At the University of Chichester Business School we regularly use presentations as formative and summative assessments. Historically we have been (lucky enough?) to teach in relatively small group sizes meaning the ‘logistics’ of a presentation are usually straightforward. Here I would like to discuss the experience in two modules I teach. One at level 4 involves a formative assessment delivered as a team presentation live in front of the rest of the class (typically less than 30) and at level 5 one module involves a summative assessment presented as an individual.
My teaching practice frequently uses presentations, in all shapes and sizes, from ‘pop up’ points from a working team around their whiteboard to solo summative presentations. The level 4 presentation, formative, is intended to support students practice and test their ability in this format in a lower risk situation. Consequently, at level 5, presenting solo in a summative situation, and in front of peers, is less intimidating.
Over recent years student numbers for the level 5 module have increased and so I included two other submission methods, digital recordings or a multimedia artefact. Here, I also give the students the choice over the submission method. COVID impacted delivery to an entirely digital approach but for three semesters I have been trying to ‘encourage’ students back to the live presentation. Prior to COVID the split of a particular method was broadly in thirds.
This year (23-24), out of 32, only three wanted to take the live approach until one student approached me requesting to present live but only to me. This was the first time I can remember getting this request, there were some mitigating factors as to why they wanted to do this and I could see no reason to say no. However, I felt it was only fair to make the offer to all of the students and very quickly three increased to 18.
In terms of the impact of the quality of work this is early days and as yet no of the media submissions have been marked.

I want to explore approaches colleagues take for presentation assessments. And more widely ‘non written’ assessment tasks, in connection to more authentic tasks related to future workplace experiences.