Interactive oral assessments

Interactive oral assessments (IOAs) allow students to demonstrate their understanding, critical thinking and communication skills through spoken interaction. These assessments are often dialogic and involve two-way communication and interaction between peers and/or an assessor. They are also typically conducted in real-time and mirror authentic real-world communication contexts.

In this article, we’ll consider why IOAs may be a good choice of assessment, and cover some things to keep in mind in terms of their design and delivery. We’ll also take a look at a few examples across several disciplines, and focus on an example of where they have been incorporated into the curriculum of an Engineering capstone subject.

Examples of IOAs

Here are just a few examples of IOAs that could take place across different disciplines:

Business or Economics: Student groups present a pitch for venture capitalists to fund their project.

Law: A moot court where students argue an issue before a panel acting as judges who question them on legal precedents.

Medicine/Nursing: Students role play as doctors/nurses with their peers who may role play as patients where a treatment plan is discussed and questions are responded to.

Architecture: Students present an architectural design proposal for a specific project to a panel that consists of teaching staff and/or peers. The presentation is followed by a guided interactive oral session where students respond to questions, defend their design choices and promote their design to the community.

Creative Arts: Students participate in a live interview where the teacher and/or peers ask open ended questions regarding a musical or theatrical performance they have delivered, or a work of art they have produced.

History/Humanities: A simulated debate takes place where students are assigned roles as political leaders, or advocates for interest groups, or well known historical figures. In the debate they must respond to questions and justify their stance on key topics.

Science: Students take on the roles of scientists, community members, government officials and business representatives in a simulated town hall meeting that addresses a local pollution issue. Each student prepares a short position statement based on research, presents their position in a structured debate and defends their claims with scientific reasoning and responds to counter-arguments when they are presented.

Considering IOAs as part of assessment design

IOAs are not just assessments that take place in an oral format. Rather, they involve higher levels of interaction compared to more traditional forms of assessments such as a scripted oral presentation. The real-time interaction reduces the reliance on memorisation, and prioritises the need for students to demonstrate their deeper understanding of a subject matter and their ability to analyse on-the-spot and articulate their thoughts and ideas. Where traditional oral presentations may assess some communication skills, such as a student's ability to talk clearly facing an audience, IOAs can assess a greater range of communication skills, such as a student's ability to listen actively and engage constructively in a live discussion. These skills better mirror real-world communication scenarios such as those in the examples listed above.

When it comes to finding a place within your curriculum to situate these types of assessments, its important to consider how this type of assessment can aid in addressing the subject's Intended Learning Outcomes. It’s also worth considering how these sit amongst other assessment types. Perhaps there is a valid reason to offer both a traditional oral presentation as one component of an assessment task, and include an interactive oral assessment as another component. Where certain generic skills are better met in one, others may be better met in another.

Why IOAs over other assessment types?

  1. Promote deep understanding: To prepare adequately for an IOA, students need to prepare the range of questions they may be prompted to respond to or a range of scenarios they may be faced with. Their ability to navigate the discussion may help to better demonstrate their true level of understanding of a topic.
  2. Promote critical thinking: Students should be able to anticipate the types of questions they may receive, or the scenario they may be faced with, without knowing exactly prior to the actual IOA taking place. In real-time, the navigation of the discussion will require some critical thinking. Teaching staff can also step in and either ask or encourage peers to ask questions that are more or less challenging to aid the level of critical thinking that needs to be demonstrated.
  3. Focus on communication: There is a greater focus on communication skills with these types of assessments. They help students develop verbal communication, active listening and interpersonal skills. These are essential competencies in most academic and professional fields.
  4. Allows for immediate feedback: Teaching staff and peers can give real-time clarification, challenge responses or explore ideas further. This dynamic process helps assess not only what someone knows, but how they think and adapt.
  5. Reduces the risk of plagiarism or cheating: Since responses must be given spontaneously, it’s more difficult to rely on pre-prepared answers or outside help.
  6. Build confidence: Regular practice with oral assessments helps students become more confident speakers, which is particularly beneficial in job roles that require public speaking and client-facing roles.
  7. They are authentic: IOAs can mirror real-life scenarios across a wide range of industries, such as can be seen in the examples above. While asking students to respond to a quiz question or write an essay may present authentic real life scenarios, the actual assessment method being employed is authentic.
  8. They allow for authentic use of AI: While students wouldn’t be able to use AI during an IOA, they would be able to use it in preparation for an IOA. This takes away the concern of students using AI to cheat their way through an assessment, but allows them to use it as critical thinkers in preparation for an IOA.

Case study : Interdisciplinary design for engineers

This year, interactive oral assessments were incorporated into a Masters level subject ‘Interdisciplinary Design for Engineers’. In this subject, students engaged in an interdisciplinary, collaborative and project-based learning environment. Through real-world projects students gain hands-on design experience and address complex challenges.

Split over two sessions, students work in groups to present a demo of a prototype that they have worked on over the course of the semester, and engage in an interactive discussion. In the first session, teams would present a 2-minute introduction of their solution, then follow this with an 8-minute interactive discussion. Students are marked as a team with a focus on the quality of the prototype. In the second session, students engage in a 15-minute interactive discussion and are marked individually where the focus is on role playing a discussion with an engineer manager.

In preparation, students are provided with an interactive discussion guide that give them a sense of the scenario, what they should focus on, what they can expect in terms of prompts and some tips on how to demonstrate their active listening skills and how to behave as a team. Students are also given an opportunity to take part in a practice session, where they can self-assess their performance. It is also made clear how students need to perform individually and as a team, and it is clear how they will be assessed individually and as a team.

There were some challenges:

  • There is a high cognitive load for assessors. This may be reduced by having more than one assessor involved, but there is still a higher cognitive load required compared to other more traditional forms of assessment.
  • This form of assessment may be quite new to students. Some students may need extra support in the lead up to the IOA.
  • Group dynamics may play a part on group performance. For example, some students may be louder and more talkative than others.

Good measures were taken to combat these challenges by having more than one staff member involved in the group assessments, and by providing support materials and formative activities to groups that make clear what is expected and sufficient opportunities to practice before the assessment.

Technology considerations

There are several online technologies that may support the delivery of interactive oral assessments. You can use the Canvas LMS to provide asynchronous instructions and peer-to-peer engagement at different task stages for an assessment. For example, students could first be prompted to explore a complex problem as a team, and be given support resources to aid this exploration. During the actual presentation, peer-to-peer feedback could be incorporated with FeedbackFruits, or perhaps the IOA culminates into a reflective activity using Cadmus.

If you would like to explore these tools further you can check our other learning technologies page. Or feel free to contact Teaching and Learning Innovation.

References