Webcam Eye Contact

[morrisja]

Hey, due to sit CA3 online next week and I'm not 100% sure about how to deal with "eye contact" with just a web-cam.

I'm fairly comfortable moving eye contact around the room in real life while talking/explaining. It's natural to only make brief eye contact with people when there's more than one in the room.

Where should I look outside of the camera, considering there's no one else to look at? A look to the slides on the screen every so often seems reasonable though I'd rather not seem like I'm bobbing between the camera and slides. I would also be worried about spending too much time staring into the camera as well.

Is there a simple guideline for this or is it reasonable to spend more time looking at the camera considering there isn't an audience to spread the eye contact over?

 

[Ian Senator]

You seem to have the right idea. Spend most of the time looking directly at your 'audience', which is the webcam, and you can occasionally look at other things such as your slides. As long as you don't stare solidly at the camera for 10 minutes, and don't face the wrong way, you can't go too far wrong!

Good luck
Ian

 

[morrisja]

Thanks Ian - I'll probably have to take a few practice runs to get used to it.

On a similar topic, judging from the sample marking scheme most of the marks for the presentation part of the exam appear to be for technique, style and format rather than content. Admittedly, these elements will benefit or suffer from the content of quality. Is it fair to say that the focus is on these parts?

Also probably a question that has been answered elsewhere (though I haven't seen it): How are the written and presentation marks aggregated? The sample marking schemes suggest 100 marks for written and 200 marks for presentation. Is the total mark out of 300 taken? Or is this one of the closely guarded secrets? :

Sample marking schemes referred to are those on the IFoA website.

 

[Ian Senator]

The parts of the marking scheme are very much inter-linked. For example, if you really mess up the content, you can't pass, even if your pure presentation skills (eg eye contact, gesturing etc) are perfect - because you've presented the wrong content.
We're told that very few people fail due to the presentation skills alone, it's much more likely to be content, or not explaining things clearly, that lets people down.

As for the split - it's 50% written question, 50% presentation question. The only reason the presentation schedule has 200 marks is because there are two markers (one actuary, one non-actuary) so it makes it easier to understand.

 

[morrisja]

Thanks for the info Ian, I guess I'll see how it goes tomorrow and Friday

 

[td290]

We're told that very few people fail due to the presentation skills alone, it's much more likely to be content, or not explaining things clearly, that lets people down.

This raises an interesting question though Ian. Large numbers of people who have passed all the CTs and CA1 are still failing the presentation element. From what you've just said we would have to conclude that the great majority of these people haven't mastered the material to be presented in the time available. Surely the communications exam should be about communicating on a subject in which the speaker is a specialist but the audience is not. I know many people who feel that a large part of the reason they failed CA3 is because they were given a question that related to a practice area other than their own. This corroborates what you are saying. Is it fair to suggest that the CA3 is failing to serve its proper purpose because it asks people to assume the role of specialist in matters where they are not and therefore is not really a fair test of communication ability?

 

[Ian Senator]

I think, td290, that whilst most students grasp the technical concepts within the earlier exams, it's the ability to communicate these concepts using simple language that CA3 is attempting to examine, and I truly believe that this is where many students fall short.

Interesting that you say students think they fail as the question can be on an unfamiliar practice area. I get a lot of students saying this on our tutorials too. However, when I mark students' attempts (as part of our Mock Exam Day, or in Assignments, Mocks etc), I often find that the BEST answers are from students in different disciplines - as they know less about the topic and aren't tempted to go into technical complexities. The worst answers are often from students who work in the area and hence go into way too much detail about the situation in the question, building in their own extra knowledge etc.

Practice is SO important in CA3, and getting feedback is absolutely critical IMHO. I think if more students took CA3 seriously, we'd see better pass rates. This is a very strong message from the IFoA we're hearing time and time again.

 

[td290]

For what it’s worth, from my own experience of CA3 I would tend to agree with you, but that’s a sample size of one and besides I was one of the few people lucky enough to get a written question on my own practice area!

I suspect we’re just using the same words to mean different things. I would say the divide between content and presentation skills is essentially between what you’re trying to say and how you say it. If the key stumbling block is expressing oneself simply then that would suggest to me that lots of candidates are failing on presentation skills alone. If this is not the case then that would imply that a lot of candidates are preparing inaccurate content, hence the question I was raising. However if you restrict “presentation skills” to mean body language, eye-contact, vocal projection, etc. then I guess that makes sense with your earlier comment.

 

[Ian Senator]

However if you restrict “presentation skills” to mean body language, eye-contact, vocal projection, etc. then I guess that makes sense with your earlier comment.

Ah, right. Yes, that's exactly what I meant by presentation skills. The sample marking schedules (available with assignments, mocks, and on the IFoA website) are split into various sections, and this is only one (relatively minor part) of them.

 

[morrisja]

I think if more students took CA3 seriously, we'd see better pass rates.

CA3 has a reputation of being something that can be a stumbling block for a lot of people.. I think taking it seriously is important but part of the problem is how difficult it is to decide how prepare for CA3. Also the fact that the presentation practice pretty much requires public speaking means a lot of people are going to avoid practice.

It would help if the IFoA put some additional sample papers up. I worked through those in the past few days and found them useful (as you said, practice is key).

I think the ActEd series X questions are decent also - the presentation scripts are invaluable though, I wish I'd realised they were there sooner!

For CA2, there is more in the way of samples/past papers and they all end up producing the same two documents - summary and audit trail. For CA3 you can end up being asked anything - letter, report, memo/email, article. And they can all be for different types of people.

The written paper I got was not of the style of any of the past questions, that's probably all that's safe to say about it, but it decreased the value of a lot of my written preparation. Producing slides is a guarantee at least - that part of practice will always be useful.

Learning how to graph in excel is probably important also - a lot of people aren't good at it and you can't pick that up on the day of the exam..