Assessment of students´ learning experience in an oral communication course at MIT for EECS majors

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) majors at MIT are required to take an oral communications course that teaches oral presentation skills and other professional skills that students will need to be effective in the workplace. In this paper, we describe an assessment of the oral presentation skills component of this course performed during the Spring 2009 semester. This assessment consisted of two instruments: (1) a class survey of 71 enrolled students (with 60 respondents or an 85% response rate) and (2) student interviews in which 7 out of 10 randomly-selected individuals participated. The findings from both were consistent and positive: students were enthusiastic about the course, found it useful and viewed the experience positively.