Perceived benefits of online oral examinations at universities

Abstract

Abstract. Assessing students’ comprehension and knowledge has been a crucial pedagogical issue and challenge at the same time. Oral examinations used to be a common assessment method in higher education, however, they seem to have lost popularity over the past decades, with the exception of a few particular disciplines like medicine. As the number of students has grown at universities, many institutions rely largely on written formats of assessment. Particularly multiple choice, open-ended or short essay questions are widespread, which are often quicker and less complicated to organize and grade (Joughin, 1998). Stray (2001) found that beside the effect of increased number of students, the shift from group socio-moral assessments of prestigious groups to individual cognitive assessmenta and the content of the knowledge being tested in different subjects also contributed to the substitution of oral with written examinations at universities. In spite of these tendencies, oral assessment is still part of the assessment structure at several Hungarian universities. In our qualitative research project (see details in Furcsa and Szaszkó, 2022), we aimed at investigating the potential advantages and drawbacks of online oral examinations. The present article seeks to summarize the findings focusing on the benefits.