Assessed presentations to a non-expert audience
Isobel Gowers
What is the idea?
When we talk about active learning it is also important to discuss how we are going to assess this learning. We want students to be able to go beyond regurgitating facts, we want students to develop communication skills they will need for work, so we need to think about what assessments we use to enable this to happen. In this idea, students had to take technical information and present it to a lay audience. It meant that the students needed to think deeply about the content to include the right amount of background and to keep technical jargon and academic speak to a minimum, whilst still correctly conveying the information in an engaging and informative manner.
Why this idea?
Many of our graduates will work in multi-disciplinary teams and need to converse or write for a range of audiences with a varying level of knowledge. In my experience exams and academic essays do little to prepare students to do this, so I was looking for an alternative form of assessment. As Race (2014, p. 90) put it: ‘There is often a considerable gap between what we get learners to do in our assessment and what they will need to be good at throughout their careers’.
Exams and essays often require students to communicate in an academic style, not in a way they will need to communicate in their professional life. Through using these presentations to a lay audience I wanted to assess both the students’ knowledge and application of the content but also their ability to communicate in a method appropriate to their future professional career. I also wanted to use authentic assessment as there is evidence that this increases both students’ engagement with learning and their satisfaction, recently reviewed in Sokhanvar et al. (2021). There are a number of slightly differing definitions of authentic learning available in the literature but for me the definition of Gulikers et al., (2004 p. 69) sums it up nicely as: ‘An assessment requiring students to use the same competencies, or combinations of knowledge, skills and attitudes that they need to apply in the criterion situation in professional life.’
I used this idea when teaching equine behaviour and veterinary physiotherapy students. In both cases they will need to work with both veterinary surgeons and other professionals as well as horse owners. Secondly, they will often be self-employed and need to be able to market themselves. Therefore, getting students to present technical information to a non-expert audience not only encouraged application of complex knowledge and critical thinking in selecting what detail needed to be presented but also provided a scenario that they might find themselves in once they have graduated.
One of the criticisms other academics have directed at me is that students do not have the opportunity to develop the assessment literacy skills they need if you keep changing the format of the assessment. I disagree because one