Duo Public Speaking: Development and Pilot Evaluation of a Collaborative Public Speaking Format and Assessment Rubric

Public speaking competitions have always favoured individual speakers and thus failed to consider relational abilities such as listening and working as a team. This disparity was first seen in the classroom setting, where those students who could not give their individual speeches were seen giving better performances after they formed pairs to come up with and deliver a speech. This classroom experience led to the creation of a new format of public speaking known as the DUO Public Speaking Format. It is an innovation in teaching and learning that was executed publicly for the first time during the International Intervarsity Public Speaking Competition (IIPSC) 2026, where duos are given three minutes to prepare and five minutes to deliver a speech together. Its centrepiece is an assessment and evaluation tool that is a specially crafted 148-point scoring sheet. It is the first such scoring tool created for paired speaking where scores for team and individual performance are measured separately and a balanced participation criterion is included in it. The entrance-exit survey data for this first application reveal that there has been an increase of 13.5 percentage points in criterion-score matching from 64.7% to 78.2% and a decrease in negative perception from 17.7% to 4.3%. Both the format and the scoresheet are registered with MyIPO, and together they offer commercialisation potential through licensing to schools and universities.

Collaborative Learning; Communication Apprehension; DUO Public Speaking Format; Oral Communication Assessment; 21st-Century Skills

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