Improving Oral Presentation Skills of Engineering Undergraduates through Self-evaluation

Oral presentation skills is a valuable attribute to graduates.Some universities, especially those offering hard sciences programs, design courses specifically to instill this soft skill. Assessments are meant for lecturers to evaluate students’ ability however, students need self-evaluation to propel their presentation skills. A self-review questionnaire is administered at two pre-determined times on students taking a professional communication course in a private engineering and technology focused university. Findings suggest that undergraduates are able to identify areas that need improvement and improve on those areas. Interestingly, it is found that the majority of them depend on gaining knowledge from their lecturers and lectures throughout the course.It can be concluded that these undergraduates had almost no prior knowledge of the skills taught in the course but had gained knowledge necessary in becoming a presenter as they experienced the course.