Handling Resistance in Internship Presentations

Kristen Einthoven, a graduating senior in mechanical engineering from Penn State, discusses how to overcome resistance to the assertion-evidence approach that occurs for students giving internship presentations at companies. As an example, Kristen uses slides from her successful internship presentation at Carbon--a presentation that she was asked to give three times because of its effectiveness.

Kirby Perosa, a graduating senior in mechanical engineering from Penn State, discusses how to overcome resistance to the assertion-evidence approach that occurs for students giving internship presentations at companies. As an example, Kirby uses slides from her successful internship presentation at John Deere.

---

Combating Industry Resistance to the Assertion-Evidence Approach with Technical Handouts

Annie Phandinh
Mechanical Engineering Department, Pennsylvania State University

Students attempting to use the assertion-evidence approach in their summer internship presentations frequently encounter resistance to the new method. In a 2017 conducted by Elizabeth Miller [1], seventeen undergraduate and graduate students were interviewed about their experience using the assertion-evidence approach in industry presentations. Of those seventeen, ten experienced resistance to assertion-evidence approach by managers. To counter that resistance, this paper proposes the use of technical handouts.

To be successful, a technical handout must be able to explain each slide and verbal message in a professional way. For formatting, an image of the slide appears at the top of the page, as occurs in the ‘presenter notes’ feature on PowerPoint. Underneath the slide, the presenter places details spoken during the presentation. As seen in the example to the right, the speaker can use headings such as "Content" to orient the audience to the type of information presented. By citing resource in the handout, the presentation has more credibility and has more features of a formal document. 

***