ABSTRACT
Presenting is a core component of most professions; and while it is a more vital element in some than in others, many job interviews involve the candidate giving a presentation. Audiences are humans, and human beings – especially in real-time – are susceptible to spectacle, showy rhetoric, special effects and showmanship; elements sometimes labelled as ‘razzle dazzle’. Presentations are highly subjective entities – perhaps more than any other form of assessed student work. Judging an academic presentation shares many challenges with assessing performance disciplines such as drama and dance in that an essential component of success for the presenter is how well they connect with an audience. Assessment should be fair, and there is certainly a case to be debated that assessing students in a way that requires that they think and talk in ‘live time’ is unfair to students who are non-native English speakers.
