Setting up an oral assessment? New guide helps you do it right
“You want every student to have the same chance of success” says Gillian Saunders, but how do you ensure oral examinations are conducted fairly?
One of the big challenges facing lecturers at TU Delft in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, while working hard to move on campus education to online in a short span of time, is also to provide appropriate assessments methods and ensure that students can take their exams and avoid study delay as much as possible. One of the options is to hold an oral examination; however, this does not come without its own challenges.
“Although you may think that doing oral exams is easy, ensuring that it is a good and fair exam is much harder. You want every student to have the same chance of success.
Students’ rights to privacy and to fair examinations cannot be pushed aside just because on the surface it may appear to make things go faster or easier. Most students have enough on their plate to cope with, without also having to worry whether their examination is conducted fairly,” says Gillian Saunders, lecturer at the Aerospace Structures and Materials Department (Faculty of Aerospace Engineering).
Gillian is not a stranger to online teaching, as her Master course in research methodologies is an online course in Brightspace. “This course is part of the thesis preparation and being online it offers the right amount of flexibility to our aerospace students, who can start their thesis at any time during the year, often while they are in a company or abroad” she explains. Gillian has also developed and teaches the MOOC Introduction to Aerospace Structures and Materials: “The investment made by our department in online education over the past five years really paid dividend when switching to remote campus” and it is also thanks to these experiences that when asked to share her insights and help colleagues in meeting some of the transition challenges, she “didn’t have to think twice”.
A handy, experience-based guide
The very practical guide Gillian wrote is for lecturers who need to switch to an oral exam and focuses on how to do it right in one go, “to make sure the guide was as complete as possible, I talked to many lecturers who already used oral exams to learn about their experiences as well as talking to assessment and regulations experts. Their help in creating the guide was extremely valuable”. The first draft was ready in three days and within a week, the guide was published on the Brightspace support website, “I am immensely appreciative of the hard work of the TLS and Brightspace Support teams. They have performed miracles to ensure that we as teachers could continue to do our jobs!”
Lecturers were also able to ask detailed questions about Gillian’s experience with oral exams and online teaching during a dedicated webinar. This is part of the series organised to support all TU Delft lecturers with moving their campus teaching to online, and includes practical exercises and breakout sessions to try out various tools – recordings are available.
“You really do not have to go at remote education alone” she encourages, “the atmosphere is great, everyone is there to share experiences and learn from each other. It also helps us lecturers to maintain a community feeling. And I picked up a few new things to look at and try out myself”.
How can lecturers help students further?
“At this time, it is really important to not lose touch with our students and to keep engaging with them,” reflects Gillian, “I try to focus on helping students to work from home by posting tips and encouraging them to stay on track”. Although moving to remote teaching was not very hard, a larger hurdle for Gillian was in the family sphere with all four members now studying and working at home. “The constant changes and uncertainty were hard to deal with for the kids. I was also confronted with the receiving side of remote learning: my eldest especially hated the lack of feedback given on the work she handed in, and although I tried to help, mum’s opinions do not count when you are a teenager, even if mum teaches at TU Delft!” Her daughter’s experience highlighted how remote learning can be very lonely and frustrating: “Creating an online community, a clear structure, communicating expectations and giving timely feedback are more important than ever” she comments.
“One should try and put themselves in the shoes of students: what would you need to be able to do what you are asking them to do?” she asks. “Talk to students to see if you got it right and what other needs they may have”. Not only remote learning, but also creating remote education can be lonely and frustrating. Asked what tips she can offer, Gillian says, “Stay engaged with your students and colleagues. It helps to spar with people to get new ideas or find solutions. And try not to reinvent the wheel. The years invested at TU Delft in creating online education have resulted in an enormous amount of knowledge and experience. Make use of these resources to save yourself time and frustration!”
What’s next?
When the precautionary measures took effect and the majority of employees at universities nationwide had to start working from home, Gillian had just began her sabbatical at the LDE Centre for Education and Learning. “That was a strange experience as I had hardly got to know my new colleagues. However, as the Centre is a collaboration between the three universities of Leiden, TU Delft and Erasmus, it already communicated remotely, which made for a smooth transition. Sadly, when it became clear that all teaching would be online for the rest of the year, I was forced to cancel the skills boot-camp I had planned in the fourth quarter as part of a European Project to improve the employability of future engineers, as the time was too short to make this a meaningful online course” instead, Gillian is now trying to organise small webinars for Master students to look at their future and their personal development.
Next to that project, she is also working on creating a MOOC on multidisciplinary research methods for engineers for the LDE Centre for Education and Learning, based on the one for aerospace students, so that more people can benefit from it.
On a more personal note, another challenge is “to stay active now that I am not cycling to work every day and my gym is closed. Together with a few of the other gym members we now hold ZOOM Zumba sessions to try and keep fit and stay in touch”.
For help and resources visit the Brightspace support pages, the online learning hub website, or contact the Teaching and Learning Support and the Extension School teams.