Research in Efficacy and Acceptance of AI in Presentation Skills Development in an Educational Setting

Peter Francis Cavanaugh

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Conference: 2024 ASEE North East Section
Location: Fairfield, Connecticut
Publication Date: April 19, 2024
Start Date: April 19, 2024
End Date: April 20, 2024
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 5
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--45779
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/45779
Download Count: 117

Paper Authors

biography

Peter Francis Cavanaugh University of Bridgeport

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Peter currently teaches full-time at the University of Bridgeport in the Technology Management Department. He also is an Adjunct Professor at Fairfield University in the Dolan School of Business.
For the second half of his career Peter had leadership roles at Crotonville, GE’s Leadership Development Center, which served GE’s global employee base of 320,000 employees and widely considered to be the cultural epicenter of the company. Ultimately, he was the Senior Leader – Global Crotonville Delivery. In this role Peter led the Crotonville learning experience delivery world-wide, including the Crotonville NY Campus and was responsible for a $85M operating budget. Peter led the 4-year ‘Reimagining Crotonville’ Project, which focused on integrating the content, experience, and environment to create a transformative learning experience. Along with expanding and updating the entire campus, the $100M+ capital improvement project enabled more creative and impactful learning experiences. In 2016 he was appointed to lead a cross-functional, adaptive team to develop a contemporary working/learning environment in GE’s HQ in Boston

Prior to his role at Crotonville, Peter had assignments in GE Appliances, GE Aviation, GE Industrial Systems, and GE Supply. He has held positions of increasing responsibility in Manufacturing, Engineering, Product Management, Marketing and Sales. Peter earned his Master Black Belt certification in the at GE Supply, completing projects in sales force effectiveness, growing sales at large industrial customers, and developing processes to improve operations at local branches.

Peter presents and lectures in multiple industry and academic settings on how learning can drive transformation of individual performance and culture. He is also an executive coach with a focus on helping individuals align their passion, skills, and values to bring their best self to their work.

Peter is married, his spouse, Eileen, is a Senior Finance Executive. Peter and Eileen are supportive of each other as a dual-career household with four children.

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Abstract

Research in Efficacy and Acceptance of AI in Presentation Skills Development in an Educational Setting

AI can be applied to many aspects of behavioral change coaching. Because AI is a developing field, there is little research conducted to understand the efficacy and the acceptance of developmental suggestions by an AI Coach.

The primary purpose of this research is to develop a methodology that could be used to test the efficacy of AI in developing communication skills. A secondary goal for the research is to better understand what factors impact the acceptance of the recommendations and the impact on the efficacy.

Communication skills are an important component of the broad behavioral skills required to be successful in both technical and non-technical domains. People develop verbal and written communication skills through practice and constructive feedback, often in the form of coaching from a ‘knowledgeable other.’ An AI coach can provide specific metrics on generally accepted measures of effective presentation: Pace, Number of Pauses, Eye Contact, the use of filler words or repeated words, volume, and sentiment. Feedback is provided to the user during their session for both their results and the optimal range of that metric for effective communication.

AI has the potential to make the development of communication skills more accessible to more students so they can achieve their communication skills goals. This research explores the efficacy and effectiveness of coaching suggestions from an AI Coach to help students and young professionals improve their oral communication skills. Graduate student participants record a brief video, their feedback quantified, and the results analyzed to determine the effect of the AI coach on their communication skills.

The practical implications of this AI study in behavioral intervention coaching could be extended to other areas of skill development as AI improves and clients become more comfortable with the feedback provided by the AI tool.

The AI Coach being used in this research is “Edy”, a publicly available AI Coach from EdMyst.

Citation
Format

Cavanaugh, P. F. (2024, April), Research in Efficacy and Acceptance of AI in Presentation Skills Development in an Educational Setting Paper presented at 2024 ASEE North East Section, Fairfield, Connecticut. 10.18260/1-2--45779