Assessing Oral Competence: A Pilot at Northeast Missouri State University.

Clyde, Glenda; And Others

Responding to calls by Missouri's Coordinating Board of Higher Education and in turn by Northeast Missouri State University, the communication faculty appointed a committee on oral communication assessment. The committee submitted to the communication faculty an assessment proposal that focused on answering the question of whether the basic speech course was achieving its desired outcome. A pilot program of videotaping student speeches in some basic speech courses was approved. A literature review conducted by the committee suggested no significant increase in negative speaker responses or anxiety levels due to videotaping. Six faculty members volunteered to participate in the pilot program, representing 12 sections and 264 students. Students (10%) were videotaped, but only eight tapes were actually provided by the students to be analyzed, and one tape was disqualified because the instructor appeared briefly on the videotape. Seven students were rated as satisfactory, one student was rated as excellent. Despite being scaled back and encountering some problems, the pilot program was considered successful. The committee offered suggestions to facilitate adoption of the oral competence assessment proposal. To date, the proposal and recommendations remain officially tabled while pressures for oral communication assessment continues to mount. Some faculty members are taking a proactive stance by revising and using the procedures outlined in the proposal. (Twenty-one notes are included; a speech performance evaluation form, the pilot participation questionnaire, and an appendix of data are attached.) (RS)