The assessment of student PowerPoint presentations—attempting the impossible?

Assessing students through their Microsoft PowerPoint presentations might be thought to be impossible, a waste of time or a fascination with new technology which will pass sooner or later. However, to make a judgement on such assertions requires examining the strengths and weaknesses of such a form of assessment. Examples within an academic setting are few and far between, but this paper explores one such case—a Microsoft PowerPoint assessment used in an undergraduate Bachelor programme in Travel and Tourism in a Norwegian university college. The goal of this essay is to look at its validity, measured in terms of how well its empirical evidence and theoretical rationales support the adequacy of its inferences on assessment.