Assessment of stress associated with an oral public speech in veterinary students by salivary biomarkers

In this report, salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase activity, and testosterone were measured to assess stress associated with a public oral presentation in Veterinary Clinical Pathology students. Stimulated saliva samples were collected before and directly after a 5-minute oral presentation and at 20 and 35 minutes after the beginning of the presentation. Cortisol peaked 20 minutes after the beginning of the presentation, whereas salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) peaked at 5 minutes, just at the end of the speech. These changes were not related to the level of stress that was indicated by the student in a questionnaire, the student's sex, or the quality of the presentation. No changes were detected in testosterone levels during the study. Saliva biomarkers evaluated in this research could be extended to other stress-producing situations in the university life of veterinary students.

Feedback on oral presentations during pediatric clerkships: a randomized controlled trial

OBJECTIVE

To measure the effects of participating in structured oral presentation evaluation sessions early in pediatric clerkships on students' subsequent presentations.

METHODS

We conducted a single-blind, 3-arm, cluster randomized controlled trial during pediatric clerkships at Boston University School of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Blocks of students at each school were randomly assigned to experience either (1) no formal presentation feedback (control) or a small-group presentation feedback session early in pediatric clerkships in which students gave live presentations and received feedback from faculty who rated their presentations by using a (2) single-item (simple) or (3) 18-item (detailed) evaluation form. At the clerkship end, overall quality of subjects' presentations was rated by faculty blinded to randomization status, and subjects reported whether their presentations had improved. Analyses included multivariable linear and logistic regressions clustered on clerkship block that controlled for medical school.

RESULTS

A total of 476 participants were evenly divided into the 3 arms, which had similar characteristics. Compared with controls, presentation quality was significantly associated with participating in detailed (coefficient: 0.38; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.07-0.69) but not simple (coefficient: 0.16; 95% CI: -0.12-0.43) feedback sessions. Similarly, student self-report of presentation improvement was significantly associated with participating in detailed (odds ratio: 2.16; 95% CI: 1.11-4.18] but not simple (odds ratio: 1.89; 95% CI: 0.91-3.93) feedback sessions.

CONCLUSIONS

Small-group presentation feedback sessions led by faculty using a detailed evaluation form resulted in clerkship students delivering oral presentations of higher quality compared with controls.

Role of the Big Five Personality Traits and Motivation in Predicting Performance in Collaborative Presentations

Personality traits and motivation have been identified as influential factors in language acquisition and educational achievement. In recent years, as instructors have adapted curriculums to prepare students for academic and professional pursuits, collaborative inquiry-based projects and presentations, where students work together in groups to socially construct knowledge and achieve stipulated outcomes, have become common features of tertiary learning landscapes. This study utilizes 441 English as a foreign language university students’ Big Five Inventory-44 and Collaborative Inquiry-based Project Questionnaire ratings to predict performance on their collaborative inquiry-based projects requiring presentations. Regression analysis revealed Extraversion and Project Work as predictors of Presentation Scores. Furthermore, Extraversion and Conscientiousness emerged as partial mediators between Project Work motivation and Presentation Scores. The results underscore the advantage extraverts possess in oral presentation situations while simultaneously stressing the importance of diligence and effort in inquiry-based projects. Implications and suggestions for future study are provided.

Efficacy of a Web-Based Oral Case Presentation Instruction Module: Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVE

Effective self-directed educational tools are invaluable. Our objective was to determine whether a self-directed, web-based oral case presentation module would improve medical students' oral case presentations compared to usual curriculum, and with similar efficacy as structured oral presentation faculty feedback sessions.

METHODS

We conducted a pragmatic multicenter cluster randomized controlled trial among medical students rotating in pediatric clerkships at 7 US medical schools. In the clerkship's first 14 days, subjects were instructed to complete an online Computer-Assisted Learning in Pediatrics Program (CLIPP) oral case presentation module, an in-person faculty-led case presentation feedback session, or neither (control). At the clerkship's end, evaluators blinded to intervention status rated the quality of students' oral case presentations on a 10-point scale. We conducted intention-to-treat multivariable analyses clustered on clerkship block.

RESULTS

Study participants included 256 CLIPP (32.5%), 263 feedback (33.3%), and 270 control (34.2%) subjects. Only 51.1% of CLIPP subjects completed the assigned presentation module, while 98.5% of feedback subjects participated in presentation feedback sessions. Compared to controls, oral presentation quality was significantly higher in the feedback group (adjusted difference in mean quality, 0.28; 95% confidence interval, 0.08, 0.49) and trended toward being significantly higher in the CLIPP group (0.19; 95% confidence interval, -0.006, 0.38). The quality of presentations in the CLIPP and feedback groups was not significantly different (-0.10; 95% confidence interval, -0.31, 0.11).

CONCLUSIONS

The quality of oral case presentations delivered by students randomized to complete the CLIPP module did not differ from faculty-led presentation feedback sessions and was not statistically superior to control.

Evaluation of reporting quality of the 2010 and 2012 National Surgical Congress oral presentations by CONSORT, STROBE and Timmer criteria

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to evaluate the abstracts of oral presentations that were accepted to the National Surgical Congress by CONSORT, STROBE and Timmer criteria and to recommend development of a national abstract assessment system.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Presentation scores were calculated for oral presentations that have been accepted to the 2010 and 2012 National Surgical Congresses and have been included in the digital congress abstract booklets by two independent reviewers who were blinded to information regarding both the author and the institution. The CONSORT and Timmer criteria were used for randomized controlled trials, and for observational studies the STROBE and Timmer criteria were used. The presentation score that was obtained by three different evaluation systems was accepted as the main variable. The score changes according to the two congresses, the influence of the reviewers on the presentation scores, and compatibility between the two reviewers were evaluated. Comparisons regarding study types and total presentation number were made by using the chi-square test, the compatibility between the total score of the presentations were made by the Mann-Whitney U test and the compatibility between the reviewers were evaluated by the Wilcoxon signed ranks test.

RESULTS

There was no difference between the two Congresses in terms of study type distribution and total number of accepted presentations (p=0.844). The total scores of randomized controlled trials and observational studies from the 2010 and 2012 National Surgical Congresses that were evaluated by two independent reviewers with different assessment tools did not show any significant difference (p>0.05). A significant difference was observed between the reviewers in their evaluation by CONSORT, STROBE and Timmer criteria (p<0.05).

CONCLUSION

Implementation of standard criteria for the evaluation of abstracts that are sent to congresses is important in terms of presentation reporting quality. The existing criteria should be revised according to national factors, in order to reduce the significant differences between reviewers. It is believed that discussions on a new evaluation system will be beneficial in terms of the development of a national assessment system.

Improving Oral Presentation Skills for Radiology Residents through Clinical Session Meetings in the Virtual World Second Life

BACKGROUND

The objective of this study was to conduct a clinical session meeting in the virtual world of Second Life to improve the oral presentation skills of radiology residents and to assess the perception of the attendees.

METHODS

A clinical session meeting (10 two-hour sessions over four weeks), where participants presented their own clinical sessions, followed by a turn of interventions by the attendees, was designed and carried out. Attendees were asked to complete an evaluation questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were performed.

RESULTS

Twenty-eight radiology residents attended the meeting, and 23 (81.2%) completed the evaluation questionnaire; 95.7-100% of them agreed that the virtual environment was attractive and suitable for holding the meeting and that the content was appropriate for their training as residents. They rated with ≥8.9 points (from 1 to 10) different aspects of the experience, highlighting the role of teachers (9.7 ± 0.6) and the usefulness of their training (9.4 ± 0.9).

CONCLUSIONS

Second Life can be used effectively to train oral communication skills in public, in an environment perceived as attractive and suitable for learning, through an experience described by the attendees as interesting and useful, highlighting the advantages of social contact with their peers.

Expanding OSCE-related Learning Opportunities For Pre-Clerkship Students: Insights From an Assessment for Learning Curriculum

Pre-clerkship clinical skills courses at many medical schools use objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) to assess students' development as it relates to the foundational clinical skills of history taking, communication, and physical examination. The authors report on a curriculum in which OSCEs also serve as a springboard for additional learning by linking them to activities that include patient write-ups, oral presentations, clinical reasoning discussions, clinical question generation, and video review with faculty. The rationale for using OSCEs as an assessment for learning tool is discussed, and some lessons learned are reported.

How to Compose, Write and Publish a Scientific or Professional Communication

There is an ample number of recommendations, guides and monographs addressing the art of composing and publishing written, oral or visual communications in science and various professions. In order to write an article, autors have to follow certain rules. Presentation of the article (oral or poster presentation) also requires skill, meaning that you have to fulfill certain guidelines and regulations.

The publication rate of oral presentations presented in national congresses of Turkish Society of Cardiovascular Surgery

Background

This study aims to investigate the literature contribution of oral presentations presented in the largest national congresses of the Turkish Society of Cardiovascular Surgery.

Methods

A total of 675 orally presented abstracts during biannually organized 12^th, 13^th, and 14^th congresses were reviewed using the PubMed and Google Scholar databases in May 2018. Abstracts were searched for institutions where they were submitted, publication status in scientific journals, type of peer-reviewed journal, and publication year.

Results

Of a total of 675 oral presentations, 69.1% were clinical studies, 18.8% were case reports, and 12.1% were experimental researches. Of all accepted abstracts, 47.3% were from university hospitals, 36.1% were from training and research hospitals, and 16.6% were from other multi-center institutions. A total of 279 (41.3%) abstracts were published in a scientific journal. There was a significant difference among the institutions in terms of the rate of publication (p=0.04), and the university hospitals had the highest rate. The mean time from presentation to publication in a scientific journal was 16.7±9.1 (range, 4 to 60) months.

Conclusion

The rate of published abstracts from the last three congresses of the Turkish Society of Cardiovascular Surgery is higher compared to the literature results reporting national congresses of other specialties, but is lower than the international congresses. We believe that this ratio should be increased to reach the same level as international reports and the methods to encourage researchers to publish should be developed.

The publication rates of abstracts presented at the Turkish Respiratory Society (TUSAD) annual congress: adequate or not?

OBJECTIVE

In this study, we aimed to determine the publication status of the abstracts presented at the Turkish Respiratory Society Congress between 2011 and 2014.

METHODS

The abstracts were classified according to presentation type (oral presentations, poster discussion, etc.), study type, study design, topic, publication status, time interval between the presentation and the publication date, and the journal in which the article was published. The conversion rate of presentations into full-text articles in peer-reviewed journals were surveyed through Elsevier's Scopus.

RESULTS

The total number of abstracts submitted in the congress was 2 009. In terms of study type, the majority of abstracts were case reports (56.4%) and the remainder was original research. Totally, 179 abstracts were published in an indexed journal with an overall publication rate of 8.9%. 18.3% of oral presentations were converted into full-text article. Publication rates according to study types were 14.8% for original researches and 4.4% for case reports. The first three subspecialties with the highest publication rates were "sleep related breathing disorders" (16.9%), "interventional pulmonology" (16.7%) and "pleural diseases" (15.2%). Median publication/acceptance time was 8.0 months (0-38).

CONCLUSION

This is the first study evaluating the publication rates of abstracts presented in a respiratory congress. Although the number of presented abstracts in the congress increased year by year, prominently in the case reports, over all conversion rates were decreased. We put forward that encouraging the authors to conduct higher-quality investigations would raise the publication rate as well as improve the scientific quality of congress.

Orchestrating Teacher, Peer, and Self-Feedback to Enhance Learners' Cognitive, Behavioral, and Emotional Engagement and Public Speaking Competence

Previous research on providing feedback on public speaking has investigated the effectiveness of feedback sources, namely teacher feedback, peer feedback, and self-feedback, in enhancing public speaking competence, predominantly individually. However, how these sources of feedback can be collectively harnessed to optimize learner engagement and public speaking performance still warrants further investigation. Adopting a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental design, this study randomly assigned four classes to four feedback conditions: Group 1 received teacher feedback, Group 2 self-feedback and teacher feedback, Group 3 peer and teacher feedback, and Group 4 feedback from all three sources. Both student engagement, measured using the Public Speaking Feedback Engagement Scale (PSFES), and their public speaking performance ratings, assessed using the Public Speaking Competency Instrument (PSCI), were validated using Rasch analysis. The inferential statistics revealed that Group 3 showed significant improvements across nearly all three dimensions of engagement, whereas Group 2 experienced significant declines in all dimensions of engagement except behavioral engagement. Group 3 demonstrated significantly greater engagement gain compared to Groups 2 and 4, indicating the synergistic effect of peer and teacher feedback in contrast to the limited impact of self-feedback. Additionally, all groups demonstrated significant improvements except for Group 2, which showed significantly lower improvement compared to Group 4. The following correlation analysis identified a significant correlation between the gain of students' behavioral engagement and the gain of public speaking performance, whereas such association was absent between cognitive or emotional engagement and public speaking competence. This study suggests that peer feedback should be preceded by group discussion and supplemented with teacher feedback in classes for enhancing the teacher-student dialog, while self-feedback should be conducted after class to improve student engagement and public speaking performance.

Academic Activities of Female Neurosurgeons in All Branch Meetings of the Japan Neurosurgical Society

This study aims to evaluate the academic activities of female neurosurgeons at all branch meetings of the Japan Neurosurgical Society and identify related issues they encountered. The programs of all seven branch meetings of the Japan Neurosurgical Society (Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu, Kinki, Chugoku/Shikoku, and Kyushu) were used to determine the number of presentations and chairpersons by sex. The covered period was from January 2008 to December 2020, which was available for viewing during the survey. Of note, only the Kinki branch used data from January 2008 to December 2019. The Neurologia Medico-chirurgica (NMC), the journal of the Japan Neurosurgical Society, was also reviewed to identify publication achievements during the same period. In all seven branches, the percentage of presentations given by female physicians increased from 7.9% in 2008 to 9.6% in 2020 (p < 0.05).Conversely, the percentage of female chairpersons in all branch meetings did not change over time and it was significantly lower (1.1%) than that of female presenters (7.9%) for all branch meetings combined in over 13 years (p < 0.01). In the NMC, the number of articles with female physicians as first authors did not increase or decrease over the years. We conclude that efforts to smoothly promote female neurosurgeons as chairpersons and increase the number of female first authors are necessary to facilitate their academic activities.

Publication rate of abstracts presented at the annual meetings of the AANS/CNS Section on Disorders of the Spine and Peripheral Nerves

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to determine the publication rate of abstracts presented at the annual meetings of the AANS/CNS Section on Disorders of the Spine and Peripheral Nerves (Spine Summit).

METHODS

The authors used a search algorithm in PubMed to determine the publication rate of abstracts presented at the Spine Summit from 2007 to 2012. The variables assessed were presentation modality, topic, meeting year, publication year, destiny journal and its 5-year impact factor (IF), country, and citation count (retrieved from the Scopus database).

RESULTS

One thousand four hundred thirty-six abstracts were analyzed; 502 were oral presentations and 934 were digital poster presentations. The publication rate was 53.97% (775/1436). The mean time from presentation to publication was 1.35 ± 1.97 years (95% CI 1.21-1.49 years). The mean citation count of published articles was 40.55 ± 55.21 (95% CI 36.66-44.44). Oral presentations had a higher publication rate (71.51%, 359/502) than digital posters (44.54%, 416/934; OR 3.13, 95% CI 2.48-3.95, p < 0.001). Oral presentations had a higher number of citations (55.51 ± 69.00, 95% CI 48.35-62.67) than digital posters (27.64 ± 34.88, 95% CI 24.28-31.00, p < 0.001). The mean IF of published articles was 3.48 ± 2.91 (95% CI 3.27-3.70). JNS: Spine (191/775, 24.64%), Spine (103/775, 13.29%), and Neurosurgery (56/775, 7.23%) had the greatest number of published articles. The US represented the highest number of published articles (616/775, 79.48%).

CONCLUSIONS

The publication rate of the Spine Summit is among the highest compared to other spine meetings. Many of the abstracts initially presented at the meeting are further published in high-IF journals and had a high citation count. Therefore, the Spine Summit maintains its high standards of scientific papers, which reflects the high quality of the research performed in the spine surgery field in North America.

The effect of co-regulation on English public speaking self-efficacy in collaborative oral presentations

This study investigated the influence of co-regulation on public speaking self-efficacy in the context of collaborative oral presentations. A total of 237 students enrolled in an English course at a university in China took part in the research. The factor analysis findings revealed that learners' co-regulation in public speaking encompass five components: co-planning, co-monitoring, co-evaluation, effort regulation, and help-seeking. Public speaking self-efficacy, on the other hand, pertains to learners' confidence in aspects including the topic, language use, organization, and delivery during public speaking engagements. The path analysis demonstrated that co-planning was a significant predictor of students' self-efficacy in terms of the topic and organization. Moreover, the co-monitoring strategy exhibited direct and positive correlations with language and topic self-efficacy. Similarly, the co-evaluation strategy showed direct and positive relationships with language, delivery, and organization self-efficacy. Furthermore, both effort regulation and help-seeking strategies were found to have direct and positive impacts on organization self-efficacy. This study offers valuable implications for educators, trainers, and individuals aiming to enhance their public speaking self-efficacy in collaborative environments.

The Reliability and Validity of the Turkish Oral Presentation Evaluation Scale for Nursing Students

Background and Purpose: In nursing education, students are often expected to make presentations. This study aimed to adapt the Oral Presentation Evaluation Scale (OPES) into the Turkish language and investigate its psychometric properties. Methods: This methodological study comprised 311 undergraduate students. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), coefficient α, and item-total correlation. Results: The item-total score correlation coefficients of the scale were between 0.636 and 0.787, and according to the CFA, the factor loads of all items varied between 0.533 and 0.846. The chi-square/standard deviation value, goodness of fit index, comparative fit index, normed fit index, and root mean square error of approximation were 2.056, 0.928, 0.973, 0.949, and 0.058, respectively. Coefficient α value was 0.951. According to the results of EFA, the scale consists of a two-factor structure in Turkish culture. Conclusions: The OPES is a valid and reliable tool to evaluate the oral presentations of Turkish nursing students.

Charting the course from abstract to published article

OBJECTIVE

Abstracts act as short, efficient sources of new information. This intentional brevity potentially diminishes scientific reliability of described findings. The authors' objective was to 1) determine the proportion of abstracts submitted to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) annual meeting that subsequently are published in peer-reviewed journals, 2) assess AANS abstract publications for publication bias, and 3) assess AANS abstract publications for differing results.

METHODS

The authors screened all abstracts from the annual 2012 AANS meeting and identified their corresponding full-text publication, if applicable, by searching PubMed/MEDLINE. The abstract and subsequent publication were analyzed for result type (positive or negative) and differences in results.

RESULTS

Overall, 49.3% of abstracts were published as papers. Many (18.1%) of these published papers differed in message from their original abstract. Publication bias exists, with positive abstracts being 40% more likely to be published than negative abstracts. The top journals in which the full-text articles were published were Journal of Neurosurgery (13.1%), Neurosurgery (7.3%), and World Neurosurgery (5.4%).

CONCLUSIONS

Here, the authors demonstrate that alone, abstracts are not reliable sources of information. Many abstracts ultimately remain unpublished; therefore, they do not attain a level of scientific scrutiny that merits alteration of clinical care. Furthermore, many that are published have differing results or conclusions. In addition, positive publication bias exists, as positive abstracts are more likely to be published than negative abstracts.