Using Technology to Engage and Improve Millennial Students' Presentation Performance

This paper discusses a popular teaching technique applied in Sales Courses that marketing educators can utilize to engage today’s millennial students through the use of streaming video technology. The exercise, a role-play simulation, can help today’s marketing students gain valuable skills needed to improve their communication ability by completing a two-stage role-play. Utilizing quasi-experimental design, scores in five areas rated by the professor and in-class students were calculated in role-play one and compared to role-play two for 91 students in five professional sales courses. A repeated measure ANOVA evaluated the impact of providing feedback and selfanalysis on students’ role-play scores. While exploratory, the results offer support that students’ scores improved in all five areas between role-plays one and two. Marketing and sales faculty are provided guidance for implementing role-play simulations that are experiential and employ technology to improve today’s “Gen M” students’ communication abilities.