Focused Inquiry Group (FIG) College Wide Learning Goal: Communication – Speaking Fall 2010 Veronica Martinez, Instructor in Communication Studies ASSIGNMENT: Creating a Rubric for the Chabot instructors to assess speaking skills in the classroom. Overall this was a very positive experience for me; knowing I was supporting (even promoting) public speaking on campus and learning what other instructors are doing with presentations in the classroom. The Work: It was easy to bring in a first draft of a rubric at the beginning of the Fall Semester. The Communication Studies Dept offered several examples of rubrics we use in our public speaking classes. Each rubric was a detailed list of criteria any instructor could use to evaluate any speaker. From that, we decided to create two rubrics for instructors across campus (holistic and 4‐
components). This was useful to stop and think of speeches in other classes: what are the assignments and how do instructors assess the work? The rubrics I created were slightly less detailed than the ones most communication instructors use but still covered what I thought was all the necessary material. These rubrics went through another revision as I spoke to Carolyn Arnold about the wording and organization, our first attempt to simplify. These 2 revised rubrics were then given to the FIG to use in the classroom. On December 9 I met with most of the FIG to review how it went. I learned many things, most importantly the detail and jargon on the rubrics was still too wordy and slightly confusing. Instructors were actually looking for very similar things as Communication Studies instructors (content, organization, delivery) but the language was understandably different and they would condense aspects of the presentation for ease of assessment. This all made perfect sense and I went back to revise again. OUTCOME: The latest drafts make much more sense for the campus to assess public speaking skills. They are general enough to apply to a variety of disciplines, they use simple language, and the 2‐component version is very simple to use. I look forward to the feedback and the continued discussion of speaking skills on campus.