Assessment of students' oral communication skills: Do students and workplace supervisors rely on general response patterns?

This paper reports a test of the hypothesis that students and supervisors rely on a general response pattern when assessing various aspects of oral communication skills. The study is a follow-up to our pilot conducted in 2006; both studies were partially funded by the Engineering Information Foundation. It is important to know whether students and supervisors evaluate each single aspect of oral communication skills individually or that they rely on a general answer pattern. This paper shows that supervisors do not seem to evaluate the various aspects but rather rely on their general impression of the students' oral communication abilities, while students distinguish between different aspects of oral communication skills when they evaluate their own skills. This is important information, because students will not be able to glean from the supervisors' assessments which aspects they will need to improve to become better communicators.