Rubric for Assessment of Oral Communication Skills (for Team Presentations)

Background: Each BS-CSE capstone course requires each student to make one or more oral presentations. The presentations may be either individual presentations or team-based; in the latter case, each student is required to participate in a significant manner in the presentation(s). The presentation may be either directly related to the student's design project in the course or may be on a different topic such as a new tool, technology, or process that may or may not be related to the project. The capstone courses include this activity in order to further develop the oral communication skills of the student. The rubric below is used to evaluate team presentations; a different rubric is used to evaluate individual presentations. This rubric is used to evaluate the communication skills of each student in the team. This evaluation helps us evaluate the extent to which the program achieves the outcome related to oral communication (outcome (g)). It also helps evaluate the extent of achievement of the outcome related to team working, outcome (d); see also the other rubric related to general team working skills.

Rubric: The student's presentation is evaluated along five dimensions. The first four are mainly concerned with the individual student's oral skills and have to do respectively with the organization of his/her portion of the presentation, the mechanics (mainly quality of slides), effectiveness of delivery, and how well the speaker relates to the audience. The fifth dimension is concerned with the student's team working skills as exhibited during the team presentation as a whole. Each of these dimensions is assigned a score of 1 through 4, these values representing increasing degrees of achievement in the particular dimension, as described in the table below in the rows corresponding to the various dimensions. The last column are the actual scores assigned to this particular student's presentation along the five dimensions. The overall total score is assigned by simply adding together the scores corresponding to the five dimensions.

A slightly different version of this rubric is used by Donna Byron and Roger Crawfis in their games course. Another version has been suggested by Rick Parent.

Some of the ideas for this rubric came from the one at: http://www.ncsu.edu/midlink/rub.pres.html.


Name of person being evaluated:  __________________________________________
Course and quarter of evaluation:  __________________________________________

   1 2 3 4 Points
assigned
Organization Audience cannot understand presentation because of poor organization; introduction is undeveloped or irrelevant; relation to the rest of the team's presentation is unclear. Audience has difficulty following presentation because of some abrupt jumps; some of the main points are unclear or not sufficient stressed; Satisfactory organization; clear introduction; main points are well stated, even if some transitions are somewhat sudden; relation to the rest of the team's presentation clear. Superb organization; builds on and provides support for the rest of the team's presentation; main points well stated and argued, with each leading to the next point of the talk.   
Mechanics Slides seem to have been cut-and pasted together haphazardly at the last minute; numerous mistakes; speaker not always sure what is coming next; Boring slides; no glaring mistakes but no real effort made into creating truly effective slides; Generally good set of slides; conveys the main points well; Very creative slides; carefully thought out to bring out both the main points of this part of the presentation as well as the relation to the rest of the team presentation; maintains audience interest throughout.   
Delivery Mumbles the words, audience members in the back can't hear anything; too many filler words; distracting gestures; Low voice, occasionally inaudible; some distracting filler words and gestures; articulation mostly, but not always, clear; Clear voice, generally effective delivery; minimal distracting gestures, etc., but somewhat monotone; Natural, confident delivery that does not just convey the message but enhances it; excellent use of volume, pace etc.   
Relating to audience Reads most of the presentation from the slides or notes with no eye contact with audience members; seems unaware of audience reactions; Occasional eye contact with audience but mostly reads the presentation; some awareness of at least a portion of the audience; only brief responses to audience questions; Generally aware of the audience reactions; maintains good eye contact when speaking and when answering questions; Keeps the audience engaged throughout the presentation; modifies material on-the-fly based on audience questions and comments; keenly aware of audience reactions.   
Contribution as a team member Seems to have no interest in the presentations by the other members of the team; occasionally gets into arguments with the other members. Mainly focused on his/her portion of the presentation; responds when another team member asks him/her a direct question but otherwise does not attempt to help other team members address audience questions. Good team player. Is interested in the presentations by the other team members; makes a definite effort to ensure the success of the overall team presentation by occasionally helping the rest of the team respond to audience questions. Superb team player. Goes out of his way to help the rest of the team in any way he can to address audience questions, get over glitches during their presentations, etc., but doing all this as unobtrusively as possible.   
Total:        

Evaluator's name:  __________________________________________
Date of evaluation:  __________________________________________