What Feedback on Business Presentations Actually Says

The starting question

Presentation feedback is often vague: too fast, not confident, hard to follow. This project asked whether those comments point to specific, fixable communication behaviours or whether they reflect something harder to pin down.

The dataset

Thirty feedback forms were collected from a single Business Communication module, with student permission and all names removed. Each form contained between four and nine written comments. The total dataset was just over 1,100 individual observations.

How the analysis worked

Comments were grouped into eight categories: pacing, eye contact, slide dependency, structure clarity, voice projection, filler words, audience engagement, and opening strength. Each category was counted and ranked by frequency.

What stood out

Structure clarity and slide dependency appeared together in 22 of the 30 forms. Presenters who received low marks for structure almost always received at least one comment about reading from slides. This connection was not expected at the outset.

Limitations worth noting

The sample is small and comes from one module in one institution. The findings describe this group, not business presenters in general. Caution is needed before applying these patterns elsewhere.

Project author

Compiled by Aoife Quirke, a final-year undergraduate student, as part of a research methods assessment. Feedback from the module coordinator shaped the final version significantly.