Understanding Oral Exams

Learn how to use oral exams to confidently assess students’ foundational knowledge and skills.

By Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning

What are the Benefits of Oral Exams?

Because oral exams are not commonly used in universities you may have some questions about why you may use one and what benefits it would provide. Please view the video below to learn more about how oral exams can work in an academic setting.

But Won’t That Take Too Long?
A common concern about oral exams is that having a discussion with each student will be too demanding on an instructor’s time when compared to typical assessment strategies. While it is true that this may be the case in a large course, where marking would traditionally be done by teaching assistants, there are diverse types of oral assessments, some of which involve having students simultaneously record their response which TAs can then grade. Grading prerecorded responses has the advantage that response can be viewed at increased speeds. And even a standard oral exam may end up being more time efficient for an instructor than an essay or long answer exam. The image below illustrates this point.

GMCTL advertisement image for benefits of Oral Exams Click image to open larger version

How Do I Run an Oral Exam?

When planning an oral exam you should prepare a transparent, straightforward grading tool. 
To reduce the anxiety that can come with oral exams and ease your grading experience as an instructor, it is helpful to create a simple rubric or grading checklist to provide to students in advance and to track students’ performance. Check out the example below to see how a checklist may be applied in an oral exam.

Score and Notes

1. Key Concepts:
 a) Supply and Demand: Applies the laws of supply and demand?
 b) Market Structures: Differentiates between market structures (e.g., perfect competition, monopoly)?
 c) Elasticity: Student applies concept of price elasticity of demand and supply?

 a)

 b)

 c)

2. Analytical Skills:
- Cost-Benefit Analysis: Student performs a basic cost-benefit analysis?
- Economic Indicators: Student interprets key economic indicators (e.g., GDP, inflation rates)?

 a)

 b)
3. Communication Skills:
- Graphic Analysis: Student coherently explains economic graphs and models?
- Articulation: Student is articulate and coherent in their responses?

 a)

 b)

You should check things off on the checklist or mark relevant areas on the rubric in real time as you are speaking to the student.

Schedule carefully - For successful grading and feedback, make sure you leave time between each meeting to assess the performance of the previous student and jot down or audio-record feedback if you did not provide it during the discussion. However, in order to make oral exams time-efficient, do not leave too much time between exams. Five minutes is often sufficient with a longer break every hour or so.

Pay attention to logistics - When you are planning how to set up your oral exam think through the process and maybe even do a troubleshooting run through with a colleague or TA. Identify areas that impede the success of the exam and adjust them in advance. One issue to watch is how you schedule meetings in Zoom. If you schedule distinct meetings for each student, you will spend time moving in and out of meetings. You are likely better off scheduling one meeting with an automatic waiting room.

Ensure an equal starting point for all students - Unlike in a typical exam where students complete simultaneously, special consideration must be given to ensure that students who take an oral exam later do not have an advantage over the early completers. Consider providing students with a list of questions or topics in advance and then varying the questions you ask each student. Another option is to have the exam progress as a conversation based on individual responses so that all students get a varied experience.

Consider creating a synchronous oral exam - Rather than asking questions of students one on one, consider talking with groups of students together or providing students with a prompt at a given time (through a Canvas Quiz) and requiring them to immediately record themselves responding.

Examples of how oral exams can be applied across disciplines:
Course Format Logistics
First Year History
(50 students)		 Major course assignment
 · Panel discussion of 2 topics covered in the course from a list of 8 topics provided in advance.
 · Students are expected to respond to and build on each other’s comments.		 · Groups of 5 students
20-min sessions then 20-min grading break.
· Feedback provided via rubric and audio recorded comments in Canvas.
Fourth Year Math
(30 students)		 Midterm exam
· Students prepare by holding similar sessions with peers in advance.
· Student is given one math problem that will apply multiple course skills. They solve the problem while explaining their process and connections to course content out loud.		 · One-on-one with instructor
10-min session with a 5-min break.
· Feedback provided in last two minutes of the session.
· Instructor will prompt students if a step is incorrect.
Second Year Medicine
(25 students)		 Final exam
· To begin: Instructor plays the role of a patient and student asks questions and initiates procedures to assess (with immediate results provided).
· Last five minutes: Student explains their diagnosis and how they came to it.		 · One-on-one with instructor
15-min session with a 5-min break.
· Feedback via rubric with explanation of correct diagnosis and procedures.
First Year Ecology
(400 students)		 Midterm exam
Canvas Quiz with two scenario questions on separate screens.
· The first student answers Question 1 explaining their response aloud to their peer (5-min). Second student asks prompting questions and gives suggestions. Roles are reversed for Question 2.
· Cannot progress to second question until first is answered and cannot go back to change.		 · In groups of two in breakout rooms in Zoom with recording on. (15-min)
· Simultaneous for all students.
· Recording are immediately submitted in Canvas exam.
· Scored by TAs using a rubric. Viewing of videos can be sped up as desired.

Given their specific benefits and drawbacks, oral exams work better in some situations than others. To find out if an oral exam may be helpful in your context check out this article, Should I Use an Oral Assessment?.

Other Resources:

  • Iannone, P. & Simpson, A. (2015). Students’ views of oral performance assessment in mathematics: straddling the “assessment of” and “assessment for” learning divide. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(7), 971–987. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2014.961124

Title image credit: Okurut Eric on Pexels
This article was created with the assistance of AI tools, as described in the GMCTL AI Disclosure Statement.

This resource is shared by the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL), University of Saskatchewan, under a CC BY-NC-SA license.