Introduction

Minutes

Members

Oral Presentation Assessment Committee

Brief history of OPAC

The Phoenix College Dean of Instruction, Marian Tadano, selected Liz O'Brien, Communication Faculty, as chair of the Oral Presentation Assessment Committee (OPAC) in September of 2000. O'Brien and Tadano selected nine other committee members, representing a variety of academic, occupation and service departments.

O'Brien attended the annual conference of the National Communication Association in Seattle in November of 2000 and brought home an assessment rubric that OPAC liked and chose to us. The rubric, The Competent Speaker, had been developed by communication scholars from around the country and was sanctioned by the National Communication Association as a valid, reliable, flexible, multi-purpose, no-biased and convenient assessment tool.

During the spring of 2001, OPAC developed guidelines for collecting student oral presentation samples. Samples do not come from the English Department. The guidelines are as follows:

• The oral presentation will be between 3 and 10 minutes.
• The oral presentation will be an individual in-class presentation on any topic.
• The oral presentation can be informative or persuasive in nature.