Gerald Stepp
Research Mentor(s): Patrick Barry
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Law School
Presentation Date: 08/03/2022
Presentation Type: Oral presentation
Poster Number:
Session: Session I: 12:30 – 1:20pm
Room: Vandenberg
Authors: Gerald Stepp
Abstract
Despite its importance in both academic and professional settings, the ability to speak clearly and compellingly remains an under-taught skill.Our project, Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting, is designed to fill that gap.
It utilizes an individualizable combination of low-stakes practice and high-stakes projects to help people from around the world build their own path to verbal competence and confidence. In particular, it lets people go at their own pace and co-design their own curriculum. It does this thanks to a MOOC we created on the educational platform Coursera, although there are also several other components to the project, including an in-person course, an open-access textbook, and a workshop series that has both residential and zoom dimensions. Good speakers are flexible speakers, so we have tried to make our materials and domains similarly adaptable. This coming year, we even plan to branch out into immersive technology and develop a series of extended reality (or “XR) exercises.
