Give feedback on an oral presentation or defence in higher education

Context

A university lecturer or instructor who has just assessed an oral presentation — a project exposition, seminar defence, thesis defence or progress colloquium — and needs to generate structured written feedback to deliver to the student. Rather than drafting each comment from scratch, the prompt produces a criterion-by-criterion draft that the instructor reviews and personalises before delivery. Useful both for delayed written feedback (email or learning platform) and for preparing a script for immediate verbal feedback at the end of the session.

Paste before

Before opening the model, prepare the following:

• The rubric or assessment criteria you used for the presentation, with weightings. If your rubric is in PDF format, transcribe the criteria as plain text.
• Your notes per criterion: what you observed in this student's presentation (two or three lines per criterion is enough; the model expands on them).
• The type of assessment task: project exposition, seminar defence, thesis defence, progress colloquium, or other.
• The course level and programme.
• Whether the feedback is immediate verbal (delivered at the end of the session) or delayed written (a text sent later by email or platform).
• The register you use with your students (formal or informal second person, as appropriate for your institution).

Privacy rule — student data protection: Do not enter the student's name, student ID, enrolment number, or individual grade. Describe performance in generic terms or use a neutral label such as "student A". If the defence is a thesis with a highly specific title that would identify its author, describe it thematically ("thesis on school climate in rural settings") rather than by exact title. Apply your institution's applicable data protection policy (e.g., FERPA in the US, GDPR in Europe).

Act as a university academic with experience in assessing oral presentations and in providing formative feedback in higher education. I will share with you the context of an assessment task and my notes. I need you to generate a structured feedback text that I can deliver directly to the student or adapt with minimal changes.

**Institution and programme:** {{name of the university}} — {{name of the programme}}
**Course and level:** {{name of the course}} — {{year or semester, e.g. "fourth year of teacher education"}}
**Type of assessment task:** {{project exposition / seminar defence / thesis defence / progress colloquium / other}}
**Feedback delivery mode:** {{immediate verbal at the end of the session / delayed written by email or platform}}
**Register:** {{formal / informal second person, as used in your institution}}

**Rubric or assessment criteria:**
{{paste your criteria with their weightings here; if you use performance levels (achieved / in progress / not yet achieved), include them}}

**My notes per criterion (no student name or identifying data):**
{{for each criterion, briefly describe what you observed — two or three lines per criterion is enough}}

**Strengths of the presentation:**
{{describe the two or three clearest strengths: command of the topic, communicative clarity, handling of questions, use of supporting material, confidence, argumentative coherence, etc.}}

**Priority areas for improvement:**
{{describe the two or three most important points to improve; include specific examples of what you observed if you have them}}

**Instructions for the feedback:**

1. Organise the text with one section per rubric criterion, plus a closing synthesis paragraph.
2. In each criterion section, name the observed performance level and offer a specific improvement suggestion for that criterion — not a generic description of the criterion.
3. In the synthesis paragraph: open with the most significant strength, identify the priority area for improvement precisely, and close with a concrete, achievable action for the next assessment task.
4. If the mode is **delayed written**, use the tone of a brief letter (greeting, body, closing). If it is **immediate verbal**, generate a script of 8–10 sentences in natural spoken language, fluent and free of unnecessary jargon.
5. Total length: between 250 and 350 words.
6. Leave the marker {{here}} in at least three positions: (a) in the opening greeting, where I will insert the student's name or label; (b) inside at least one rubric criterion, where I will add the specific observation that only I have from that presentation; and (c) in the proposed action in the synthesis paragraph, where I will adjust the concrete task to this student's particular context.

Expected output

Real example (abridged):

Dear {{here}}:

I am writing to share feedback on your oral presentation of the didactic design project in Social Studies Didactics.

Coherence of the didactic design — In progress The sequence follows a logical progression from the concrete to the abstract. The aspect to strengthen is the closing: the unit did not explicitly return to the objectives declared at the start. I suggest incorporating a final synthesis that shows how the activities addressed them.

Pedagogical grounding — Achieved This is the central strength. You cited Perkins and Wiggins appropriately and argued why the inquiry-based methodology is more relevant for this particular historical content {{here}}. That ability to justify didactic decisions with theoretical frameworks is exactly what is expected at this level of training.

Synthesis Your command of pedagogical grounding distinguishes this presentation. The priority area to work on is the reflective closing of the design; without it, the didactic sequence feels incomplete to the evaluator. As a concrete action for the next assessment task, {{here}}.

I remain available for any questions. Kind regards,

Watch out for

• Do not paste identifying data. Name, student ID, enrolment number, or individual grade must not enter the model under any circumstances — apply your institution's applicable data protection policy (e.g., FERPA, GDPR, or equivalent). If the feedback is for a thesis defence, describe the work thematically and do not use the author's name or the exact title when it identifies a single person.
• Immediate verbal and delayed written are not interchangeable. The verbal script must sound natural when read aloud; if the model generates text that is too formal for that mode, prompt: "Rewrite this in a conversational tone, as if I were saying it aloud."
• The model may generalise the feedback. If the comments per criterion sound applicable to any presentation, prompt: "Include at least one specific observation from what I described in my notes for [criterion X] — not a generic description of that criterion."
• Do not deliver it unchanged. The {{here}} markers are there for you to insert what only you know — without that personalisation, the feedback loses much of its formative value.

Suggested follow-up

If you want to separate the feedback by delivery mode: "Generate the complete delayed written version first; then, from that, extract a verbal script of 5–6 sentences for the immediate oral feedback." If you need to give feedback on a group of 10 or more similar presentations, adapt the feedback-academic-writing-higher-education prompt to oral performance profiles: describe three or four presentation profiles instead of written assignments.