Assessment of Oral Presentations and Written Reports of Student Projects
Assessment Type:
Formative
Time allowed for assessment:
Target:
Assessment of group work
Learning outcomes of the assessment practice:
Learning Outcome 1:Â To enhance the understanding of the relationship between industries and the global business environment
Learning Outcome 2:Â To learn about the major decisions that need to be made in the internationalisation process for a domestic company.
Key features and principles of the assessment practice:
1) Smaller scale project (Discover an international city) – 20%
Rationale
The small scale project aims to improve students’ understanding of the relationship between industries and the global business environment.
Key features
Students are required to select a country among the 19 countries which are participating in G20. They are required to choose a city in the selected country, then select an industry which the city excels in and investigate the factors contributing to the success of the chosen industry.
Students will do an oral presentation on this assignment, and there will be a question and answer (Q&A) from the floor. For the Q&A session, each team (non-presenters) are required to ask 2 questions and the presenters can choose any one to respond in-class. The group presenting is expected to respond to the remaining questions (which may be seen as more difficult) on the e-learning platform (i.e. blackboard) within two weeks.
For the oral presentation, students are assessed with the guidance of a rubric with 11 criteria. Around 4-5 criteria are on presentation skills and audio/visual aids, the other 4-5 criteria are more related to the content (materials) of the presentation. For example, they are assessed on the originality of the materials, whether they have their own unique interpretation of the materials. Feedback is usually given right away after the presentation. Positive feedback is usually given in front of the whole class, while feedback for improvement is usually given after class whereby the group that presented will stay back for a short discussion with the lecturer.
2) Group project – 35% (Group presentation -10%, Group written report - 25%)
Rationale
Students are expected to learn about the internationalization process, so one of the important things which they have to consider is the strategic decisions that needed to be made by a company that wants to go international. For example, the company need to consider which overseas market to open, what type of entry mode and strategy they need to adopt when serving international market(s). . These decisions may not be needed when a company serves domestic market only. In fact, these are some core lecture topics, and the aim of the group project is to see whether students can apply these concepts (what they have learnt) to a real-life example.
Key features
Students will be divided into small groups and are asked to select an established company. They are then required to imagine that the chosen company is going to expand internationally, and thus have to select a location overseas. They are required to help the company make some managerial decisions, in terms of location choice, entry mode choice, and strategic choice for the international venture. . As established companies are used, students can do some empirical studies. Students need to hand in a written report and conduct an oral presentation for the assignment.
For the group presentation, students will be assessed on a team basis and will receive a collective grade. However, extra bonus will be awarded to outstanding individual presenter(s) in the team. In other words, the whole group will receive a collective grade and every team member’s grade will not be lower than this collective grade. However, as the amount of effort each student put in may be different, they are given an opportunity to push up to “2-sub-grade†above the collective grade. For example, if the whole group get a ‘B’, the team member(s) who has/have very outstanding performance in his/her presentation can get ‘A-’ as the maximum. If the group get a ‘C’ as the collective grade, the team member(s) who has/ have outstanding performance can only get a maximum of a ‘B-‘. Doing so can help improve the team spirit on one hand ( as students know that if the team does well, they will get good grades, too) and motivate students’ to put in extra effort as individualized assessment are also given.
The group written report will be handed in around 1 to 2 weeks after the presentation. So, students can make changes and do not necessarily need to put what they have presented into the written report. Based on the inputs from the Q&A session (after their presentation), students can make a decision on whether to add more information or change their standpoints for the written report. This is an important learning opportunities for students as they can reflect on the questions being asked or comments being made by their peers and instructor.
Assessment of the written report is based on a rubric which includes a 5-point scale (i.e. from ‘rooms for improvement’ to ‘excellent’). For example, the written report will be assessed for data relevancy, material organization, whether their argument is convincing and also the application of the theories, frameworks and models learnt i
What are the best things about this assessment method?
The small scale project presentation involves the social learning element as it requires student-student interaction during the Q&A session, both online and offline. Assessment of the group presentation attempts to balance team effort and individual effort, by given out a collective grade as well as offering incentives to put extra effort with individualised assessment for students.
What are the challenges in implementing this assessment method?
For the peer evaluation, it was observed that some groups will give full mark to all team members. So, it really requires students to give honest comment according to their team members’ contribution. The lecturer will have to base on her own judgment on how much to believe in students’ rating of their peer; and hence adjust their class participation marks based on her own observation on students’’ participation and performance in-class. For example, if the whole group rated each other full marks, the lecturer will reflect and recall on their participation and performance in-class if the marks given are significantly higher than the other groups. Sometimes, the lecturer needs to adjust the marks . At CUHK, there is a grading curve, i.e. there is a quota for grades. If a group of students get high marks, they will take the entire quota for high grades. It may put the students who rated honestly in the peers’ evaluation and gave different marks to their members according to their contributions in a disadvantage. Therefore, the lecturer needs to make adjustments on the class participation marks if such behaviors are observed.
What do your students think about this assessment method? (Any evaluation?)
Students do complain about the amount of workload.
In previous years, the weighting for Q&A session was larger. The original thought is to motivate students to ask questions and pay attention to the presentation. As a result, the presenters are required to answer the questions that they did not have time to answer in-class in the elearning platform within 2 weeks. I used to expect students to perform better in answering those question, as they have more time to look into them, so the weighting used to be higher (i.e. 10 marks). However, I have decided to reduce the weighting to 5% now because some students raised a good point about the quality of the questions. Since the questions asked by their peers may be too simple or irrelevant and their performances as well as the quality of the answer will be highly dependent on the quality of the question. I agreed with their viewpoints and hence reduced the weighting of the Q&A session.
Plans for changes/developments in future (if any):
Keep on listening to students’ feedback on their concerns and suggestions to ensure a fair assessment scheme.
