Employing assessment as learning in enhancing students' oral presentation skills

In recent years, there is an increased awareness of the importance of assessment as feedback to learning in higher education (Heywood, 2000). This paper describes an attempt to carry out assessment as learning and evaluate its outcome in a group of Bachelor of Education students who work on a module on English language and communication in Year 1 of their studies. Three measures have been introduced to help students to learn through the assessment, develop reflective abilities and self knowledge on their performance. Students have been informed the mode of assessment and the assessment criteria in the beginning of the module. Besides, students are given time in each scheduled teaching session to meet with their group members and prepare for the group presentation task. A trial run of part of the presentation is done before the real assessment and tutor feedback is given. Students' reflections are analysed and coded according to grounded theory and clustering of data into different topics and themes are done according to the research questions. Findings concerning perceived strengths and weaknesses of students' oral presentation are reported in this paper. The effectiveness of the measures used to enhance the quality of students' work is discussed based on their reflective recounts evaluating the experience of the oral presentation task. Implications are drawn for ways to further enhance assessment as learning in improving students' oral presentation skills. Copyright © 2005 De La Salle University, Philippines.