Using Rubrics in Evaluating Oral Presentation: Private Universities of Bangladesh in Focus

Abstract

Rubric, with its multifaceted implications in teaching and learning, has been explored and used widely in the educational realm. Supported by strong evidence of benefitting both teachers and students, this assessment tool is quite often being used for formative purpose. Oral presentation, on the other hand, benefits tertiary level learners of EFL context to a great extent as it essentially plays a key role in developing their English proficiency for academic sector and grooms them for professional sector, and so it needs to be evaluated in such a way that the learners can make the most of it. While using rubrics in evaluating oral presentation is nothing new, studies (or lack of studies) in Bangladesh show that this practice might not be very familiar in this particular EFL context. To find out rubrics‘ potential for evaluating English oral presentation in Bangladesh, especially in the private sector of higher education, was the primary focus of this research. At the same time, it also investigated the teachers‘ view towards the use of assessment tools, particularly rubric, in evaluating oral presentation and the frequent challenges they face while using assessment tools like rubric. While looking for these queries, the research also attempted to make a list of common evaluative criteria for oral presentation in English. For these purposes, teachers and students from five private universities of Bangladesh had been interviewed, and classes on oral presentation in those universities had been observed. The collected data have been analyzed incorporating Flavell‘s metacognitive theory (1979), the concept of scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) and the underlying feature of rubric–providing transparency in assessment through stating descriptive criteria for multiple levels of quality. The findings of the research show quite a few positive aspects of rubric in evaluating oral presentation, some challenges faced by the teachers while dealing with rubrics and a number of common criteria for evaluating oral presentation. Apart from the ‗mostly positive‘ information regarding the iv significance of using rubrics in oral presentation, the findings point towards teachers‘ lack of understanding about rubric use, unwillingness to use rubrics, negative view on rubrics and the lack of available rubrics or resources for creating rubrics. Strangely enough, keeping aside the surface-level findings, an in-depth analysis of the data poses a few questions on the core of this research–do the teachers really use rubrics as they claim or are they confusing rubrics with other assessment tools? Are they really aware of the appropriate use of rubrics even if they are using it? These questions along with other findings emphasize the need for standardization of evaluation technique concerning oral presentation at tertiary level, increasing awareness among the teachers about the significance of using rubrics in evaluat ing oral presentation, arranging training or workshop on evaluation and the use of rubrics, and providing necessary resources to the teachers. Ensuring these might be the most viable solution to attain a comparatively better evaluation system of oral presentation in private universities of Bangladesh.