Professor Bill Baker’s forty-two-Year Quest to teach Presentation Skills
Wha, wa, wha, wa.” The speaker was reaching Charlie Brown levels of incomprehensibility. And the longer after lunch the meeting dragged on, the further Bill Baker’s mind wandered.
Until a thought popped into his mind.
“I remembered the devices given out at political events so the audience members could indicate if they liked what they were hearing,” explains Baker, professor of organizational leadership and strategy at the Marriott School. “I asked myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have one now?’”
Abandoning any appearance of paying attention, Baker started sketching on a sheet of paper. He left the meeting not only feeling inspired but also with the genesis of a computer program that would change the way presentation skills are taught at BYU and across the country.
ABCs of Presenting
It’s no secret that Baker is a fan of acronyms. His MPA students once gifted him the AKA (Acronym King Award). When it came to labeling his new idea, Baker stayed true to form. REACT stands for real-time audience critique technology, and it couldn’t be more aptly named.
It’s a web-based system that records student presentations, allowing instructors and peers to leave time-stamped comments. The presenter can immediately review the video, read the feedback, and see a line graph showing how listeners related to what he or she was saying. And unlike the gadget Baker originally envisioned, REACT requires only a laptop and a webcam. It may sound simple, but it’s revolutionized business communication instruction at the Marriott School.
Before REACT, Baker’s students would receive a DVD copy of their presentations and a few handwritten comments on how to improve. The process was further complicated by the specially equipped rooms and specialized staff needed to film and distribute the recordings. Often feedback was so delayed that not much progress was made between presentations.
Michael Allred, who graduated from the EMPA program last spring, managed the time-consuming process of preparing the DVDs as a teaching assistant. When REACT was introduced, it quickly became an advantage. With the help of two other TAs, he was able to record and provide feedback for fifty EMPA group presentations in just three hours.
“REACT is so easy to use,” Allred says. “The setup involves plugging in the camera, logging on, and starting a session to record—it’s phenomenal.”
Front of the Class
But the real benefit of REACT isn’t its time-saving interface. It’s the way it improves students’ experiences.
“Presentation skills are vital in the business world,” Baker says. “There are presentations where million-dollar deals hang in the balance, and there are times when you’re asked to share a simple report. Either way, if you can’t present in a clear manner, people won’t respond to your ideas.”
Researchers estimate that people spend up to 80 percent of their workday communicating (two-thirds of that is verbal), according to a study in the Journal of Communications. This stat is part of the reason Marriott School curriculum focuses heavily on students’ abilities to develop and present ideas.
Tommy Montoya, a recent MPA grad who previously coached students on their presentation skills, spent his last two semesters facilitating more than a thousand REACT sessions for undergraduate and graduate courses. The results were dramatic.
“On more than one occasion students have asked me, ‘Do I really do that?’ or ‘Oh, was I that jumpy?’ when we’re watching the recording together,” he says.
And according to Montoya, that introspection is what leads to improved performance.
He remembers when, following a particular presentation, Baker commented on how well the group had done. Montoya had worked with the students the night before and couldn’t help grinning.
“REACT makes an incredible difference,” he says.
Fine-Tuning
As intuitive as the system now is, it’s come a long way since its inception in 2009.
Baker took his initial sketch to BYU’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), which is dedicated to helping teachers develop ideas to improve student learning. The staff was excited, but due to an already busy schedule, it took a few months before work began in earnest on REACT.
The initial version, which featured only a line graph charting the audience’s numeric approval, was tested in Baker’s fall 2010 MPA classes, where the consensus was that written feedback was also needed. Baker took the students’ suggestion back to the CTL, and by the next semester, students in management communications (MCom) courses were testing the revamped design.
But the addition of written commentary presented a new challenge—getting the students to leave comments while at the same time creating a graph. To keep multitasking from complicating the process, classes were divided into two groups. One focused on typing in comments while the other generated the line graph using the arrow keys to signal how well a presentation was going.
This was the winning combination. REACT is now part of all MCom and MPA classes. More than 2,000 students have used the program, and with other disciplines—education, law, and communications—clamoring to incorporate it into their curricula, that number is set to grow exponentially.
Off to Market
REACT isn’t just making a splash at BYU though. It’s currently improving student presentations at Cornell, Baylor, Iowa State, George Washington University, and several state institutions.
That’s thanks to entrepreneur Ken Meyers.
Meyers has worked with several internet start-ups since earning an MBA from the Marriott School in 1999. But by April 2011 he was searching for a change.
On a whim he stopped into Baker’s office to inquire about adjunct teaching opportunities. There weren’t any openings, but Baker did mention his pet project. Meyers’ ears perked up. He had to see a demo.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about the market opportunity,” Meyers says. “I did some research with faculty and IT staff at various universities as well as sales executives. The reaction was so positive I decided to buy the rights from BYU to commercialize it.”
His company became SpeakWorks and launched later that year. The first three months were spent prepping the software for commercialization and scalability, and the updated version was tested at BYU in the fall of last year.
While the company is still in its infancy, the initial reaction has been positive. Aside from realizing the educational platform, both Meyers and Baker believe there is a huge opportunity for growth in the professional sector. They also envision applications for smartphones and tablets in the not-distant future.
For Baker it all boils down to creativity: the ability to dream something no one has thought of before.
He particularly relates to the philosophy of Utah-based artist James C. Christensen: the human mind is like a library card catalog, and creativity is simply a matter of putting the cards together in a new combination.
Baker seems to have struck a winning formula: boring meeting + a spark of ingenuity = a thoroughly fresh approach.
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Article written by Megan Bingham
Photographed by Bradley Slade
About the Author
Based in New York City, Megan Bingham is a writer and editor at Family Circle magazine. She graduated from BYU in 2010 with a degree in communications.
Thanks for Forty-Two Fantastic Years
About Bill Baker
In his forty-two years at BYU, Bill Baker has seen a lot: the business school’s transformation into a nationally ranked institution, the construction of the
N. Eldon Tanner Building, and the tenure of all seven deans. And that doesn’t even touch on his personal accomplishments.
But when asked about his fondest memories, Baker doesn’t talk about any of those milestones. Instead, he talks about people.
“Teaching has always been my number-one love. I’ve done enough research along the way to avoid getting fired,” Baker laughs, “but the thing I’ve enjoyed most is working with students.”
He’s being modest, but the sentiment rings true people, not accolades, have made his work meaningful. That philosophy stems from a lesson Baker learned more than twenty-five years ago.
In the mid-1980s BYU’s business school was just beginning to teach microcomputers, and Baker found himself teaching computer programming. While he was knowledgeable on the subject, he realized he didn’t know everything.
As department chair, Baker often observed his colleagues’ courses. One afternoon he found himself in Gary Carlson’s class, watching as students took turns presenting their projects. One student demonstrated a technique on an IBM PC that Carlson had never seen before.
“How’d you do that?” Carlson asked. “Show me that again!”
Baker was astonished.
“I thought Gary knew everything,” Baker discloses. “The fact that he was willing to admit to his students that he was still learning completely changed me.”
Since then, Baker’s career has been marked by a quest for knowledge and excellence. In addition to inventing REACT, Baker, who is the school’s senior-most faculty member, has taught more than 270 classes, authored Writing and Speaking for Business, and published fifty-three articles in academic and practitioner journals.
“I determined early in my career that I did not want to retire on the job,” Baker says. “It was important to me to strive for improved performance right up until the end.”
Baker did just that, teaching and innovating until his retirement in August. But taking a break isn’t in his plans. He and his wife, Jeannie, are awaiting a mission call, where Baker will continue doing what he does best—working with people.
