Enhancing management students’ professional presentation skills through self and peer assessment: Calibrating judgement using the 3D presentation framework

Oral communication skills are a key attribute sought by employers recruiting business graduates (Estrada-Worthington 2015; Jackson 2014) and assessing and developing these skills has become a key focus of management courses in universities (Du-Babcock 2006). However, despite this focus employers and researchers have highlighted gaps in the professional communication capabilities of many business graduates, including a lack of understanding regarding what effective oral communication is (DuPre & Williams 2011; Jackson 2014; Kinash et al. 2016). Section 1 of the report situates the research within the broader context of developing key skills in business graduates and provides an overview of the importance of oral communication skills within the Australian business environment. It presents a review of academic and practitioner literature that positions the need for an integrated approach to teaching and assessing oral communication skills within a university environment. Current methods for assessing oral communication skills are outlined and the potential for self and peer assessment to address limitations in current practice are discussed. Self and peer assessment have been shown to help students to identify an appropriate standard of performance, develop the capacity to judge themselves and determine areas for improvement (De Grez et al. 2012; Dochy et al. 1999; Hancock & Freeman 2015; Magin & Helmore 2001, Patri 2002; Race 2001). This report introduces a framework for developing oral presentation skills based on a structured and comprehensive method for students to reflect upon and assess their oral communication skills by calibrating judgement regarding their oral communication skills. This framework advances a method of providing formative feedback for the development of oral communication skills which also provides the opportunity for students to calibrate self-assessment of performance against feedback from instructors and peers. Section 2 of the report reports on a pilot project which developed a suite of presentation self and peer assessment tools developed to facilitate formative self and peer assessment. These tools and supporting resources (provided as an appendix to this report) were tested within an embedded and optional use environment. Student feedback on the resources was gathered to (a) refine the resources for future use and (b) identify any barriers or resistance to their use and ways of overcoming these (MacAlpine 1999; Patton 2012). Results from the pilot study suggest that using self and peer assessment tools can help to calibrate student judgement on standards of oral communication. The tools developed for this study provided students with a stronger understanding of communication standards and structured feedback on their current presentation skills and areas for development. The tools also provided users with the opportunity to give as well as receive feedback through a systematic approach to self and peer assessment. This study finds that to be most effective self and peer assessment needs to be supported by the Instructor, integrated into the curriculum, and learning appropriately scaffolded. Section 3 discusses the benefits of and need to calibrate student judgement on standards of oral communication. The potential application of each tool for teaching within business and management is explained. It is concluded that these self and peer assessment resources are suitable for use in any management subject with specified learning outcomes relating to the need to communicate professionally through oral presentations and can be used by management educators in their teaching to calibrate students’ judgement around professional communication standards and develop their reflective capacities and skills in providing peer feedback.