Are oral examinations all too hard? Interactive oral assessments offer a practical alternative

Background/context. Oral examinations have been around for a long time and have been especially popular in health-related disciplines or doctoral defence. Considering the growing challenges associated with academic integrity and enhanced artificial intelligence-assisted publicly available tools, oral assessments offer a reasonably sound alternative to evaluate student learning. However, oral exams have been plagued with controversy due to the stress associated with them for students, the perceived increased workload for academics, and the risk of bias (Akimov & Malin, 2020).  The initiative/practice. Interactive Oral Assessment (IOA) (Sotiriadou et al., 2020), which is an alternative to traditional oral assessment, was investigated in this research as part of a mixed-method three-year research project to evaluate its influence on student outcomes and the experiences of academic teaching staff.

Methods of evaluative data collection and analysis. Quantitative and thematic analysis of the staff and students’ responses was done on the data collected at the two-year point in the project. Data consisted of transcripts of staff focus groups, autoethnographic reflections completed by academics, and student survey responses from 172 students and 14 teaching staff across 25 teaching subjects. 

Evidence of outcomes and effectiveness. The intermediate findings indicate that, given the interactivity aspect of IOAs, student anxiety and stress levels were at a level that was functional for preparation for future professional challenges and at a more acceptable level for students than would be experienced before a written or traditional oral examination. Meanwhile, teaching staff reported that although the implementation of IOA involved greater and more thoughtful planning, scaffolding, and preparation than more traditional assessments this was offset by greater satisfaction with the teaching process, improved academic integrity and considerable grading efficiencies. There was little to no evidence of perceived bias being an issue for students.