Student perceptions of oral exams in undergraduate engineering classes and implications for effective oral exam design

Saharnaz Baghdadchi; Huihui Qi; Marko Lubarda; Alex Phan; Nathan Delson; Carolyn Sandoval

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: Educational Research and Methods (ERM) Division Poster Session
Page Count: 21
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41123
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41123
Download Count: 946

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Saharnaz Baghdadchi University of California, San Diego

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Saharnaz Baghdadchi is an Assistant Teaching Professor at UC San Diego. She is interested in scholarly teaching and uses active learning techniques to help students achieve expert-like level of thinking. She guides students in bridging the gap between facts and usable knowledge to solve complex engineering problems.

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Dr. Qi is an Assistant Teaching Professor at University of California, San Diego.

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Marko Lubarda University of California, San Diego

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Marko Lubarda is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He teaches mechanics, materials science, design, computational analysis, and engineering mathematics courses, and has co-authored the undergraduate textbook Intermediate Solid Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He is dedicated to engineering pedagogy and enriching students' learning experiences through teaching innovations, curriculum design, and support of undergraduate student research.

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Nathan Delson University of California, San Diego

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Nathan Delson is a Teaching Professor at the University of California at San Diego. His research interests include robotics, biomedical devices, and engineering education. He teaches introductory design, mechanics, mechatronics, capstone design, medical devices, and product design & entrepreneurship. His interests in design education includes increasing student motivation, teamwork, hands-on projects, and integration of theory into design projects. In 1999 he co-founded Coactive Drive Corporation (currently General Vibration), a company that provides haptic solutions. In 2016 Nate co-founded eGrove Education, Inc. an educational software company focused on teaching sketching and spatial visualization skills.

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Abstract

Effective instruction involves well-designed assessments that provide information to students and instructors about how students progress throughout a course. Such assessments could provide feedback to students and help to guide their learning. Assessment strategies that focus on learning can positively impact students’ mastery of the course content. In many undergraduate engineering courses, the primary and dominant assessment format has been written exams, whereas oral exams are not widely used, especially in large undergraduate courses. Because of their dialogic and adaptive nature, oral exams have the potential to generate many unique learning benefits for students [10, 32, 41]. Some of these benefits include providing instructors with an opportunity to deeply understand students’ thought processes [10, 33, 34, 62, 70, 91] and to give targeted and immediate feedback to students [9, 41, 43, 46, 66, 88, 91, 92], increasing the interaction between students and the instructional team [33, 45, 46, 54, 69, 93], and helping students to improve technical speaking skills [32, 41, 46, 59, 66, 69]. If well designed and implemented, oral exams could generate positive student engagement and positive perceptions in the class [31, 41, 54, 59, 69, 80], and ultimately improve their motivation toward learning [12, 36, 43, 48, 54, 59, 66, 67, 69, 70, 85]. Despite these potential benefits, many instructors hesitate to implement oral exams, in part because they are relatively uncommon in engineering courses in the U.S., and student perceptions of oral assessments are unknown. Indeed, students' perceptions are important, as studies have shown that their perceptions are likely to affect their attitudes toward learning and, consequently, impact their performance in the class [4, 6, 14, 15].

In this study, we seek to understand students’ perceptions toward the implementation of oral exams as an assessment tool in undergraduate engineering classes with a long term goal of identifying features of oral exams that have the greatest potential for positively impacting student engagement and learning. To achieve this goal, oral exams were implemented in six different engineering courses (four unique courses) from two disciplines, Mechanical engineering, and Electrical engineering. Student perception data were collected through carefully designed anonymous quantitative and qualitative survey questions. Results from the data analysis of students’ perspectives identify benefits and areas for improvement of different oral exam configurations. The results suggest that overall, students consider oral exams to have positively contributed to their learning in many aspects, such as improving technical communication skills, increasing motivation to learn, improving academic integrity, helping with the conceptual understanding of the subject matter, and receiving real-time feedback.

Citation
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Baghdadchi, S., & Phan, A., & Sandoval, C., & Qi, H., & Lubarda, M., & Delson, N. (2022, August), Student perceptions of oral exams in undergraduate engineering classes and implications for effective oral exam design Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41123

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Effective instruction involves well-designed assessments that provide information to students and instructors about how students progress throughout a course. Such assessments could provide feedback to students and help to guide their learning. Assessment strategies that focus on learning can positively impact students’ mastery of the course content. In many undergraduate engineering courses, the primary and dominant assessment format has been written exams, whereas oral exams are not widely used, especially in large undergraduate courses. Because of their dialogic and adaptive nature, oral exams have the potential to generate many unique learning benefits for students [10, 32, 41]. Some of these benefits include providing instructors with an opportunity to deeply understand students’ thought processes [10, 33, 34, 62, 70, 91] and to give targeted and immediate feedback to students [9, 41, 43, 46, 66, 88, 91, 92], increasing the interaction between students and the instructional team [33, 45, 46, 54, 69, 93], and helping students to improve technical speaking skills [32, 41, 46, 59, 66, 69]. If well designed and implemented, oral exams could generate positive student engagement and positive perceptions in the class [31, 41, 54, 59, 69, 80], and ultimately improve their motivation toward learning [12, 36, 43, 48, 54, 59, 66, 67, 69, 70, 85]. Despite these potential benefits, many instructors hesitate to implement oral exams, in part because they are relatively uncommon in engineering courses in the U.S., and student perceptions of oral assessments are unknown. Indeed, students' perceptions are important, as studies have shown that their perceptions are likely to affect their attitudes toward learning and, consequently, impact their performance in the class [4, 6, 14, 15].

In this study, we seek to understand students’ perceptions toward the implementation of oral exams as an assessment tool in undergraduate engineering classes with a long term goal of identifying features of oral exams that have the greatest potential for positively impacting student engagement and learning. To achieve this goal, oral exams were implemented in six different engineering courses (four unique courses) from two disciplines, Mechanical engineering, and Electrical engineering. Student perception data were collected through carefully designed anonymous quantitative and qualitative survey questions. Results from the data analysis of students’ perspectives identify benefits and areas for improvement of different oral exam configurations. The results suggest that overall, students consider oral exams to have positively contributed to their learning in many aspects, such as improving technical communication skills, increasing motivation to learn, improving academic integrity, helping with the conceptual understanding of the subject matter, and receiving real-time feedback. 
AU  - Saharnaz Baghdadchi
AU  - Alex Phan
AU  - Carolyn Sandoval
AU  - Huihui Qi
AU  - Marko Lubarda
AU  - Nathan Delson
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Student perceptions of oral exams in undergraduate engineering classes and implications for effective oral exam design
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41123
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41123
ER  -