Four Fresh Approaches for Providing Effective Evaluation Rather Than a Sandwich

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One common method for providing feedback (evaluations) is the “sandwich method.” For example, a brief article at the bottom of page 13 in the July 2023 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Expert Advice for Evaluations says:  

 

“Many Toastmasters use the ‘sandwich method,’ which layers the evaluation into three parts: what the speaker did well, suggestions on areas for improvement, and an upbeat conclusion that encourages the speaker to continue growing in their chosen path.”

 

An article by Melinda McGuire in Faculty Focus on April 24, 2024 titled Is the Sandwich Method Getting Stale? Fresh Approaches to Providing Effective Student Feedback discusses four other approaches:

 

SBI Model: Situation, Behavior and Impact

COIN Model: Context, Observation, Impact, Next Steps

GROW Model: Goal, Reality. Options, Way Forward

CEDAR Model: Context, Example, Diagnosis, Actions, Review

 

An image of a peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich came from Evan-Amos at Wikimedia Commons.

 

An extremely late comment on one of my blog posts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two days ago I received the following comment from someone over in Jakarta, Indonesia:

 

“Nice info! Can’t wait to your next post!”

 

But, what he referred to was my post from way back on June 1, 2009 titled Cluttering is not the same as stuttering. I already have done over 2,270 posts since then. Therefore I put that comment in my spam folder rather than providing a link to his web site by approving it.

 

The cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

How NOT to comment on one of my blog posts – by instead emailing me asking for a link to your commercial article

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On August 10, 2022 I received the following email about one of my blog posts from way back on  January 19, 2011 titled Will homeopathic silica reduce fear of public speaking? I have edited that email for clarity:

 

“Quick Question:

 

I noticed you shared an article from Wikipedia when you talked about water treatment methods here. I read the Wikipedia article, and I think it’s pretty good. However, we recently published an article  (blog post) by Michael Song at Glacierfresh Filter on April 26, 2022 titled How safe is your tap water? Everything you need to know that questions the effectiveness of current water treatment methods. 

 

There have been several cases worldwide where tap water was found unsafe. We cite the Flint water crisis in this article as an example. 

 

We also discuss the following issues in this article:

• The global water situation
• What's in your drinking water?
• How do you know if your water is safe?
• How can you protect yourself from unsafe drinking water?

 

Here is the article if you’d like to read it. I know it's a big request, but would you consider linking to our article? I think some of your readers would find it helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions, and thank you for your time.

 

Take care,

 

-Adam Carter”

 

But he didn’t bother to refer directly to that very old blog post from way back in 2011, just my monthly list of posts. And that post was mainly about homeopathy and fear rather than water treatment. He also had just generically referred to the English-language Wikipedia site rather than their Water Purification article. I’m not even sure if Mr. Carter is real, or just a bot. There is a very similar email here from March 22, 2021.

 

On June 17, 2016 I had already blogged about Explaining lead in drinking water and the Flint crisis. So, no, I am not going to link from my post to their article. Instead I will refer you to the YouTube video for Shania Twain’s song That Don’t Impress Me Much.

 

The cartoon old man at a computer I adapted is from here at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Another generic comment

I enjoy receiving feedback, and occasionally get useful comments on my blog posts. But I detest getting totally generic comments like the following one (and do not put them up):

“Hello! Thanks for sharing a knowledgeable post. I have read it very carefully. I just found this post very effective to make the concept strengthen. I wanted to request you please visit my website. I also post the knowledgeable information.”  

Advice about feedback from Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

At Netflix I have been enjoying watching the current (tenth) season of Jerry Seinfeld’s TV show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. In Episode 2 Dave Chapelle says:

“For most people, not caring about the scrutiny of other people is one of the hardest things to do. I would even say harder than public speaking itself.”

In Episode 5 there is a longer exchange between Brian Regan and Jerry about evaluations by critics. It’s way more useful advice than the 1993 comedy routine public speaking coaches keep repeating:

“Jerry:  It is one of the comforts of comedy, I think, that almost never do people who are really good not get anywhere. Almost never.

Brian:  And I think it’s because of the objective response.

Jerry:  Right.

Brian:  No one can take away the laughs.

Jerry: Right.

Brian:  If it was just acting, it’s subjective and someone could say, ‘they’re not that good. They don’t have this. They don’t have that.’ But if you go on stage and make people laugh, nobody can say, ‘They’re not laughing.’

Jerry:  That’s what’s so funny to me when you get a negative review, which we all get from time to time. And you want to say…’They’ve already voted. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you didn’t like it, but the vote – We took a vote that night, and out of 2,000 people – I know you got this job at the newspaper, but it doesn’t mean anything.’

Brian: ‘It’s too late.’ You’re gonna go back and tell those people not to go in the past to the show they laughed at. Don’t. If you have a time machine, I’m telling you, don’t get in it and go back to Friday.

Jerry:  Yeah.

Brian:  I’m trying to make the audience laugh, and then – I’m not trying to please some guy at a typewriter, you know?

Jerry:  Here we go again. There’s no typewriters any more, okay? Speaking of time machines, you need one. And set it to ‘present.’ “

The microphone image came from Wikimedia Commons.

Want someone to change? Have a conversation with them!

On February 15, 2018 Bill Lampton posted a YouTube video titled When in Doubt Leave the Word Out about how he was offended by one foul word in an article at LinkedIn that was otherwise creative, constructive, helpful, and made him think. He just stopped reading. (I saw a post about the video he put on the Public Speaking Network group at LinkedIn).

Bill said he’d never commented on that article, and didn’t identify it in his video. He calls himself the Biz Communication Guy. But in this case he just walked away rather than communicating his feedback. That’s a loss. Back on December 12, 2016 Bill had an article at LinkedIn Pulse titled Winners Get What They Want By Asking.  

On December 8, 2017 at the ETHOS3 blog Kelly Allison had posted about 5 Reasons Why You Should Join a Toastmasters Group. I blogged about it the next day in a post titled Not quite my name, and mentioned that post on the two Toastmasters International groups at LinkedIn. Most commenters at the groups told me to quit whining about her saying Group rather than Club, and to just enjoy the free publicity. But one asked if I’d bothered to speak up and comment on that Ethos blog post. I hadn’t yet, so then I did. First Kelly changed the wording, and then she also fixed the title. Now that post is a testimonial that a Toastmasters club can proudly point to.

Sound conduction through your head bones is why you hate your own voice on recordings

When you listen to yourself, some of what you hear is conducted to your ears through your head. Other people just hear your voice carried by the air. Reader’s Digest just had a web article explaining that, and there was another one by Jordan Gaines at NBC News back in 2013.

The first few times you hear (and watch) yourself rehearsing on recordings that feedback may be disconcerting. You may think you’re the worst speaker ever and want to cover your ears, as is shown above. Get over it, and see what you could be doing better.

The image was adapted from a sculpture of Three Wise Monkeys on Wikimedia Commons.

Should we do as you say or as you actually do?

On November 7, 2016 at his Manner of Speaking blog John Zimmer posted about Don’t join Toastmasters? Seriously? He was responding to an article by Jonathan Li at Entrepreneur on May 9, 2015 titled 10 Mistakes Successful Speakers Never Make Again. Those ten were:

 1] Feeling terrified before speaking in front of groups
 2] Joining Toastmasters
 3] Having a voice that shakes
 4]Avoiding humor
 5] Practicing in front of a mirror
 6] Picturing audience members ‘in their underwear’
 7] Worrying about what to say during the Q & A
 8] Designing PowerPoint slides that are dry and boring
 9] Starting your remarks with ‘Good morning everyone. Today I will talk about...”
10] Stopping efforts to improve your public speaking skills

Under 2] Joining Toastmasters Jonathan said:

“Successful speakers don’t go to Toastmasters, because the organization's forced-to-clap environment is unrealistic. Successful speakers practice public speaking in front of live audiences that provide constructive feedback. The realistic environment helps them grow and succeed faster.”

John discussed why he thought what Jonathan said was bad advice, and I agree.

But I thought I remembered that Jonathan was a Toastmaster. He was. Look at the announcement for May 27, 2015 at Wayfoong Toastmasters Club. Jonathan also appeared on the Toastmasters Podcast #88 with Bo Bennett, where he was introduced as an Advanced Communicator Silver and Competent Leader.

On November 12, 2015 Jonathan had another article at The Huffington Post titled 7 Secrets to Speaking with Confidence. They were:

1] Prepare for the best and the worst
2] Know when to close your mouth
3] Smell a lovely smell
4] Sing your favourite song
5] Talk to your audience as friends
6] Look your best
7] Practice with feedback

Under 7] Practice with feedback he said:

“I practiced my talk at Toastmasters and got useful feedback from live audiences. With quality feedback, we delivered our best TEDx talks.”

You can watch a YouTube video of Jonathan's  12-minute TEDx Hong Kong talk on How to Speak with Confidence. So, please do as Jonathan actually does, not as he sometimes says.

The 1903 image of Translating a love letter came from the Library of Congress.

Shutting the stable door after the horse is stolen

On November 6th someone anonymously commented twice on my post from October 2, 2012 titled Rock Water: the Bach Flower Remedy for perfectionism that doesn’t contain any flowers. He (or she) said that I should have tried the flower remedies before writing skeptically about them. But, I already wrote that post over three years ago, and I’m not going to apologize now for doing it. In three previous posts I had already discussed the lack of evidence for effectiveness of the flower remedies.

That comment is just shutting the stable door after the horse is stolen, a proverb shown above in a cartoon adapted from one back in 1884. It is a pointless form of heckling.

Three more generic spam comments

Honest feedback on either a speech or blog post is wonderful. In one case an alert reader caught me when I accidentally said seconds rather than minutes. Oops!

Dishonest feedback to induce posting of links to other questionable web sites is awful. Recently I got three comments on my blog posts that all wound up in the Google Blogger spam folder. None added anything useful. They began as follows:

1]  I always liked your blog post because you always comes with different ideas and information. I always shared your site post with my friends. Keep posting and I will follow you.

2]  I admire the valuable information you offer in your articles. I will bookmark your blog and have my children check up here often. I am quite sure they will learn lots of new stuff here than anybody else!

3]  Very very interesting post. I like this one. Gotta bookmark this one. More information visit our site...

As I noted last December, these comments are generic - completely independent of the content they claim to discuss. 

What tools wil public speakers be using a decade from now?

I’m not sure, but they may include smartglasses like the Google Glass shown above. At the very least it could be used as an almost invisible teleprompter. Smartglasses also could give you a presenter view of the slides or video so you don’t need to turn around to face the screen and ignore the audience. Back in January 2010 I blogged about other software that provided Visual feedback for vocal variety.

On March 30th the University of Rochester had a press release about how Wearable technology can help with public speaking. It described a real-time feedback system called Rhema for both volume and speaking rate. Details are in an article by Tanveer, Lin, and Hogue. The press release began by stating that speaking in public was the top fear for many people, with the implication that new technology would help. (A six-page article about teleprompters in the Saturday Evening Post for September 14, 1957 was titled “Sure Cure for Stage Fright”).

Maybe in a decade displays like descendants of Google Glass will seem normal. I still find them a bit creepy. That’s probably because I first saw similar devices worn by the nasty Borg on the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation back in 1989. Their first communication with us was:

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

The image of Google Glass came from Wikimedia Commons.

A completely generic spam blog comment

A few days ago I found this gem in my spam comments folder:

“Excellent post (It could equally well be: Great blog, Superb blog, Wonderful site, Awesome web site) you have here but I was wanting to know if you knew of any forums that cover the same topics discussed in this article? I'd really love to be a part of community where I can get suggestions from other experienced individuals that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Also visit my site ...”

This isn’t real feedback. It’s completely canned. There is no relation with my content. You could apply it anywhere (and already have). I am not going to post your empty comment and let you get a link to your silly web site. 

If you really want to know about other forums, then look at the Other Sites of Interest list at the top right corner, and click on one of those eight. Or click on the label (feedback) at the end of this post to see other posts about that topic on this blog.  

Last month there was a whining comment in the spam folder from a guy claiming that American men should boycott American women. This jerk has been wandering around for years, and his rant already has been flipped over.

Spam comments from folks who don’t know which end is up

When I checked the spam folder on my blog yesterday, I found a comment on a post from September 29, 2009 about Teleprompters and public speaking that said:

“Wow, supoerb blog layout! How ldnghty have you been blogging for? You make blogging glance easy. The overall look of your site is magnificent, let alone the content! My site...”

Now, the gray Blog Archive list on the right side of my posts shows that this blog has been around since 2008, so asking me how long I’ve been blogging is rather silly. 

Even sillier was the totally unrelated topic of his web site - a review for a nonprescription remedy meant to treat hemorrhoids. That remedy combines a dietary supplement (capsules) and a homeopathic spray (containing about 25% alcohol, and purified water), When I looked at two web sites about the product, I found rather confusing instructions.

The manufacturer’s web site says that the spray is applied under the tongue, but one paragraph says twice a day, while another says three times a day.   

Another web site selling the product says that that spray is applied twice a day - either directly to external hemorrhoids, or under the tongue. I’m not sure they know which end is up. 

A third web site says that the remedy originally just was the capsules, and then the spray was added later by new management.

The cartoon of a handstand was derived from this old WPA poster.

Cranking out spam comments

In blogging as in public speaking you will get feedback. Sometimes it’s useful, but other times it’s just someone looking for attention (turkey spam).  

On June 5th the automatic spam detection for my blog intercepted this proposed comment:

“There’s a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone. See the link below for more information.” 

Since I don’t like insults, I didn’t accept that comment. It was on my third most popular post from December 2009 titled Does homeopathic Argentum nitricum reduce anxiety? Also, the link was to a web site unrelated to the topic.

It came from a woman I’ll refer to as Woo Hoo, whose Google Plus page shows lots of comments but absolutely no original content of her own. She also uses a briefer version:

“What goes around comes around. See the link below for more info.”

She also frequently uses one with fawning approval:

“I like your post a lot. You should write some more on this! Great job coming with such a terrific post!”

Previously I have seen Fairy tales in my blog spam folder from four turkeys and Off-topic spam blog comments - the hCG Diet Scam.

The meat grinder image came from here at Wikimedia Commons.

An off-target comment from Best DISSERTATION Services

 Back in January I had a post titled Don’t just get on the bandwagon! Find your own speech topic and approach. Last week I got a comment about it from Best DISSERTATION Services who sell in the UK and also have a blog. Their blogger, Vestri Vel, asked me to:

“Kindly share more information.”

That’s pretty silly since my post already had labels that linked to four topics: planning (with 42 posts), research (with 68 posts), ruts (with 3 posts), and speech topics (with 17 posts).

The Dissertation Writing web page for Best DISSERTATION Services includes a statement that:

“Our cheap dissertation writing services provide you a complete high quality dissertation without any errors.”

I doubt it, since captions to the scrolling animated images on their home page include both:

“With Smiley FACE Your Resit Diseertation”

“Make rite choice to write your dissertation.”

The archery target came from Wikimedia Commons.

Fairy tales in my blog spam folder from four turkeys

Some people will comment almost anything to try and get a link from this blog to their commercial web site. Here are some examples from the past six months. (Of course, any blog built in Google Blogger runs just fine with Internet Explorer. Why wouldn’t it?)

“Hello, neat post. There is an issue together with your web site in Internet Explorer, could check this. IE nonetheless is the market chief and a big element of folks will leave out your wonderful writing due to this problem. My web site is...”

“Hmm is anyone else having problems with the pictures on this blog loading? I’m trying to find out if its a problem on my end or if it’s the blog. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. My web site:...”

“Hi, I think your site might be having browser compatibility issues. When I look at your site in Ie it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!...”

“Have you ever considered about adding a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is fundamental and everything. However think of if you added some great photos or video clips to give your posts more ‘pop’! Your content is excellent but with pics and videos, this site could definitely be one of the greatest in its field. Great blog! Look at my homepage...”

The sliced turkey spam and can were posted by Carol Spears on Wikimedia Commons.

Off-topic spam blog comments - the hCG Diet Scam

When you give a speech you may be asked irrelevant questions by hecklers who have their own agendas. On a blog the equivalent is spam comments. This blog is hosted using Google Blogger, which includes a feature for detecting and diverting spam comments to a junk folder - once you tell it you want to moderate comments rather than publish every one.  

The last time I checked my junk folder I was surprised to find over two dozen comments made just on July 20th. They all contained links to Canadian web sites peddling diet supplement products for the Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) diet.

The day before they started spamming me I had read a long and somewhat technical post on the Science-Based Medicine blog by Scott Gavura titled The HCG Diet: Yet another ineffective quick fix diet plan and supplement. In that post he discussed how the diet had long been shown to be ineffective (and potentially dangerous), but had been popularized again in 2007 by the notorious telemarketer Kevin Trudeau in a worthless book. It also mentioned that last December the U.S. FDA had taken action to pull unapproved HCG products off the market. So, the dirty business has moved across the border to Canada.

There is an excellent, more readable two-page discussion of the diet in Myth vs. Fact - The Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) Diet, a downloadable fact sheet from The Hormone Foundation. I found it via some quick research on Google that led me to a blog post by a dietician.

Getting that pile of spam reminded me of a line from The Mary Ellen Carter, a song by the Canadian singer-songwriter Stan Rogers bemoaning:

“....smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go.”

The vintage SPAM can is from Wikimedia Commons.

Getting useful structured feedback on speeches

On February 21st at the Inter-Activ Presenting & Influencing blog Gavin Meikle asked How do you know if your presentations are any good? Then he described five questions that could be answered with ratings on a 1 to 10 scale. He asked how others assess speaker effectiveness.

Last July I blogged about an Online directory of speech evaluation forms, and in May 2010 I blogged on Rubrics and figuring out where you are.

Back in 1990 the National Communication Association devised The Competent Speaker Speech Evaluation Form. It has eight competencies (four each on content and delivery) rated as either  Unsatisfactory, Satisfactory, or Excellent. The 2nd edition of their detailed publication about it from 2007 can be downloaded as an 47-page Acrobat .pdf file at the Assessment Resources page on their web site by just clicking on that title. 

Even if you ask nicely for structured feedback you may still get unhelpful suggestions. Tom Fishburne has a bunch of cartoons about the eight types of bad creative critics, creative directors, managers, and leaders.

The cartoon about how too many cooks spoil the broth was adapted from an 1884 Puck magazine cover.

Rubrics and figuring out where you are

In the jargon of educators a rubric is a set of criteria for assessing a type of work. Usually it includes several levels of achievement for each criterion. ((Think of a ruler or yardstick). Naturally there are rubrics for evaluating public speaking. Rubric sounds very similar to Rubik, like the very popular Rubik’s cube puzzle.
















For evaluating a speech you need to consider both content and delivery. Often they each are described via four criteria, as follows:


CONTENT

1. Chooses a suitable topic
2. Communicates the purpose appropriately
3. Provides relevant supporting materials
4. Uses an appropriate organization pattern

DELIVERY

1. Uses appropriate language and adapts to the audience
2. Uses vocal variety (rate, pitch, and intensity)
3. Uses nonverbal tools (body language) to support the verbal message
4. Uses suitable visual aids

In the U.S. there is a standard, single-page, Competent Speaker Speech Evaluation Form that was developed by the Speech Communication Association, which now is called the National Communication Association. A dozen colleges and universities participated in developing the current version (2007), which is described in a very detailed $18 publication. The University of Alaska Southeast has a web site with both a form and the detailed criteria for Unsatisfactory, Satisfactory, and Excellent. Tusculum College has another rubric for public speaking with ten criteria and five levels of achievement.

These rubrics evaluate a single speech. It also is useful to take a more global view of competence. In a recent post on her Self-Promotion for Introverts blog at Psychology Today, Nancy Ancowitz described her Presentation Skill Self Evaluation Tool. It has ten questions about preparation (mostly content and structure), but twenty questions about delivery. Each question calls for an answer on a scale from 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent). Last November in a post on the joy of figuring out where you are I discussed some other self-assessment tools from Melissa Lewis.

February 21, 2012 Update

The Competent Speaker Speech Evaluation Form can be downloaded as an Acrobat .pdf file.

Visual feedback for vocal variety

Imagine practicing public speaking with a display showing a bar graph of how the pitch range for your voice was varying. It could silently warn if you were speaking in a monotone rather than conveying emotion via wide variations. Wouldn’t that be a great tool for increasing your vocal variety?

You don’t have to imagine it, because it already exists. In the October 2009 issue of an online magazine called Language Learning and Technology Rebecca Hincks and Jens Edlund at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm described a computerized system for Promoting Increased Pitch Variation in Oral Presentations with Transient Visual Feedback. They developed it as a research tool for teaching presentations in English as a second language. In the above image I called it a liveliness meter.

Right now it’s not a product that you can buy off-the-shelf. It might be someday though. As Randy Bachman of Bachman-Turner Overdrive once sang: “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”