{"id":25073,"date":"2026-02-16T13:47:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T02:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/?p=25073"},"modified":"2026-02-16T13:47:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T02:47:20","slug":"what-we-learned-from-400-interactive-oral-assessments-in-stem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/what-we-learned-from-400-interactive-oral-assessments-in-stem\/","title":{"rendered":"What we learned from 400+ Interactive Oral Assessments in STEM"},"content":{"rendered":"

By 2024, we faced a familiar challenge around assessment integrity: quiz answers and podcast assignments came back polished and well-produced, but we needed to see the critical thinking behind them. We wanted assurance that students could reason through problems, not just generate good outputs.<\/p>\n

So we turned to live conversation, a format that values the thinking process itself and lets students demonstrate their understanding in real time.<\/p>\n

Previous\u00a0posts on this blog have explored Interactive Oral Assessments<\/a> (IOAs) in\u00a0both\u00a0writing<\/a> and French studies<\/a>. Our experience adds a new dimension: implementing IOAs in a STEM context, a second-year microbiology and immunology unit, at a scale of over 400 students. Here’s what we learned.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our IOA in brief<\/h2>\n

Our IOA is a structured 10-minute conversation where students explain concepts to an assessor. The conversation flow is structured but unscripted. The assessor works with each student to bring their best understanding out while also surfacing knowledge gaps and guiding reasoning further.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s less like a traditional oral exam, focused on recitation, and more like a professional dialogue: explaining a case to a colleague, reasoning through a problem together.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We wanted to see how students apply knowledge, explain their understanding, and arrive at conclusions. We wanted to see\u00a0the process of thinking, not just final answers.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How we structured the IOA<\/h2>\n

For practical reasons (time and budget!) conversations needed clear structure and assessors needed confidence guiding the dialogue. We designed a progression from prepared material into genuinely unpredictable reasoning, this means that students could prepare using pre-released scenarios, but follow-up questions and curveball challenges required them to think and apply knowledge on the spot.<\/span><\/p>\n

The conversation moved through six segments\u00a0revolving\u00a0around\u00a0a case study: a microbiology\u00a0segment\u00a0assessing foundational knowledge, a follow-up probe (“why\u00a0do you think that?” or “what about X?”) revealing depth, an immunology\u00a0segment\u00a0covering the second content area,\u00a0with\u00a0an adaptive follow-up testing reasoning extension, a “curveball” scenario requiring on-the-spot application, and big-picture synthesis demonstrating integrated understanding\u00a0in the context of the scenario. Our observation was that these high-level questions really surfaced deep understanding.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To build confidence in IOA preparation, we pre-released the case scenarios and provided some high-focus topics for the IOA. These pre-released topics gave students a sense of direction and assurance while preparing for the IOA, but since the on-day allocation of scenarios with questions asked dynamically adapted to each conversation, it required real-time thinking and discouraged scripted responses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The rubric assessed five dimensions: microbiology understanding, immunology understanding, application and analysis,\u00a0breadth\u00a0and depth of reasoning (curveball and synthesis questions), and communication. Students received the rubric in advance for transparency.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why this works for STEM<\/h2>\n

While quizzes test recognition, conversations reveal whether students can explain and apply ideas with genuine depth of understanding. The IOA functions as both assessment and learning experience. Students told us that talking through concepts helped them remember material even months later.<\/p>\n

Graduates in microbiology, immunology, and health research need independent critical thinking and the ability to articulate their reasoning. This includes explaining protocols to team members, discussing results with colleagues, or troubleshooting unexpected findings with a research partner. IOAs develop these essential skills that written exams alone don’t fully capture.<\/p>\n

We also encouraged AI use in preparation and developed a voice-enabled practice bot containing the same scenarios as the real IOA. This positioned AI as a study tool while the IOA remained the secure assessment point where understanding was demonstrated live, which aligns with TEQSA’s 2023 authentic AI engagement and assessment security.<\/p>\n

Scaffolding: what made it work<\/h2>\n

We were critically aware of the importance of scaffolding, especially since oral assessment was relatively new at second-year level. Drawing on foundational work on structured learning support (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976<\/a>) and the principle of constructive alignment, which ensures our teaching, practice activities, and assessment all target the same outcomes (Biggs & Tang, 2011<\/a>), we implemented layered support well before the assessment.<\/p>\n

Below is a list of materials we developed to prepare students for the IOA:<\/p>\n