Interplay Between the Big Five Personality Traits and Oral Presentation Skills: A Study of Non-English Medium Engineering Undergraduates

1. Introduction

The art of rhetoric skills determines a student’s academic competence to a significant extent. It also impacts their career and quality of life in the future. The growing importance of developing positive personality traits to acquire effective communication skills aided by impressive oral presentation in a familiar and unfamiliar condition on any given topic is now an indispensable element of evaluation in higher education in all streams and particularly in engineering. It stands out as a key element in selection for employment and career advancement as well. Hence the ideal goal for engineering education should provide a balanced instruction to meet challenges in the era of globalisation. Engineering students are under constant pressure to upgrade themselves to a better skilled and more able person to stand the pressures and demands of the ever-changing society in the 21^st century. The constant pressure to improve personality and skills to stay updated is indeed a race against time for every student given the challenges of the job requirements and competition a limited job market, especially in a developing economy. The need to acquire knowledge, skills and understanding of different stakeholders’ perception is a proficiency that is required in any profession, and engineering is no exception. Hence, the need for effective communication skills. Furthermore, the importance of skillful communication and its implications is vital (Morreale et al., 2000). Development of oral presentation skills has received a lot of research attention in the last decade (Kelsen & Liang, 2019). Several theories and models of communicative competence have been described from as far back as the ancient rhetorical scholars of Greek and Roman philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero (Konstan, 2006). However, the ancient concepts about communication have reached fruition towards many theoretical models in more recent times. Since the 19^th century, the role of personality type in engineering education has been led by numerous research method (Felder et al, 2002)