Using Artificial Intelligent And Machine Learning To Encourage And Enable Practice And Self-Development Of Public Speaking Skills
OVERVIEW
Power of Public Speaking has partnered with ASI Innovation Labs to infuse machine learning capabilities into the Pops Classroom platform for teaching and learning public speaking skills in today’s classroom. Power of Public Speaking specializes and focuses on classroom solutions for communication and presentation-focused courses. The first project is the Pops Advisor for presentations which has created an automated process to provide students feedback on the content and delivery of their public speaking practice/performance. Using cutting-edge technology and techniques, Pops Advisor provides an on-demand evaluation of students’ video presentations.
No other solution/tool provides automatic feedback on the metrics of voice quality with an analysis of content/message delivery and organization, and visual performance feedback. By providing on-demand and automatic feedback to students as they practice from home or anywhere, Advisor encourages students to practice more. Not only are students encouraged to practice more, but they know which areas they should focus on in order to best prepare for class as they arrive on “Speech Day.” The automatic nature of the feedback provides instructors with flexibility and efficiency.
Instructors can be as hands-on or hands-off during Advisor practice sessions. While students can operate autonomously and asynchronously with the tool, instructors can also choose to keep track of how much a student is practicing, how they are improving over time, and provide additional comments/feedback as they see fit. Advisor is not intended to replace the guidance and experience of performing a presentation in class; the goal is to enable a student to become a more proficient speaker before getting to class, so the instructor can guide them further than before possible during the course of a semester.
PROCESS
Using 13 machine learning models, Advisor analyzes the following evaluation criteria:
RECOMMENDATIONS & FEEDBACK
Recommendations
The presenter receives feedback on several categories, including the Overall speech, Delivery, and each organizational element: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. To provide the presenter with the most valuable feedback that enables actionable response for the next practice session, recommendations are provided not only based upon which specific evaluation criteria need to be improved, but also the combination of those criteria. For example, if a presenter their Eye Contact and Vocal Fillers, it may be a sign they lack confidence. It is also determined which areas need the most attention and those areas are prioritized in the recommended actions/changes for improvement. As result, the user is provided with enough to know what to improve the next practice session, but not so much as to overload.
From there, three types of feedback are provided for each category depending on how many evaluation criteria need improvement within each category:
General Rating: Needs Improvement, Fair, Good, Very Good, or Great!
Visual Feedback. Ex:
Text Recommendation. Ex: “Your message was clear, but be sure you are grabbing your audience’s attention in your introduction to ensure they are listening.”
Pose Estimation
A heatmap of the human body showing the 20+ properties representing joints of the human pose and the magnitude of the movement of each.
Nose, Neck, Right Shoulder, Right Elbow, Right Wrist, Left Shoulder, Left Elbow, Left Wrist, Mid Hip, Right , Hip, Right Knee, Right Ankle, Left Hip, Left Knee, Left Ankle, Right Eye, Right Ear, Left Ear, Left Small Toe, Left Heel, Right Big Toe, Right Small Toe, Right Heel
Speech Metrics
Useful speech metrics which provides quantitative descriptors on several aspects of the presentation. Several metrics of the presenter’s speech including number of words, total presentation time, speaking rate, vocal fillers percentage (total fillers divided by total words).
Presentation length is measured against the minimum and maximum time parameters entered by the user during the session creation process. The word count and talk speed are determined based upon speech to text conversion, then providing an exact count of words and the words divided by time in minutes to determine words per minute (WPM).
The vocal filler ("uhm", "so", "ya' know", etc.) feedback is one of the most difficult measures to assess. Vocal fillers are identified by also converting speech to text, then analyzing the frequency and placement of words within sentences. While the algorithms are capable of returning the exact words it determines are fillers and the frequency of each, it was decided to provide the most useful feedback, the percent of the time (frequency) of vocal fillers would be returned.
CONCLUSION
Pops Advisor is capable of providing useful and insightful feedback on multiple levels of analysis to presenters as they practice and perform presentations. The feedback and recommendations provided to the user are structured in a way that enables constructive and actionable areas of improvement, without overloading the user. As the tool is used over time by many users, it will only improve how it evaluates and provides recommendations.
Pops Advisor can be utilized in any classroom setting that students are presenting, particularly in the Basic Public Speaking Course. The tool provides instructors with the flexibility to be as involved with student practice as they wish, from allowing students to use the tool autonomously outside of class time, to provide specific additional feedback on each/all practice session(s).
Pops Advisor results in stronger speeches/presentations by encouraging and enhancing practice and self-improvement by a presenter, enabling instructors and coaches to focus on more advanced/complex feedback. When considering what can be accomplished by a student toward skill development in a single school semester, Advisor increases the overall and resulting development.
To learn more about Pops Advisor, please VISIT THE WEBSITE.