Public speaking can be nerve-wracking, but it’s also a skill every professional needs. Many students leave higher education feeling unprepared to speak confidently in front of an audience. Traditional courses exist, but providing enough guidance to every student is time- and resource-intensive.

This is where SPEAKS comes in. SPEAKS (Speech content Preparation for Effective and Authentic Knowledge Sharing) is an educational software designed to guide students through preparing the content of their speeches. The tool and its evaluation were presented at ECEL 2025 in a paper authored by Nina Mouhammad, Jan Schneider, Roland Klemke and Daniele Di Mitri as part of the HyTea-project, highlighting its potential to support students in developing better speech content and becoming more confident regarding public speaking.

The tool uses a fully scripted, chat-based interface with a cockatoo character, which guides students step by step through seven stages of speech preparation. These stages cover understanding the audience, setting the presentation’s main message, crafting engaging introductions, structuring the middle content and creating an effective conclusion.

SPEAKS was developed based on public speaking pedagogy and insights from interviews with 13 expert instructors. In a user study with 17 participants, the software was evaluated on usability, usefulness, perceived learning, and confidence in public speaking. Key findings include:

  • Ease of use: Participants found it straightforward to navigate the tool
  • Usefulness: The step-by-step guidance was helpful for preparing speech content
  • Increased confidence: Users public speaking related confidence increased statistically significantly after using SPEAKS

Overall, the study suggests that guidance-based software like SPEAKS can supplement traditional public speaking training, particularly in settings where individual support is limited.

For more information, read the full paper presented at ECEL 2025 and explore the SPEAKS paper website.

Mouhammad, N., Schneider, J., Klemke, R., Di Mitri, D. (2025). From Nervous to Noteworthy:
Evaluating SPEAKS, an Educational Software for Speech Content. Proceedings of the 24th
European Conference on e-Learning. https://doi.org/10.34190/ecel.24.1.4104