In Constructions of Identity (VII), Cluj-Napoca, 24-26 October 2013,

Adrian Radu (ed.), Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă, Cluj-Napoca, 2014, pp. 213-

222

A CONSTRUCTIVIST-INSPIRED FRAMEWORK

FOR ASSESSING ORAL PRESENTATIONS

Ileana Oana Macari

Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iași

Abstract: The paper describes a constructivist-inspired framework used for the

assessment of the oral presentations that English minor 2nd

year students complete in

groups as the end-of-term TPL course assignment in the first semester. This kind of

integrated evaluation using peer, self, and instructor assessment has great pedagogical

value, because it engages students and teachers as responsible partners in learning and

assessment.

Keywords: constructivism, oral presentation, portfolio, authentic assessment

Introduction

Although constructivism and the principles that underlie this philosophy of

learning1 are not exactly new (Vygotsky 1962, 1978; Dewey 1897, 1900, 1902,

1916, 1938; Piaget 1923, 1926, 1948; Bruner 1960, 1996; Rorty 1979, 1982; Steffe

& Gale 1995), they have not ceased to produce some trendy revolutionary

educational tools over the last two decades. In fact, constructivist principles prove

especially valuable at university level in Romania where, because of the shift from

selective towards mass education which involves large cohorts of students, the

1 Constructivism starts from the premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, each of us

constructs his/her own understanding of the world and generates our own rules and mental

models used to make sense of our experiences. Subsequently, learning is the process of

adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences. The major guiding

principles of constructivism are: 1. Since learning is a search for meaning, it must start with

the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning; 2. The learning

process focuses on primary concepts, not isolated facts; 3. Good teachers must understand

their students' mental models used to perceive the world and the assumptions they make to

support those models; 4. The purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her

own meaning, not just memorize the ―right‖ answers and regurgitate someone else‘s

meaning. 5. The only valuable way to measure learning is to make the assessment part of

the learning process, ensuring it provides students with information on the quality of their

learning. (http://www.funderstanding.com/theory/ constructivism/)

actual interaction1 between teachers and students has been diminishing. The effect

is that managers consider that university graduates are deficient in practical skills,

while students and graduates point to a heavily theoretical academic curricula and

to classic exams lacking reliability and relevance (Macari 2009: 25).

Rationale

For more than ten years, the constructivist theory has been an inspiration to me for

finding feasible ways to improve both my teaching and the assessment methods I

employ. Two effects of this attempt are my giving up classical lecturing and exam

topics some 8 years ago. Instead of taking dictation or making notes of lectures, my

students are expected to study the sections assigned for each session in advance as

part of their individual study tasks, according to a schedule they receive at the

beginning of the semester, and come up each week with questions, comments or

problems they have encountered.

Students are encouraged to spend time at home writing down the

questions or comments they might have concerning the assignments and

the answers they get to them during class discussions. The questions

usually become useful discussion topics for the seminars and this will

contribute to their successfully meeting the specific objectives of the

course. Apart from building up competence, the immediate result of

these tasks is that their own written notes and summaries will build their

portfolio. They are advised to keep all such material, as much of it will

be useful in the exam sessions. (Macari 2013: 617)

The students' additional motivation for building a complete well-structured

portfolio is that, as they are announced during the first meeting, depending on the

course type, the materials that make it up will be either evaluated as part of the

final mark,2 or used during the exam.

3

Assessment

One way in which I tried to incorporate assessment in the learning process was to

ask students to create group presentations and give them during the TPL course4

1 By actual interaction I mean activities such as seminar discussions, oral examinations,

follow-up comments, feedback, tutorial classes, etc. 2 In the Morpho-syntax course and the Translation practical course, students' portfolios

account for 20% of the final mark. 3 In the Morpho-syntax course, students have access to their own portfolios during the exam

sessions, for reference purposes. 4 The Theory and practice of language (TPL) course (briefly described in the following

section) offers the teacher some freedom in choosing both topic and teaching and

assessment methods.

meetings. In search for appropriate means of fostering authentic assessment,1I also

decided to include peer and self-assessment in the final grade each student received

at the end of the semester.

The actual reasons for resorting to oral presentations were my attempts at

engaging students in proactive learning and especially at helping them cope with

the emotional impact of speaking in front of an audience and receiving comments

and marks, since language students often are self-conscious in oral production.

Moreover, by involving students in peer and self-assessment, I could avoid

(potential impressions of) careless/non-transparent evaluation and feedback, and

develop students‘ skills in critiquing their own work. The resulted approach has

shifted the focus from measuring the ―quantity of knowledge‖ the student is able to

display in an end-of-term test or essay to the assessment of student performance on

a task.

The concepts of authentic learning and assessment have been brought about

by the need to better prepare students for real life, a principle promoted, for

example, by the Edutopia website.2 According to Meg Ormiston

3, "(a)uthentic

learning mirrors the tasks and problem solving that are required in the reality

outside of school" (2011: 2-3). The teachers who decide to lay the ground for

authentic learning will also endeavour to implement into their practice some

formative assessments, such as oral group presentations and tests focused on

authentic tasks. The effect of such a change is the disappearance of the borderline

between learning and assessment, as the constructivist philosophy suggests.

Jon Mueller's authentic assessment toolbox (jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu)

puts the defining attributes of traditional and authentic assessment side by side,

thus showing what the latter has in common with real-life circumstances.

Traditional vs. Authentic

Selecting a Response vs. Performing a Task

Contrived vs. Real-life

Recall/Recognition vs. Construction/Application

Teacher-structured vs. Student-structured

Indirect Evidence vs. Direct Evidence

1 Jon Mueller defines authentic assessment (AA) as a form of assessment in which students

are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential

knowledge and skills. http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm 2 The website (http://www.edutopia.org/) is published by the George Lucas Educational

Foundation (GLEF), founded in 1991 with the intention of celebrating and encouraging

innovation in K-12 schools. 3 Meg Ormiston is a curriculum coach, school board member, keynote speaker, professional

development specialist, author and grant facilitation specialist who has been involved in

professional development activities focused on changing instructional practice in the

classroom for over twenty five years (http://techteachers.com/).

All the five attributes of authentic assessment can actually be traced in the process

of creating a group presentation: students perform a group task whose topic they

choose from real life; they decide together on the organization of their project and

apply prior knowledge and skills in doing that; they work on the oral presentation

as a team and submit their performance to be evaluated by their peers and teacher;

through self-assessment, they also reflect on their own performance. As I explain in

a previous article (Macari 2009), my students' oral presentations are scored on self,

peer and teacher assessment grids to determine how successfully students have met

specific standards.

Description of activity

TPL (Theory and practice of language/literature) is a course1 that governs and

complements the practical courses, so that the tutor may choose, according to what

he/she deems necessary, to focus on particular skills or content.

Students form groups of 4 or 5, then identify topics and create Power Point

or Prezi presentations which are subsequently brought before the class. They

decide how to share roles inside groups and each of them must have an active part

in all the stages – topic identification, documentation, writing of presentation,

presentation itself. Together they agree on the agenda, participate in selecting

contents, in the follow-up discussions and in the self- and peer-assessment.

Participants

The 128 participants are English minor 2nd year BA students, in their early

twenties. About 80% are female and 20% male. They have studied English in

elementary and secondary school for 4 to 12 years. They are grouped in 23 teams.

Procedures

The idea of the project is discussed during the first meeting, when students learn

their responsibilities - choice of topic, configuration of teams and allocation of

roles, scheduling of presentation and assessment. At the end of the semester, each

team hands in a portfolio containing the PPoint/Prezi presentation and the

assessment rubrics2. Self and peer-assessment account for 50 per cent of the final

grade, and instructor assessment for the other 50%.

Results and Discussion

1 The course runs from the 2

nd semester to the 5

th, 1 h/week, 14 weeks. The Theory and

practice of language alternates semesters with the Theory and practice of literature. The

present article describes the TPL course in the 3rd

semester, October 2012 to January 2013. 2 I described the assessment rubrics in ―Constructing language assessment – applying a

constructivist view: A case study‖ (Macari 2009: 26-7).

By bringing a presentation before their tutor and peers, students practise speaking

in front of an audience, take responsibility in assessment and learn to argue when

critiqued. The focus of the assessment will be on the practical skills (enumerated

above) they need after graduation and, through the questions in the assessment and

self-assessment rubrics, will consider criteria for judging merits such as: cohesion

and coherence of presentation, team work, presentation skills, use of computer

technology, language skills, and time management. In the self-assessment grid,

students also identify the difficulties they have encountered while working on the

project, what they have liked and what they have gained from this experience.

All teams seemed satisfied with the choice of topic and with each

individual‘s role in the selection and organization of the materials. In line with their

audience, both those who opted for PowerPoint and those who chose Prezi were

content with the ‗visual‘ result of their project, as is apparent in the selection of

self-assessment and project-description samples below.1

We didn’t use Microsoft PowerPoint, we wanted to use a different program for our

presentation so in the end we came to the conclusion that Prezi is a nice and clear

way to send our message. Another strong point that led to the originality of our

project was represented by our photos, taken in a frosty day in Copou. Because we

wanted our colleagues to remember us, we gave them a piece of our project: a mini

photo and a significant quote that represented our team.

Mark proposed is 8 because they used another program than Power Point and

because the resources and the organisation of material were very well done.

However, the majority were quite critical about their own and the others‘ oral

performance. From their responses, it can be inferred that the major produce of

student self-reflection is the connection they make between the level of English

(that influences oral performance) and the success of presentation. If by realizing

this they are motivated to work harder, students very convincingly illustrate the

way in which assessment influences learning.

My strongest point during the presentation was the fact that I represented one of

the strongest pieces in my group (I prepared the soundtrack and I helped them to

do the Power Point presentation). I think that my weak point is that I must improve

on my English and on the pronunciation (because I must be much better than I am

now).

My English was not so good. I suppose that this aspect downgraded me.

1For the sake of authenticity, I have chosen to provide the samples in their original form,

with no intervention in what regards either content or language structure. The use of italics

will highlight them in the text.

I think this activity was useful because we need to improve our way of speaking in

front of a class and to improve our speech. It is very important to learn how to

control our emotions and how to attract the attention of the listeners.

In evaluating their peers, students were very critical especially of the speakers who

had chosen to read their roles.

They had many weakest points like: reading from the paper, same information from

the slide was read by them.

The project was interesting but because they read from clipboard the project has

not been so successful.

One student motivated the poor grades she awarded to three of her colleagues as

follows: S1 – 5 (she made many grammatical errors and read from the paper), S2

– 5 (she has a defectuous pronunciation and read from the paper), S3 – 6 (bad

spelling but she tried to make a free presentation.), thus making it clear that she

regards bad pronunciation and reading instead of talking freely as the worst

combination in an oral presentation. In fact, only those with a poor level of English

are expected to read their roles; to put it differently, by reading one admits to

having a poor level of English skills and should only expect a low grade.

S4 (8) - she has a good English but she read same ideas from the paper, S5 (7) - he

hasn’t a very good English, he read from the paper, S6 (7) she hasn’t a very good

English, she read same ideas from the paper, S7 (8) - he has a good English but he

read same ideas from the paper. S10 (9) - he has a good English, he didn’t read, he

was relax, he was very good.

In their self-assessment responses, students usually blame what they call the

‗nervousness‘ generated by having to speak in front of an audience1.

I found the oral presentation to be the hardest part of this project, as it is difficult

for me to speak in front of a large audience. I’d rather express myself in writing, as

any mistakes I had in my oral presentation are due to the fact that I am more

nervous speaking in public.

The part I found most difficult was the oral presentation in itself. I do not like

speaking in front of the classroom, but in this case I had to get over my

nervousness and give a good speech.

1 The most extreme example is the excerpt in which one female student described her

perception of the audience as follows: ―[…] I got a chance to practice my English … in

front of numerous angry, judgmental students.”

The most difficult part of the assignment was creating a coherent oral presentation,

as I am not a very good public speaker. It took a lot to overcome my nervousness

and to speak freely in front of a class full of people judging us solely on a 10

minute presentation.

Thus, even the teams with above average command of technologies1 seem certain

that their presentation skills do not match their computer skills.

One student only admitted that she had had troubles with remaining

objective during peer-assessment and correctly attributed this to the emotional

factor. Her reaction shows remarkable insight about one of the major difficulties

encountered by inexperienced teachers.

The most difficult part was to assess the other presentations because I liked most of

them and I found it hard to be objective. I tried to assess them by comparison and,

also, by my own standards. Both of these methods made this assignment easier for

me to do.

Actually, most of the students argued that, beside team-building, the main benefit

of such an activity is that it trained their public speaking skills.

Yes, I think this kind of activities are useful cause they gives us the chance to work

not only together but individual too. Thus I feel it helps me develop different skills

in communication.

It is useful because you get to speak in English with your project colleagues more

than usually about a subject. You also get to train your skills in speaking in front of

an audience.

I think that this kind of activity is very useful for a future teacher, which I hope I’m

gonna become.

I found it very useful, not only because of the challenge to manage a team of

grown-ups with different opinions, but for offering us the occasion to speak in

public, in English. At that time, seemed to be a repressive action, but now I

understand its benefic results. It was a thrill, but only by repeating this action we

will be able to speak in front of an audience without being nervous, in future.

Yes, this kind of activity is useful because team work can be an effective method to

motivate students, encourage active learning, and develop key critical-thinking,

communication, and decision-making skills.

1 Two of the teams used video-editing software to create short movies in which they played

their parts but also involved passers-by. None of the groups had any technical problems

during the presentations. Those who were not very much into computers chose to make a

slide show as a background for the presentation.

Remarkably, students empirically identified and focused their comments on some

‘real life‘ skills like team work, creativity, sharing responsibility, prioritizing, time

management.

I found it useful that we had a deadline which made us manage our time more

effectively. Working in a team, where we all had different responsibilities, made me

want to fulfill my tasks in an effective manner, so as to better our final

presentation.

The most difficult part of the assignment was finishing the project on time. Because

we took a lot of time in deciding the theme of the project and because some of my

teammates had some difficulties in overcoming their weaknesses it was hard to

meet the deadline. In the end we managed to finish the presentation in time with a

little bit of group effort.

They also liked the opportunity to have fun while working and take pride in the

result.

I enjoyed it very much because I did all I wanted. I was happy to see that (even for

a short period of time), my colleagues made me feel like my opinion counts. Also, I

was thrilled to work in this group because all of my colleagues are A-students and

this kept me motivated to come at their level.

I enjoyed very much working at this project because it reminded me how it’s like to

put all your soul into something and, after finishing it, to be proud of what you

have done. I like this kind of experience when you start from nothing and you come

up with all kind of ideas in order to make something interesting and original.

Moreover, we had fun while making a useful thing.

I really enjoyed working on the project, especially because my team consisted of

people I knew. I like the fact that the other members of my team were open-minded

and we managed to expose our opinions, to argue and then to take a decision

together. Another pleasant moment while working on this project, was when we

made our own ad. We were all dressed in colourful clothes and we had an

umbrella, even though outside it was not raining. While we stood on the stairs of

the University, people were staring at us, probably wondering what we were doing

there.

Yes, I enjoyed working on the project because it involved my creativity and team

spirit. Also I had the chance to talk in front of dozens of students and to exercise

my English pronunciation. For me it was like a public speaking and I really

enjoyed the role I had in this project.

I enjoyed working on the project because I discovered interesting things while

searching the material for the presentation. Another nice thing was working with

my colleagues from the team. We met every day for a week and I learnt new things

from them. It was useful for me because we had to listen some people talking and

each of us should write his part from the presentation. In this way we learnt

something about word’s pronunciation.

Preparing the décor was also very interesting. We wanted to introduce students in

Hawaii’s world. We went shopping together and we ate coconuts together while

repeating the speech and the strategies to attract the public.

I think this activity is useful because it makes us work in teams, it provides us with

the opportunity to teach something to our peers and also to learn something from

them and it puts us in the position of assessing others and, of course, assessing

ourselves.

I really enjoyed working on this project, because we could demonstrate that

through combining work with pleasure, we made a good thing.

Although many of the teams pointed to the enjoyable side of working on such a

project, the samples above clearly show that entertainment was not their main

focus. The self and peer assessment rubrics I created were intended to guide

students‘ observations and perception so that the portfolio they submitted to the

tutor proves their reflective and self-reflective skills together with the record of

their progress and achievements. Without being aware, I was following in this way

a tip provided by the Edutopia team, which advises teachers to ―(a)ssess students

based on rubrics rather than relying solely on grades. Student development is often

more important than the final outcome‖ (http://www.edutopia.org/assessment-tips).

Conclusions

The oral presentation is not a standard course component, but I introduced it

because I thought that by assessing this type of activity I would better engage

students in proactive learning and improve my assessment practices. It is also true

that, since students know from the beginning that nobody fails this exam if they

fulfil their dues, I expected this course to be quite popular and students very willing

to get involved. Indeed, students had positive perceptions and enjoyed

experimenting with the power of grading, expressing opinions, and proving their

aptitudes in front of their colleagues and me. Equally true, students realized soon

enough that, exactly like in real life, power comes packed with responsibilities; to

my mind, this awareness is a major accomplishment of the activity described here.

In all types of assessment, but especially when implementing authentic

assessment forms, the teacher must first develop the list of assessment criteria. For

oral presentations, the criteria should appropriately address all the aspects of the

assessment process and align closely with the learning outcomes of the module.

Moreover, ―the criteria should be made available to the students well in advance,

and in an ideal world the students should have the opportunity to practise and

receive formative feedback before they are summatively assessed‖ (http://www.

internationalstaff.ac.uk).

The selection and presentation of assessment criteria is only part of the

bigger picture – the need for continuously adapting to what happens after our

students have graduated. As David Jakes notes, ―schools and teachers often get

stuck in a "Yeah, but…" mindset when thinking about change. Instead of dreaming

about what's possible — taking a "What if" stance towards the challenges standing

in our way — we're all too ready to trip over the hurdles in front of us without even

attempting to jump‖ (http://blog.williamferriter.com).

In the context of the current discussion, "What if" can be translated into the

implementation of certain shifts in assessment that will take our practices beyond

traditional exams and tests. What is more, the "What if" stance can actually fight

back (some of) the effects of the massification of higher education.

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