2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Pre-recorded presentations are becoming more prevalent in professional settings, such as conferences and in the classroom, and require a different but related skill-set than the standard in-person presentation. To evaluate student performance and understanding of pre-recorded versus in-person presentations we conducted a preliminary research study in a Systems Bioengineering course with a mixture of undergraduate and graduate enrollment. For each of the four course modules, students were randomly assigned groups with at least two graduate students per group and developed a small computational model based on the module’s topic. Students presented their work in a pre-recorded presentation in the first and third modules and in an in-person presentation in the second and fourth modules. At the end of the course, students were asked to complete an anonymous Qualtrics survey, developed based on previous surveys that evaluated in-person versus virtual presentation formats[1, 2], to identify the positives and negatives associated with pre-recorded presentation on both the presenter and the audience member. Nine students, eight graduate students, and one undergraduate student completed the survey. All students had prior experience with in-person presentations, but only two students had previous experience with pre-recorded presentations. Students rated how delivering presentations in each presentation style impacted a variety of learning outcomes, such as ability to be innovative and take risks, improving teamwork skills, and improving communication skills, on a scale of 1 to 10—with 1 being no impact and 10 being great impact. In general, across all categories delivering in-person presentations were rated higher than delivering pre-recorded presentations, with an average mean score of 7.91±1.92 versus 4.24±2.94. Similar trends were seen in the results for audience learning for in-person versus pre-recorded presentations. Learning objectives assessed for being an audience member during each presentation style included understanding of the project presented, ability to think critically about the project, willingness to ask questions, and understanding of the overall module. Across all audience learning categories, in-person presentation scores averaged 7.5±1.66 while pre-recorded presentations again scored lower, but with large standard deviations, at 3.83±3.16. Students were also asked two short answer questions on which presentation medium they would pick in the future and challenges they faced when making the different types of presentations. While the majority of students indicated a preference for in-person presentations, two students preferred pre-recorded presentations, stating that pre-recorded presentations “[L]ets you be sure to articulate clearly with multiple attempts” and “Although it took more time and was harder to gather everyone for the pre-recorded presentations let me think about the other groups presenting instead of going over information I would have to present when it was my groups turn.” Future work should repeat this study and further evaluate the effect of providing resources on effective ways to give pre-recorded presentations on student’s learning outcomes.
[1] M. Braun, "Comparative Evaluation of Online and In-Class Student Team Presentations," Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, vol. 14, no. 3, 2017, doi: https://doi.org/10.53761/1.14.3.3.
[2] A. J. Zak, L. F. Bugada, X. Y. Ma, and F. Wen, "Virtual versus In-Person Presentation as a Project Deliverable Differentially Impacts Student Engaged-Learning Outcomes in a Chemical Engineering Core Course," Journal of Chemical Education, vol. 98, no. 4, pp. 1174-1181, 2021/04/13 2021, doi: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c01033.