Abstract:

Oral communication is a key transversal skill for any student in general and Master student in particular. For this reason, students of the subject Energy Efficiency in Thermal Systems of the Master on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency at University of Zaragoza have to present the main findings of their subject work (developed in pairs) to their classmates as well as to the professor. In order to improve the evaluation process and to increase the interest of students attending presentations, they are asked to evaluate their classmates by a numeric mark. These marks are compared with those provided by the professor, as well as with other marks related to the presented work itself (quality of the written report and accuracy of the calculations) and to the whole subject (final mark, results of the written exam, and results of other practical sessions). It can be seen that, sometimes, marks provided by students are lower than those proposed by the professor. Besides, although all students assume that the professor is attending presentations, some of them do not feel very comfortable when their classmates are part of the audience. Furthermore, the need to assess the quality of the presentations made by the others allows the students to focus on the main points that a good presentation should have, and then to improve their own presentations.

Acknowledgement:
Authors would like to acknowledge the support of University of Zaragoza (Teaching Innovation Project PIIDUZ_19_432).

Keywords:

Oral communication, co-evaluation, engineering.