Seamless learning for oral presentations: designing for performance needs

Abstract

This paper investigates English language learners’ oral presentation needs, alongside students’ and instructors’ perceptions towards mobile seamless language learning. The findings will be used to develop a mobile-based learning environment. Interviews with both instructors and students were used to help build a Likert questionnaire which was refined with input from experts. Results reveal that students have a need for oral presentation training in areas such as slide design, presentation-specific language, structure, and body language. Instructors and students are willing to work with peers on oral presentation projects despite lacking previous experience. Deeper exploration from interviews show students believe sentence level language issues are more important than the organization and design of a presentation. Furthermore, instructors expressed problems with incorporating technology and online collaborative learning into language courses suggesting they need more training with learning technology. Students also believed online collaboration would be convenient but difficult to manage, indicating a need for both online and face-to-face collaboration. These findings will help with the development of a mobile seamless language learning framework and app for oral presentations. Guidelines are suggested to help instructors to improve students’ oral presentation performance.