Oral Reports in an Organic Chemistry Laboratory Curriculum

The importance of teaching chemistry undergraduate students communication skills is widely recognized, but laboratory assessment is dominated by written reports with delayed feedback from instructors. The literature has demonstrated encouraging learning outcomes like positive student attitudes and deeper understanding associated with oral assessments, alongside the significant benefits of immediate feedback, but logistical challenges remain regarding implementation and consistent assessment across different instructors. This report describes an oral lab report in Organic Chemistry II that utilizes a technical, conversational approach and addresses some of the challenges associated with oral assessments, while retaining their previously documented benefits, including the development of oral communication skills. Using a rubric that is focused on principles of the Science Writing Heuristic, a comparison of students' overall score on written and oral lab reports showed that students scored higher on the oral lab report than with an analogous rubric on the written lab reports for a given experiment. Additionally, students score significantly higher on their oral report when compared to their written reports for other experiments that have a similar complexity. Oral reports can be conducted in-person or virtually without a significant difference in scoring. The challenge of instructor bias in scoring is discussed and instructor reflections are included.