The Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Evaluation (OIEE) created the following to aid instructors in selecting and/or designing assignments to assess Oral Communication.
To ensure the achievement of these objectives, each of these communication modes is treated as a separate learning outcome, with each requiring coverage in all core courses.
¹ 19 Tex. Admin. Code §4.28 (2021).
Definition
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board states that the Texas Core Curriculum objective of Communication is “to include effective development, interpretation, and expression of ideas through written, oral, and visual communication.”¹ Oral Communication refers specifically to the purposeful delivery and organization of spoken ideas, adapted to purpose and audience.To ensure the achievement of these objectives, each of these communication modes is treated as a separate learning outcome, with each requiring coverage in all core courses.
¹ 19 Tex. Admin. Code §4.28 (2021).
Oral Communication Rubric & Assignment Checklist
The Importance of Oral Communication
- Employers rate oral communication as the most important skill they seek in identifying strong job candidates (p. 13).¹
- Oral communication is among the three top skills that employers would like colleges and universities to emphasize. Almost half of the employers believe that students are not adequately prepared to demonstrate this skill (p. 22).¹
¹ American Association of Colleges & Universities. (2023). The career-ready graduate: What employers say about the difference college makes. https://dgmg81phhvh63.cloudfront.net/content/user-photos/Research/PDFs/AACU-2023-Employer-Report.pdf
Best Practices for Assessing
- Share the rubric with students and highlight the components that should be included in the assignment.
- Clarify expectations using rubric-based guidance, e.g., what strong delivery looks like (engaged eye contact, expressive voice) or what distinguishes an effective central message (clear, focused, supported).
- Break the assignment into stages, such as:
- Determining the purpose (inform, persuade, entertain)
- Selecting an appropriate topic for the audience and context
- Planning content structure: introduction (purpose, preview), body (main points, evidence), conclusion (summary, closing)
- Practicing delivery (voice, pacing, pitch)
- Provide examples of strong and weak presentations. Use class discussion or peer review to illustrate clarity, structure, audience awareness, and delivery quality.
- Encourage rehearsed, audience-ready delivery, not reading from notes.
Recommended Assignment Types
Individual student submissions of:- Presentations, structured talks, or audio/video submissions with a clearly delivered central message
- Discipline-specific oral formats (e.g., lab presentations, design critiques, policy briefings)
- Performed skits or dramatic monologues with a clear message/topic
- Instructional video of how to solve a problem or complete a process
- Podcast-style recordings with identifiable organization and audience focus
Oral Communication Assignment Prompt Template
The following template offers guidance for designing an assignment that demonstrates the core objective of Oral Communication. Instructors are encouraged to adapt it to their discipline.Purpose: Set a purpose for the assignment (e.g., informing, persuading, entertaining, or inspiring).
Topic/Central Message: Provide a topic or give parameters for students to select a topic.
Audience: Instruct students to communicate to an audience, such as the instructor, classmates, general public, donors, scientific community, government officials, elementary students, theater audiences, project stakeholders, etc.
Supporting Materials: Communicate your expectations about what type(s) of evidence students should include to support their central message (e.g., explanations, examples, illustrations, statistics, analogies, reflections, quotations from relevant authorities, or other types of information or analysis).
Organization: Clarify expectations about structure. For example, an effective presentation typically includes an introduction, a clearly organized body, and a conclusion. Depending on the context, other structures—such as problem-solution or chronological—may also be appropriate.
Delivery: Set expectations about vocal elements and filler words (e.g., “um” and “uh”). Encourage students to practice before their final recording and/or to incorporate peer review.
Length: Set a time limit for the recording. For assessment purposes, OIEE recommends over 30 seconds and under 10 minutes.
Mode of Submission: Communicate expectations about the format of the recording. For example, voice-over in a slide deck, recording within Canvas (“Record/Upload Media” assignment submission type), YouTube link, or link to a video in Google Drive. With links to external sites, OIEE recommends setting privacy settings to “accessible by anyone with a link” or “anyone in Texas A&M University.” Please be aware that for "Media Recordings" there is an individual submission storage limit of 500 MB. The maximum total course storage capacity is 2 GB.
