Public Speaking

This handy guide provides instructions, examples, and tips that help you lay a solid foundation for your custom presentation.

Good direction draws the best performance out of AI, and we’re here to share our tried and true techniques with you. Use this guidance to create a unique and immersive scenario for your learners, one that will engagingly put their public speaking skills to the test.

Contents

This guide covers how to effectively fill the customisation fields on BSGO:

1. Title
2. Description
3. Presentation customisation options
4. Presentation topic(s)
5. Presentation duration
6. Instructions for the learner
7. Q&A requirements
8. Number of questions
9. Audience focus
10. Audience difficulty
11. Recording style
12. Language
13. Assessment
14. Additional assessment criteria

Use the links above to jump to a specific section of this guide.

The title of your custom roleplay is displayed in BSGO for you and in the app for the learner. You have 70 characters to work with (roughly 15 words), so keep it brief but identifiable. You can even try engaging your learners’ curiosity with it!

Feel free to take inspiration from one of our examples.

This is the description that learners will see in the app when they are selecting a customisation from the list. It should give them a short overview of what the scenario is. Tailor it to reflect the presentation you’ve created and be sure to include any extra pieces of information a learner needs to know before they start.

You have 350 characters to work with (roughly 60 words).

Feel free to take inspiration from one of our examples.

There are two ways to customise the scenario in this roleplay: you can customise it using the form in BSGO, or learners can customise it in the app. You can switch between the two using the ‘Allow the learner to set up the presentation’ toggle.

This button lets you set a slideshow – or several – for your learners to use during their presentation. If you set multiple, learners will be asked to choose one when they enter the roleplay.

Clicking the button shows all the documents you currently have access to, including ones you’ve uploaded yourself, ones shared within your organisation, and the ones available globally in the Bodyswaps Public Library. You can also upload new documents, if the slides you want aren’t here yet.

Please note that you must export your slides as a PDF before you can use them in the app.

Here, you can enter the number of minutes your learners should aim to speak for. Once this time has passed, their presentation will end.

Use this field to explain what the learner’s task is. The learner will see these instructions upon entering the simulation. Note that this information is not sent to the AI. It is displayed to the learner in a text popup when they enter the roleplay.

Give the learner guidance about the scenario they’re entering and what the goals of the presentation are. What skills do they need to apply? What outcome are they trying to achieve?

You have 500 characters to work with (roughly 80 words) and it’s the only set of instructions the learner will receive before starting, so make it count!

Feel free to take inspiration from any of our examples.

This setting governs whether your learners will face a Q&A after they give their presentation. Note that these questions are generated by AI based on the content of the learner’s speech – they can’t be set in advance.

You can choose from making the Q&A mandatory, optional, or disabled. If you make it optional, the learner can decide whether they want to answer questions after they give their speech.

This determines how many audience questions the learner will be asked during the Q&A session. You can set up to 10, but note that, depending on the topic of the speech and the difficulty, each question can add substantially to the length of the simulation. In most cases, five is enough.

This determines how hard the Q&A questions are. Easy questions are supportive and friendly, usually focusing on how the learner feels. Medium questions engage more with the content of the speech, inviting the learner to elaborate on the ideas they’ve shared. Hard questions challenge learners to respond to criticism, usually focusing on perceived weaknesses in their presentation.

Here, you can set the audience’s concerns in the Q&A session. It guides the AI as it selects the questions that the audience will ask. Note that it does not affect the model of the avatars that show in the app.

You should enter one or two words that succinctly capture the kind of audience you want in your scenario – ‘general public’, ‘businesspeople’, ‘students’, etc. For instance, if you create a presentation pitching a new product or service, the public will ask questions about how they can use it, while businesspeople will seek more information about the business model.

This allows you to set whether the learner must use turn-based mode, in which the audience member asks a question, then waits while the learner presses a button to record a response, or real-time mode, in which the learner can speak freely at any time, with the next question being asked automatically when they stop. You can also allow the learner to choose which to use for themselves.

Turning on this setting prompts the learner to select what language they’d like to use for the roleplay when they start. Enable this to allow your learners to take the roleplay in a language they feel more confident in – or disable it to enforce practice in a specific language.

When this toggle is enabled, the learner must submit their results when they reach the end of the simulation. They will have an opportunity to repeat the simulation for a better score. If disabled, then the learner can end the simulation without submitting their results.

In all the roleplays you create with Public Speaking, learners will always be assessed on clarity of language and reasoning, but you can also set up to three custom criteria. These are used by the AI to assess the learner’s performance and generate personalised feedback.

They can be anything you can think of, but it’s important to make sure your scenario gives learners the opportunity to display these skills and behaviours. It’s also a good idea to define your criteria as clearly as you can, to improve the accuracy of the AI’s assessment. Whatever criteria you add, the feedback will always contain recognition and praise for what the learner did well alongside constructive criticism about what they can do differently next time.

Note that these won’t affect the presentation itself or the audience’s behaviour during the Q&A. They are solely used for generating feedback.

You’ll need to give each criterion a title and a detailed definition. See below for more guidance.

Criteria title

Use this field to name the skill being assessed.

1. Think of a concise phrase that summarises the behaviour or skill.
2. Keep it limited to a single sentence and try not to exceed 35 characters, because this title needs to fit on the analytics pop up at the end of the conversation.

Criteria details

Use the ‘Criteria Details’ field to describe a good and poor display of this skill.

1. Explaining what good and bad looks like helps AI understand how to effectively gauge the learner’s performance and write useful, actionable feedback. Otherwise, it will rely on its own dataset and it may not be accurate to your specifications.
2. If you want to take greater charge of the feedback, try adding direct examples of advice and quotes that the AI can integrate into their own output.
3. There is no character limit, but the trick is to give enough detail that guides the AI and helps it focus, while avoiding going overboard.
4. Too much detail could cause the AI to struggle with prioritising what’s important, and reduce consistency. It could even make it overly critical of performances that didn’t fully match the criteria.
5. If you find yourself describing more than one behaviour in the description, you probably need to separate it into a new criterion. This improves AI focus, accuracy, and consistency.
6. The best way to know how your assessment criteria will perform for your learners is to test the conversation for yourself and refine. Try giving responses that display good and poor examples of the skills, then iterate your criteria descriptions until you’re satisfied with the quality of feedback.

Feel free to take inspiration from one of our examples below.