Stelios Kehaghias prompts for on-line business plan presentations

It has been good practice for many years in the Executive MBA programme that students have been presenting their business plan for the unit Strategy Formulation and Business Decision. Presentations are taking place in Thessaloniki, Belgrade, Bucharest and Kyiv. The last two years we decided to experiment with online presentations and ask students from Kyiv to use the Cisco Webex platform, while we were standing on the other side of the line. 

Our goal is to try and develop new skills as we believe that the manager of the future has to be technology ‘savvy’. Education is about pushing ourselves into unknown areas, being able to adapt and be flexible outside our normal comfort zone.  Although we know that face-to-face presentations may generally be more effective, the world of technology has changed our perceptions. We see that there are unique advantages that come from using online tools. Some of these include:

• Delivering a message in the way the audience wants it - on a PC, laptop, mobile, PDA, Pocket PC or an overhead screen
• Making  the message available wherever the user is located
• Increasing audience participation
• Making expert presentations available to everyone - wherever they are located
• Making it easy to use –  users view  the presentation remotely from their web browsers 
• Improving product/technical knowledge

The setup was as follows:

• Student Group: students could physically gather in one place or alternatively be at different locations (each one at their house or office).
• The Assessors: there were more than one assessor who were located in their offices in their own city and country, who viewed the presentation and asked questions.
• The Technical Facilitator: this person was in Thessaloniki and made sure that the connection was working, that students did not have any technical issues, and gave students permission to act as presenters.
• Programme Administrator: this person made sure that schedule was on time and took care of any issue/problem (not technical) that arose on the spot.
• Other Audience: these people were invited to watch the presentation; they could be students' colleagues or other lecturers.

There is always a chance that some technical issues may appear and actually they do. Internet communication and web applications are far from being flawless. Also, presenting online is a different experience overall for presenters and the audience.

These issues can be effectively addressed in order to improve the experience and eliminate problems. Some recommendations that derived from our previous experience are:

• all students should be requested to present from a central facility and not from remote locations.
• a screencast session on online presentations should be developed and made available to students
• a compulsory training session on the Webex environment should precede presentations
• a clear protocol should be established before hand 

Concluding, I believe that the experiment was successful. It helped us identify the drawbacks and the benefits of having presentations online. Excluding the technical issues, a safe conclusion is that online presentations are not better or worse than face to face presentations; they are just different! And students should experience both.

Stelios Kehaghias

15 November 2014