“I decided we would do an oral exam* because it’s a great way to see if people have actually learned anything from my course and aren’t just parroting notes. Because I can ask them to elaborate on their answers.”
Yeah and it’s also a great way to get otherwise good students to go blank because it isn’t possible to absorb every bit of complex information you spent 12 weeks rushing through, Barbara.
This “gotcha” style teaching fucking pisses me off. There is no time in the real world people are not going to be able to look up their notes. Fuck, half the time I’ll ask a professor something and they’ll be like “I’ll have to look that up later and get back to you.” Why? BECAUSE THEY’RE HUMAN AND THATS HOW BRAINS ARE.
This type of teaching only favours students that already had experience with the subject beforehand and freaks with amazing memories. This kind of understanding of the material only comes from experience and repetition, something that the traditional 12 weeks of rushed lectures/labs that discard each topic quickly to fit all of them in don’t do.
I fucking hate how much I am going into debt to be taught only the vaguest concepts but doing most of the teaching myself in my own time. Education under capitalism is a joke.
*An oral exam is an exam where instead of answering questions in a quiet room on paper, you have to answer questions on a live video call with your instructor.
i’m not sure that i agree that oral exams are inherently bad, i just think they need to be taken with the instructor having a spirit of charitability and recognising that students can’t remember every little detail. evidently this wasn’t the case with you but the typical exam paper format isn’t very good for neurodivergent students either in a very different way, like i’d always do awfully in exams by my standards so obviously i’d be more inclined to think that format is worse than oral.
It really depends for me. I like practical exams, but it’s the interview type set up that’s giving me anxiety. I suck at written exams too, but les than when I’m being stared at and judged
yeah, i mean if it makes you anxious then it clearly is worse for you! i don’t want to come off as minimising your struggles, just that examination methods should probably be more flexible in general.
Absolutely! My prof said it’s a bit tricky because he needs to feel for gaps if he wants to give a high mark but he will look for what’s actually known to give a passing grade. So he tries to steer the conversation according to clues you might drop in your answers, but can’t overlook mistakes or should-be-known.
I really like oral exams more than written because of ADD, but if we think outside that dichotomy than having the students write something they taught themselves would be much better. But that requires a lot of educators in even a mid-sized class.