Assessing the effectiveness of an online teaching intervention in reducing the Public Speaking Apprehension (PSA) among the second-year law undergraduates in Kotelawala Defence University

Abstract

Public speaking skills are a mandatory requirement for law undergraduates to become competent future lawyers. Public Speaking Anxiety (PSA) is one of the crucial issues faced by law students. Therefore, the current study was designed as a pretest-posttest design to evaluate the effectiveness of an online teaching intervention in reducing the PSA among second-year law undergraduates at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (KDU), SriLanka. More than fifty-three individuals from two of the four groups prepared to undergo lectures were randomly chosen for the study. The online teaching intervention continued for 15 weeks via the zoom platform. It consisted of gradual exposure, Communication Orientation Modification (COM), skills training, humour, and simple breathing exercises. A self-administered questionnaire consisted of an assessment of socio-demographic data followed by the Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety (PRPSA) scale was used in the data collection. The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential analysis in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 23.0. According to the normality tests, the distribution of the pre-test data was normal, but the post-test data was not normal. Hence, the researcher used both parametric and non-parametric tests. The mean (±SD) age of the participants was 22.15 (±4.857) years, and the majority of them were females (83.0 %: n=44). A Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed that the 15-week online teaching intervention on managing the PSA had resulted in a statistically significant reduction in the PRPSA score (Z =-5.761, p=0.000). Hence, the current study has revealed that the online teaching intervention conducted among the second-year Law undergraduates in managing the PSA has successfully reduced the PSA among the study participants. However, further experimental research is needed to assess associated factors related to PSA among Law undergraduates.