Author(s):
Our project aims to advance the knowledge and understanding of how we can practically implement oral exams in engineering classes, and the potential impact of oral exams on engineering students’ learning and their learning experience. Prior research suggests that the adaptive dialogic nature of oral exams has potential benefits for both instructors and students, including deeper insight into students’ reasoning and understanding, thus holding promise for improving both assessment of conceptual mastery and for providing feedback for students to adapt their learning attitudes and strategies accordingly. Considering the complexities of designing and implementing oral exams for various contexts, our multidisciplinary engineering instructor team developed oral exams for different engineering courses to explore various options for administering oral exams and to examine the impact that different designs have on student learning. The main research questions of this project are:RQ1. What is students’ overall psychological experience with oral exams?RQ2. Students’ learning experience: do students find oral exams to play a positive role in their own learning?RQ3. How does the implementation of oral exams impact student’s overall academic performance ?RQ4. How to prepare Instructional Assistants to effectively administer oral exams? RQ5. How to prepare students for oral exams? During the three project-year, our project team implemented over 7000 oral exams to about 3500 engineering students. Our study has shown that If designed and implemented carefully, oral exams have the potential to increase students’ learning motivation, improve students’ learning of the content, steer their learning strategies toward deeper and more meaningful learning, and foster students’ sense of belonging.
Coauthors
Carolyn Sandoval, Nate Delson, Curt Schurgers, Marko Lubarda, University of California San Diego
