Professional presentations: factors that influence oral presentations of engineers in engineering workplace of Pakistan

Abstract

Oral presentation has become an important aspect of modern workplace and engineers usually perform oral presentations to keep management of the organization well informed about progress of company projects. This study examined factors that influenced effective oral presentation performance of engineers at workplace. Six engineers from 2 engineering organizations of Pakistan participated in this study. Purposive sampling was used since engineers with 5 years work experience were selected as participants for this study. All presentations were recorded to capture barriers that hampered effective oral presentation performance of engineers. Data were analyzed qualitatively through an assessment rubric. It contained four traits such as presentation skill, confidence, nervousness and vocal variety. Three assessors assessed these presentations to overcome researcher bias. The results of the study revealed that poor presentation skill, poor confidence and nervousness hindered effective oral presentation performance of engineers. The findings of the study would contribute to prepare better future engineers for modern industry.