Presentations & performances

Example

These may be individual or group presentations/performances. Including questions to individuals strengthens the value substantially.

Pros

• Authentic: presentational (oral, visual, physical) skills are useful in future employment;
• Peer-assessment can make presentations/performances a better learning experience for all;
• Showing and quizzing multiple students together builds community and understanding
• Asking spontaneous questions from the assessor and/or the audience helps reduce misconduct

Cons

• Assessing presentations is quite time-consuming;
• May be hard to strike a balance between mastery of content, and skills of presentation;
• ‘Raising the bar’: expected standards can become higher over a series of presentations/performances as assessors expect more and more;
• In presentations, ‘impression’ marks can be associated with the quality of presentation slides or resource materials used in the presentations;
• Reliability – scores from different assessors may vary substantially.
• Time requirement for student preparation, and for assessment – though per student, probably not longer than marking an essay.

Requirements

• Time for assessors – but also for students
• Assessment criteria must be made clear in advance of the task being started
• Large file sizes where performance submitted in advance

Resistance to academic misconduct

• High if performance in question-answering is a major part of the mark. (Questions need to be probing).

Making it more robust

• Ask questions and score for answers.