Survey Says: Students Struggle with Outlining. Here are Some Tips to Help Them.

At this year’s NCA Conference in New Orleans, we asked public speaking instructors what their students struggled with. We heard a lot about the challenges of overcoming speaking apprehension, organizing ideas, and incorporating sources. In this post, we’ll focus on one specific challenge that multiple instructors brought up: getting students to effectively outline.

Making outlining easier and more engaging for students was one of the central challenges we addressed in our webtext, Public Speaking for Everyone.

Why Outlining is Difficult for Students

Outlines help students organize their ideas, work out their language and style choices, and stay focused. So why do so many students struggle with and even avoid outlining altogether?

We asked public speaking instructors about student difficulties with outlining in an online poll. Here’s what a few of the instructors had to say in their own words:

• “Many of them say they’ve never used an outline or been taught to create an outline.”
• “They are more comfortable writing paragraphs,” and they “over-rely on too many words rather than just including key points.”
• “They don’t understand the formatting… or even the general point/purpose of an outline.”
• “[They don’t] see the value goes beyond the semester.”

How Instructors Are Helping Students Learn Outlining

We wanted to get a better understanding about instructors’ current strategies for teaching outlining. So we asked them: what’s most helpful for students when it comes to learning how to outline?

Overall, the responses fell into several categories. Instructors say they rely on

• examples (48%),
• physical resources like videos and textbooks (14%),
• opportunities for practice (13%),
• templates (13%),
• and demonstrations (8%).

Even with this variety of methods, instructors still report that it’s difficult to get students to use outlines consistently.

We set out to examine two popular outline styles. We wanted to include a style in our webtext that would better serve students.

Selecting the Best Outline Style

But which style is the best for students? We asked instructors—and our followers on social media—to choose between two popular styles, illustrated in the graphic below.

The main difference between the two styles is in the labeling of the major sections, which ends up determining how extensively students will use Roman numerals. Style A uses Roman numerals to label all the main points, while Style B only uses Roman numerals to designate the main sections—Intro, Body, and Conclusion.

We were interested in finding out how instructors feel about these two styles and whether either could make outlining more approachable for students.

Survey Results: Instructor Preference

In our new webtext, Public Speaking for Everyone, we use Style B. Our results show that most respondents preferred this style as well.

Fifty-six percent of respondents chose Outline B with main sections numbered, while about one third preferred Outline A. Around 10 percent voted for neither option, commenting that they teach using some alternative version of the two or a different style completely.

Survey Results: Reason for Preference

In our webtext, we decided to go with Style B for two reasons.

This style labels every section, including the introduction, body, and conclusion, as students would be asked to do in outlines they create for other disciplines. This helps make the knowledge they gain here more transferable.

This style also reduces confusion through more limited use of Roman numerals, since many students don’t feel comfortable using them extensively.

Our reason for choosing this style overlapped with what many instructors said. Whether respondents preferred Outline A or B, the top two reasons for their preference were the same in both groups. They believed their preferred style was easier to understand and that it was standard (or at least taught in their current public speaking textbook).  

To better understand how to make outlines easier to grasp for students, we considered responses to our survey as well as research on teaching public speaking. Here’s some research-based tips you can use in teaching outlining.

Tips for a Learner-Centered Approach to Outlining

When developing our outlining tool, we wanted to align our approach with learner-centered strategies that research suggests could improve student outcomes in outlining (Kahl and Venette, 2010). More generally, a growing body of research suggests that a learner-centered approach can yield positive results in public speaking courses (Stefaniak and Tracey, 2015; Chou, 2011; Kahl and Venette, 2010).

Keeping these principles in mind led us to design outlining instruction based on the following:

• Make it relevant.
• Make it simple.
• Build it into the process.
• Include student reflection.  

Make It Relevant

One study focusing exclusively on public speaking classes concluded that “students benefited from learning in a learner-centered teaching environment particularly when the relevance of learning activities can be justified" (Stefaniak and Tracey, 2015). Students are interested in transferable skills, so showing how outlining is relevant to them using examples beyond the public speaking classroom can help motivate them to learn. But outlining also needs to be relevant and of value to the course in the moment, which can be accomplished by assigning outlining for credit.

Make It Simple

Learner-centered instruction “begins with a consideration of learners’ prior knowledge, skills, and experiences” and is “adaptable” (Bremner, Sakata, and Cameron, 2022). Using a style that is understandable (and breaking it down clearly) is key.

As many instructors pointed out in our survey, templates are a valuable tool that can help in this regard. They can clarify the often frustrating formatting process and allow students to focus on the content while they practice outlining.

Build It Into the Process

Building outlining into the process of speech creation helps students engage in the all-important “experimentation and testing” stage of learning (Kahl and Venette, 2010). Our outlining sequence includes a working (draft) outline and opportunities for instructor feedback and peer review, which students then revise to create a final speaking version. This kind of “instructional sequencing” provides “constant repetition and rehearsal throughout the semester.” That repetition and rehearsal can increase student confidence and satisfaction (Stefaniak and Tracey, 2015).

Include Student Reflection

Reflection helps prioritize the “autonomy” and “decision-making dialogue” elements of learner-centered pedagogy, helping students to develop critical thinking and metacognitive skills (Brenmer, Sakata, and Cameron, 2022). Asking students to describe their process and decisions is a learner-centered technique that can empower students and encourage them to think critically about their choices.

Students are prompted to reflect on the choices they made while creating their outlines in Public Speaking for Everyone.

These learner-centered principles guided our design when developing our webtext, helping us tackle the challenges of outlining with a new tool.

Our Solution: A New Tool to Make Outlining Easier

We solved many technical issues by developing an outline tool that would not only help students select and organize their ideas but also format the outline for them, freeing them to see the structure and think more carefully about the contents.

These templates are embedded directly in the webtext, right alongside the instructional content. This allows students to complete everything in one place and receive feedback from instructors quickly and easily using embedded commenting tools. And students can download their outlines to submit or use in delivering their speeches.

We’ve made outlining a process rather than a single attempt. Using templates like the one above, students first complete a short working outline to start to formulate their ideas. After they have read more about the type of speech they are developing, the templates prompt them to build on their initial draft with more detail. Last, students streamline their detailed outline to create a shortened speaking outline with delivery prompts. The webtext guides them through a natural revision process to create an outline they will actually use.  

You can learn more about our new public speaking webtext by visiting our Public Speaking for Everyone catalog page. And if you’d like a hands-on preview of our new outlining tool, just get in touch!

Sources

Nicholas Bremner, Nozomi Sakata, and Leanna Cameron. “The Outcomes of Learner-Centered Pedagogy: A Systematic Review.” October 2022. International Journal of Educational Development, 94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2022.102649

Mu-Hsuan Chou. “The Influence of Learner Strategies on Oral Presentations: A Comparison Between Group and Individual Performance.” 2011. English for Specific Purposes, 30, 272-285.

David H. Kahl, Jr. and Steven Venette. “To Lecture or Let Go: A Comparative Analysis of Student Speech Outlines from Teacher-Centered and Student-Centered Classrooms.” July 23, 2010. Communication Teacher 24(3), 178-186. https://doi.org/10.1080/17404622.2010.490232

Jill E. Stefaniak and Monica W. Tracey. “An Exploration of Student Experiences with Learner-Centered Instructional Strategies.” Contemporary Education Technology, 2015, 6(2), 95-1112. https://www.cedtech.net/download/an-exploration-of-student-experiences-with-learner-centered-instructional-strategies-6142.pdf