Once upon a time there were two students of anthropology (Mie Nielsen and Vibeke Follmann) who were fed up with a surfeit of boring teaching and too many tedious student presentations. They wanted to find specific tools for use in communicating all the knowledge they learned during their degree programme.

So they started a company called “TALERØRET” (“THE MOUTHPIECE”, ed.) at the same time as studying anthropology. The aim was to teach their fellow students and any other interested parties the art of communication, as well as organising lectures with university students. They’ve been in business two years now, and have discovered that they are by no means the only students at AU who want to learn how to get their message across as forcefully as possible.

“Lots of students have started to approach us asking about communication courses – particularly since we became a regular feature of the compulsory teaching for students of medicine two years ago,” explains Mie Nielsen.

As a result, the two students have entered into a dialogue with academic councils and supervisors at a variety of degree programmes at AU with a view to putting oral communication on the timetable.

Messy PowerPoint presentations

This has just been done on the comparative literature programme, where oral communication is now included in the academic regulations for the Master’s degree programme. The teaching involves a one-day workshop run by TALERØRET.

The workshop is very welcome among the students. At this stage they are on their seventh semester, so they have seen plenty of their fellow students struggling with the art of communication when making presentations during the programme. Many of these presentations have been pretty messy, explains Ask Hastrup, who is also rather surprised that oral communication is not taught until the seventh semester.

The students have their own ideas about where it all goes wrong for students and teachers.

“One of the deadly sins is messy PowerPoint presentations, and I think there’s a general tendency for academics to squeeze far too much information into our PowerPoints, or to include too many slides. This is a really good course because it gives you ideas for specific tools to improve your communication skills,” explains Marie Knudsen, who is also a seventh-semester student of comparative literature.

They don’t think it’s a problem that the teaching is provided by two students like themselves.

“It’s absolutely fine. We start from scratch and the things we learn are very practical – so it’s great that the teachers are students too,” she says.

Inspire, Learn, Share

ILD is the name of a cross-disciplinary association for students at the Faculty of Arts (ILD stands for “Inspire, Learn, Share” in Danish, ed.), and here too there is increasing interest among students to improve their communication skills – not only in connection with their teaching, but especially to help them find jobs.

“We can sense that an increasing number of students feel limited when it comes to communicating what they know. Students of the Arts don’t necessarily take degree programmes that lead to specific professions, and what they know is often rather abstract,” explains Signe Bønløkke Dollerup, a member of the ILD board.

“But we can’t communicate effectively without the necessary tools,” she says.

TALERØRET is trying to gain a more prominent position for communication in AU’s academic regulations, while ILD focuses on events for students who are happy to spend some of their spare time on improving their communication skills. For instance, student presentations and debates are arranged three times each semester.

“We exchange new knowledge and experiences – for instance in relation to methods and theories,” explains Dollerup.

“And before doing so we coach and guide the students in how to give a good presentation, something we’ve had positive feedback for.”

ILD and TALERØRET joined forces this autumn to organise a communication course for students with particular focus on improving the standard of student presentations.

Communication snobs – or hiding your light under a bushel?

But why is it so difficult to stand up in front of your fellow students and give a good presentation?

Vibeke Follmann from TALERØRET believes that one of the reasons is that the university world does not generally accept that good communication also contains a certain degree of entertainment.

“Unfortunately, many of our students and teachers think that telling a story or using props as part of your presentation is unacademic; and that academic communication should preferably be heavy, voluminous and boring. They’re like communication snobs.”

But she also thinks that students have a tendency to hide their light under a bushel.

“I think that we students tend to be excessively modest. We don’t believe in our academic ability before we get our final degree certificate. We don’t dare to assume any status until we have the proof. But we ought to see our degree programme as independent parts – we conclude bits of the programme as we go along, so there’s no reason to wait until we’ve finished the whole programme before telling other people what we know.”

Copying what the teachers do

But what about the experienced teachers who stand in the lecture theatre year after year, sharing their wisdom with a room full of students? Could they be a source of inspiration?

Yes, but not always, say two of the students responsible for TALERØRET.

“Students who don’t know how to communicate tend to copy what they see – and what they see is their teachers,” says Vibeke Follmann. And she continues:

“And it’s probably easy to accept poor teaching because students don’t necessarily know the difference between good and bad communication.”

Mie Nielsen adds:

“After all, you have to know what the alternatives are. You can’t use a theory that you know nothing about. But there’s a new generation on the way. Our PhD students focus a great deal on communication, so things are changing all right.”

The art of giving a presentation – dos and don’ts

Source: Vibeke Follmann, TALERØRET

Translated by Nicholas Wrigley