient Discovery
7) Amazon.com
8) Spartan Race
9) Harry Markham's Loyalty Dilemma
10) "We are Market Basket"
11) Restoration Affiliates
12) Formula 1: Unleashing the Greatest Spectacle on the Planet
13) Lobster 207
14) DeBeer's Diamond Dilemma
15) Tesla's Entry into the US Auto Industry
16) Nike Considered
17) Netflix Goes to Bollywood
18) Nintendo's "Revolution"
19) Ventures in Salt

Case Studies are what communication scholars would call "rich texts," full of complex information, technical data, and other details that flesh out the scenario. Even short cases are at least 15 pages of text. If you read that aloud, it would yield about a 20-minute speech! You get to present it in approximately 4 minutes.

Your task is to develop an informative speech of 4 minutes (with a 30 second grace period) that summarizes your chosen/assigned case study in a way that is informative to your audience of junior-level business school classmates. In a way, your task is to teach them one key element of this case study. Keep in mind that what you emphasize may not be the "thesis" or "this is why the company made a good decision" element that is often present. Instead, you should focus on providing a concise and clear synthesis of one major aspect of the case. With the Amazon case from our sample speech, for example, you might make the company's evolution and strategic development the major focus of your speech. That will be most of what you talk about, but you'd still want to briefly note/provide a basic explanation of the focus on long-term cash flow growth. Alternately, you might make that long-term cash flow choice the main focus of your speech, but you would still provide a very basic synthesis of the background/evolution of the company.

Your speech should have the normal components (introduction, conclusion, transitions, and a clear organizational structure) and should also do three key things: (i) Provide the necessary background information about the case study, (ii) define key terms and concepts, and 3) provide a coherent and clear overview of at least one aspect of the case. You'll necessarily have to select some things to emphasize and some things to pass briefly over. A strong clear thesis and preview will help your audience follow along.

Practice, synthesis, and summary are crucial here. If you just try to present the whole case but cut it down to 4:00, you will struggle to complete the homework and to reach the time limit. Instead, think of this informative speech as a new distinct thing that you are creating. With 4 minutes, what are the key ideas of the case? What terms or concepts does your audience need to know to understand it? What background information is needed to grasp the case? What shared knowledge can you expect your audience to have and which terms will you need to explain? What quantitative data is crucial to the case and how can you present it verbally?

Purpose:

The homework is designed to help you exercise several different skills at once. Your audience no doubt has some shared knowledge and experiences you can draw on, but they have likely not read your case nor studied the technical or quantitative information. You must summarize the case but also synthesize its key points. These skills are related but distinct, together pushing you to decide what information is most valuable and to present it effectively. In addition, this homework asks you to effectively use carefully-prepared visual aids. Many people create visual aids as their speech. That is, they open up Google Slides or PowerPoint and then create their whole speech by making slides. This makes for unclear speeches and ineffective visual aids! You'll also need to teach certain terms or ideas. This homework seems deceptively simple. Good summary is challenging, and it takes time and revision to do it well. We're going to take that time with this homework and the next one.

In addition, case studies like the MIT ones we're using are the "coin of the realm" in many industries. Being able to talk about a case study or how to apply a given scenario to a new one is valuable in your professional life. This homework gives you an excellent set of resources both from being a speaker and as an active audience member. A single day of class can give you 15 different talking points for potential employers! These are the studies used at the MIT Sloan School of Management.