ADAPTING PRESENTATIONS TO AN ONLINE SETTINGFOR ACADEMIC AND SOCIAL PURPOSESJohn Alexander
Kanda University of International Studies
INTRODUCTION
At Kanda University of International Studies (KUIS), all freshman students take a class
entitled Freshman English. In the Freshman English class, an orientation unit is required forthe first unit. In the orientation unit, there are academic and social goals that should be met.
Academically, the students are introduced to six core learning processes, providing themwith a variety of multimodal learning experiences which are revisited in each proceedingunit. Socially, the Freshman English orientation unit is used to create a positive learning
environment for the students. Most importantly, a significant emphasis is placed on
creating bonds within the Freshman English classes through numerous games, discussions,and other get-to-know-you activities. The Freshman students in the English department ofKUIS attend Freshman English class four times a week together. In addition, the samegroup of students takes Foundational Literacies and English for Academic Purpose together
as well. Because the students are together so much in class and are required to work
together in discussions, classwork, and project work, getting to know each other well is also
an important necessity for the Freshman English class. With the migration of classes online
due to the 2020 pandemic, significant adjustments needed to be made to ensure that theseacademic and social goals are met. This article will explain how I adapted the final project
for the orientation unit.
PREVIOUS YEARS’ PROJECT
For the past three years, the final project was a useful thing presentation in which thestudents must present one useful thing to the class. A former KUIS teacher shared thispresentation idea with me as an effective introductory presentation for the orientation unit.
The content of this presentation is divided into three parts: a description of the useful thing(including details and history), why the student chose this useful thing and its importance,and how to use it.
For many students, this presentation is the first time they have given an Englishpresentation. Therefore, the main goal of this project is to introduce the students to thebasics of giving a presentation, specifically following a logical presentation structure,making notecards, and developing effective presentation skills. First, the students learn
how to organize a presentation with an introduction, content section, and conclusion. Then,the students learn about making notecards instead of writing a script. Lastly, the students
learn about presentation skills including body language, gestures, eye contact, posture, andvoice. While the content is important and assessed, the main focus is on organizing anddelivering an effective presentation.
ONLINE AFFORDANCES
2.	  Adapting	  Presentations	  to	  an	  Online	  Setting	  for	  Academic	  and	  Social	  Purposes.	  John	  Alexander.	  Pages	  11-­‐14.	  Literacies	  &	  Language	  Education:	  Research	  &	  Practice,	  2020	  Special	  Section:	  Teaching	  During	  a	  Pandemic.	  English	  Language	  Institute,	  KUIS.

There are many benefits and constraints for conducting classes in the online environment,
both academically and socially. At KUIS, Zoom is the platform that the synchronous online
classes utilized, so it was necessary to find a way to adapt this presentation using Zoom.
Academically, Zoom is a sufficient, while not perfect, platform for online classes.
Specifically, it has several useful functions that make giving a presentation online doableand even effective. In terms of giving a presentation, the Share Screen feature (called ShareContent on an iPad) allows participants to share their screens with the class. Therefore, aclass participant can easily share his/her screen and present a slideshow to the class. In fact,
once the students are familiar with the platform, it becomes quite easy to give apresentation and to progress from one student’s presentation to the next.
On the other hand, there are numerous limitations for adapting this presentation to theonline environment. It is very difficult to include and assess presentation skills other thanvoice while giving a presentation on Zoom. Many students have limited space and are
sitting in their bedrooms at a desk, on their beds, or on the floor; some are in a common
area of their house or apartment. Therefore, it is not feasible for them to stand up in a roomwith enough space to give the presentation, making it difficult to assess presentation skills.
Even if there were enough room, the students would have to stand back from their
computer or tablet in order to display body language, gestures, eye contact, and posture. Ifthey stood back, then the students would be farther away from the microphone makinghearing difficult. In addition, they would have to step forward to touch the screen or key
each time they wanted to change the slide. Also, although there is a camera function inZoom, many students wanted to keep the cameras off while presenting a slideshow
because they must hold and look down at their iPads, which creates an awkward camera
angle. While Zoom can be an effective tool to give presentations, it presents limitations if
the goal is to mimic a traditional presentation in front of an audience with a screenprojection.
One of the biggest challenges for online learning is the limitation of socialization. With
online learning, the students do not have the regular, on-campus, day-to-day bonding
activities. For example, it is difficult for them to chat before or after classes and during free
periods, eat lunch together, study together, help each other with assignments, and attend
school events (specifically beginning-of-the-year events that are normally held for
freshman students on campus). Missing these opportunities significantly reduces theamount that the students can get to know each other, their personalities, their thoughts,
and opinions. Class bonding and getting to know each other well is a very important goal
for the Freshman English class since the students must take many classes together. Online
learning presents a limitation to this as the students are isolated from each other and stuckin their houses all over Japan in their own workspaces with the internet connection that isavailable to them.
PRESENTATION ADAPTATIONS
Due to the limitations of the online environment, I needed to adapt the final presentation
for the orientation unit. I made significant changes to the presentation’s focus and content.

Before even considering the content, it was clear that I would have to change thepresentation’s focus. The primary learning outcomes from the useful thing presentation
were for students to be able to positively give a presentation in front of an audience using
effective body language, gestures, and voice; demonstrate an understanding of a logicalpresentation structure; and create notecards that could guide them without having a script.
My main goal was for the students to experience what it is like to give a presentation in
front of an audience in-class and to do so effectively.
Having that in-class experience would not be possible, so I focused mainly on voice andomitted the other presentation skills. Regarding the voice component of presentation skills,
in the useful thing presentation, I usually focus only on projecting your voice so thateveryone can hear. In an online setting, I expanded the vocal components to include speed,fluency, clarity, and intonation. Before the presentation, we analyzed video clips ofpresentations and discussed which speakers spoke loudly, clearly, naturally, andenthusiastically. We also reviewed and practiced sentence stress. Lastly, I introducedintonation and we practiced shadowing different YouTube videos. While I usually introduce
these voice skills later in the semester, this online situation presented me with theopportunity to introduce these skills earlier.
Another big difference was the addition of slides to the presentation. Usually, I do not
introduce making slides until the second unit, which begins about five or six weeks into the
15-week semester. However, because everything was online and the students weresomewhat familiar with using Google Slides, I thought it was a good opportunity tointroduce creating a slideshow for a presentation earlier than I normally would. By‘somewhat familiar’ I mean that the students had edited various slideshows that I had
created and shared with them, but they had not created their own slideshows.
Lastly, and most importantly, I changed the content of the presentation from useful things
to my life. Through conversations with the students, it was clear to me that they still did notknow each other that well towards the end of the orientation unit, especially compared toprevious years. Therefore, I thought it was a good opportunity for the students to present
about themselves and share more details about their lives with their classmates. While theuseful thing presentation is a satisfactory presentation for the orientation unit, it does notreveal very much about the students themselves.
In the new presentation, I wanted the students to discuss different points about their lives. I
expanded on a presentation idea that another KUIS instructor shared. She was using apresentation in the orientation unit entitled, my first few weeks as a university student. That
presentation focused more on the students’ present lives, so I thought that I could adapt
that and include past and future and make it a presentation about the students’ lives. For
the past section, students could include any general information they wanted such as
experiences, high school activities, etc. For the present section, the students had to discuss
how they had been impacted by the 2020 pandemic and how high school and university
were different. For the future section, the students had to tell their goals for the year andhow the goals are related to their future dream. By adjusting the content, students couldshare much more about their personal lives and hopefully get to know each other better.

RESULTS & REFLECTIONS
Overall, I think I was able to accommodate this presentation well to the online setting. I wasable to make adjustments to the outcomes that better utilized the available online
affordances. I could hopefully create an opportunity for students to get to know more
about their peers. The students shared a lot about themselves and highlighted various
aspects of their lives that was new information for their classmates. I feel that thispresentation met my expectations for using it as a tool to help the classmates become
closer as a group by learning much more about each individual.
Nonetheless, it was not without some issues. First, there were still many students who reada script. In the future, additional in-class practice of small sections of the presentation
multiple times with a partner or small group may help the student become more familiar
with the content and discourage them to read. Another problem was that most content in
the present section was very similar without much variation between presentations. On theone hand, the present content was a bit repetitive, especially considering the differences in
the content in the past and future sections from all the students. On the other hand, it
could have been beneficial for the students to hear the same concerns and issues from theother students to reinforce the idea that ‘we’re all in this together,’ even though they are allisolated from one another.
CONCLUSION
In the future, I would like to continue doing an adaptation of this presentation. On-campus,
combining the focus on presentation skills from the useful thing presentation and thecontent of the my life presentation could create a good final project for the orientation unit.
In an online setting, there should be more focus and practice on giving a presentation as
opposed to reading a script. Adapting this presentation to an online setting and changing
the content to reflect the current situation, I believe that I was able to create a better senseof togetherness within the class while still teaching the students how to create apresentation.