From Nervous to Noteworthy: Evaluating SPEAKS, an Educational Software for Speech Content

Abstract

Public speaking is a critical competency for professionals, yet many higher education graduates lack sufficient training in this area. While educational institutions offer public speaking courses, these often cannot provide the level of individualized support students need as this would be too resource-intensive. Although various software tools exist to bridge this gap by supporting students with aspects such as non-verbal communication and slide design, there is a notable lack of tools that assist with the preparation of speech content—a key component of effective public speaking. To address this gap, we developed SPEAKS (Speech content Preparation for Effective and Authentic Knowledge Sharing), an educational application that guides students through preparing speech content while teaching them how to do so effectively. SPEAKS uses a scripted, chat-based interaction with a humorous and empathetic cockatoo character, who leads users step by step through seven stages of speech preparation. These include defining audience knowledge, setting learning goals for the audience, crafting engaging introductions, and ensuring coherence between the introduction and conclusion. The tool is grounded in public speaking pedagogy and expert interviews with 13 public speaking instructors, which informed both the instructional content and the design principles. We conducted a user study with 17 participants to evaluate SPEAKS in terms of perceived usability, perceived usefulness, perceived learning, and its impact on public speaking-related confidence. The results show that SPEAKS is easy to learn and use, and participants found its guidance-based support helpful for preparing speech content. Importantly, users reported a significant increase in their confidence to deliver a good speech after using the tool. Qualitative feedback further confirmed the tool’s usability and highlighted its strengths in supporting structured content development. Participants also identified areas for improvement, which can inform future iterations of the application. Overall, the findings suggest that guidance-based software like SPEAKS can effectively supplement traditional public speaking training by addressing the often-overlooked aspect of content preparation, especially in contexts where in-person resources are limited.