The Perceptions and Practices of University Students and Teachers about Classroom Presentations

Students’ classroom presentations as teaching and assessment techniques are widely in practice at universities all over the world. Previous studies indicate that university students are provided unsatisfactory time for presentations. It frustrates them especially when teachers use the presentation as an assessment tool. The present study aimed to explore the views of teachers and students’ perceptions behind their dissatisfaction with the uses of presentations by teachers as a teaching method as well as an assessment tool. In this qualitative study, researchers usedsemi-structured interviews from 14 M. Phil students and three of their teachers. Both teachers’ and students’ practices were also observed during sessions as scheduled for presentation activity. The observations were made towards the end semester from the qualitative thematic analysis. It was found that students’ and teachers’ expectations from each other regarding many aspects of the presentation did not match. Especially, students felt unhappy about the time duration allowed toprepare presentations. Feedback was also regarded as useless and of low quality. Presentations were more frequently used at the end of the semester rather than through the semester. Teachers need to share criteria based on the possible time for an average student to understand and present the assigned tasks in class.