Week 6: Presentation

Overview

Prepare a brief (3-minute) sales presentation that you will deliver to the class next week. Pick a topic that you can adequately present in the time-limit and that will showcase the various skills that we have discussed in class. Unless the instructor approves otherwise, assume that your audience is the class itself. Keep the following things in mind:

Examples

• Persuading the audience that the store brand item is as good as the name brand

• Persuading the audience that the more expensive, long-life light bulb is actually the better buy

• Persuading the audience to invest in a certain mutual fund

• Persuading the audience to buy textbooks from a certain source

• Persuading the audience to adopt a particular exercise regimen

Tips

• Remember you only have 3 minutes. Make careful choices. For example, don't try to convert us to Shintoism in three minutes--you don't have enough time.

• Keep it simple. Find a simple, believable, real product that you're sold on and sell it to us.

• Have fun and remember the importance of psycho-logic. Don't just use logic; use a wide variety of appeals to get our attention and move us to the conclusion.

• Identify the key issues in your audiences mind.

• Consider the motivated sequence. Using it is not a requirement, but I rarely see a speech without it that would not have been better with it.

Time Limit

The time limit for this presentation is 3 minutes. I will let you know when you have reached the time limit, but I will not give any advance warning (you wouldn't get one on the job). 

Don't get phobic about the time limit. It's simply another part of meeting an audience's expectations. I impose these time limits to teach you communicative discipline and to better manage the class.

I do not give any penalty for going under-time, but I begin to assess a penalty for presentations that go more than 30 seconds over the time limit. That penalty can vary depending on how well the student does on the presentation overall, but it may be as much as one-third of a letter grade for every 30 seconds over the time limit. For example, if a student goes 5 minutes for a 3 minute speech, he would be 1 1/2 minutes overtime and may loose as much as a full letter grade (1 third for every 30 seconds). I usually don't take off that much, but that's the benchmark I use.

Weeks 9, 10, 11 (as necessary to accommodate enrollment): Present Reports (see schedule)

Overview

Each student will be required to read at least one outside book for this class and prepare a 1-2 page written report to be given to the entire class along with a brief oral report. In some cases, the instructor will provide the book for the student. The student may substitute a text other than those suggested by the instructor with the instructor’s prior approval. See a list of books.

The student should approach these reports as he would a report on the job, that is, giving essential information and analysis for others who do not have the time to read the material. However, these reports should be more than merely informative; they should evaluate and critique the book relative to the topics we will discuss in class. A successful book report will give a brief overview of the book’s material, but will primarily focus on analysis. It should demonstrate that the student understands the author’s arguments and is able to evaluate them.

Tips

• Ten minutes may sound like a lot. But you are summarizing a whole book. Be selective in what you choose to say. Summarize. Synthesize. Boil it down to the essentials.

• If you find yourself with a report that gives a chapter by chapter summary of the book, stop! You're going down the wrong road. If you were sitting in front of your boss giving him a summary of an important book in your field, he wouldn't sit still long enough to hear you say anything past, "And chapter two is about . . . ." This isn't high school. Tackle the authors ideas. Get under the hood of the book and see how well it runs. Don't be passive (Look at all the metaphors I've thrown at you in this paragraph to get my point across! Do you get the point? If not, talk to me. I want you to learn from this assignment).

• The best book reports not only grapple with the author's ideas, they also deal with the communication issues we raise in class. Most of these authors have assumptions about communication that they may not make explicit. Bring them to the surface and critique them. Are they in line with what we've discussed in class? Do you agree with them?

• Remember your audience. Your goal is to get us interested in the issues the book raises, even if it does it poorly. Give us a good review.

• In short, make connections—between the class ideas and the book, between your experience and the authors, between the audience and the text and your interpretation.

Time Limit

The time limit for the oral presentation is 10 minutes. See my previous comments on how I approach time limits.

Week 4: Précis/Plan Due

Week 12: Project Due

The student will negotiate the specific topic prior to handing in the précis.

Overview

The research project for this class will take the form of a formal academic paper involving research and demonstrating the student's ability to present good arguments. Each student will negotiate the topic with the instructor after the second week of class. The purpose of this negotiation is to find a topic that will meet the requirements of the assignment and also be of some benefit to the student. Ideally, the research topic should improve the student's own use of management strategies and communication.

While the requirements for this assignment are rather broad, there are several guidelines that may help you choose a topic. 

• The topic should be one about which the student can find some body of extant academic research.

• The topic should be one the student can find a reasonable number of primary sources. The student may use secondary sources, but should not primarily rely on them.

• The topic should be one on which the student takes a position. In other words, instead of simply presenting a review of literature, the student should take a position and give good reasons to defend that position.

• The topic should involve the at least some of the topics covered in this class. We will cover a wide range of topics in the class, so the student will have many from which to choose. For example, a topic dealing strictly with finance or human resources, while it may be interesting, is beyond the scope of this class. However, a topic that deals with some aspect of finance or human resources as they relate to strategic communication would be acceptable.

• The topic may be one of practical value to the student--one that will be of some benefit to him or her on the job or in the community.

You should be prepared to discuss possible topics and approaches with the instructor on week 2. By week 4 (at the latest), you should have given the instructor, in writing, a précis of not more than 1 page that discusses the following items:

• Topic or Question you will answer in the paper

• Your reason for choosing this topic

• Brief Preliminary Bibliography (at least 3 varied sources)

The instructor will coach you on your choices based on this précis. 

Examples

• Overall, one heuristic research direction for this paper would be to evaluate the relationship of some communication variable to one of the five typical organizational behavior variables: absenteeism, turn-over, job satisfaction, productivity and corporate citizenship behavior. Other possible variables could be profitability, growth or shareholder value.

• For example, In Built to Last, Collins and Poras evaluate the relationship between sustained profitability and growth to several factors such as the strength of corporate culture, succession planning, goals, etc.

• A meta-analysis is acceptable for this project, also. You could look at several empirical research articles to determine the similarities or differences in their findings. For example, after reviewing several studies of the success of internal communication programs, what conclusions can you draw about what makes these programs effective?

• It may also be possible to conduct your own empirical research project. For example, you could survey a wide sample of employees in Christian organization to determine their overall level of job satisfaction relative to the levels in other types of organizations.

• You may also do a theoretical study. For example, drawing from a variety of texts and sources, you could build an argument to challenge Machiavelli's position or whether a leader should be feared or loved.

• You may do a theoretical study involving the theology of management. For example, what biblical principles should frame the development of a compensation structure?

• You may do a case study. You could look at the effectiveness of the communication strategies in a single organization, such as GE, Carolina First, etc.--either by your own direct research or by gathering data from as many primary sources as possible.

Paper Length

Teachers never like to answer the question, "How long does the paper need to be?" The standard answer is, "As long as it needs to be." The standard answer applies for this course. However, to meet the requirements of a typical graduate-level research project, a paper will typically be approximately 15 pages, excluding the cover page and bibliography.