Poster: Education

Abs # 13: Assessment by Peer-Evaluation of Undergraduate Oral Presentations

Presenter:	Soundararajan, Madhavan , msoundar@unlnotes.unl.edu
Authors	Soundararajan, Madhavan  (A) (A)  Markwell, John  (A) (A)
Affiliations:	(A): University of Nebraska

Professional development of real-world skills should be an integral component of undergraduate science education. One of the many areas where students lack significant training is in making oral presentations of research projects. In an effort to promote and develop the art of presentation by undergraduate students, we have developed a rubric, following the guidelines available in the literature. A rubric is a scoring guide that evaluates a student’s performance based on the full range of relevant criteria, rather than a single numerical score. The student self or peer assessment rubric that we have designed includes several areas, such as, organization, depth of analysis, graphic design, subject knowledge, preparation, eye contact and overall impact. From an analysis of the range of scores that we have obtained since its introduction in 2001, it is evident that some of the students were much more critical in distinguishing different levels of accomplishment, whereas other students felt uncomfortable in distinguishing between different levels of performance. We conclude that development of a rubric is not in itself sufficient to permit students to critically evaluate performances by other students, but that explicit instruction in evaluation and calibration are also necessary.