Reflective oral assessments in which students present a professional report based on research outputs developed in a final-year Combined Honours module in HaSS (HSS3099).
Our opportunity
Final-year project work can often be seen by both staff and students as an end in itself. Students might work intensively for a year or more on the largest undertaking of their degree, drawing on deep personal and intellectual commitments, but the culmination of that journey is frequently the point of submission with minimal scope for learning beyond it. This led us in Combined Honours to ask ourselves: what mechanisms could support students’ engagement with feedback on capstone work? How can we encourage students to reflect on the knowledge and skills they have gained via project work as they prepare for their first steps beyond the degree?
To address this issue, we wanted to create for our students an opportunity to learn not only during the project’s development (via workshops, supervision and feedback on draft work) but also after the project’s submission. We felt this would provide a space in which we could:
- Enhance student engagement with feedback;
- Develop students’ understanding of their project as both a process and a final product;
- Encourage ongoing reflective learning around the development of both skills and knowledge; and,
- Foster students’ ability to articulate the value of their projects for graduate settings.
To do this we created a summative oral assessment that our project students sit at the end of their final year. This was particularly important due to the profile of these students who develop projects that are often distinct from work done at earlier stages in their degree.
As students of two or more subjects, our students’ final-year projects draw together different subject-specific work in innovative formats that have included academic, professional and creative forms of research output. We wanted to help our students to take stock of this novelty by identifying what went well (and what might have been better) and to consider the value to themselves and to the wider world of their independent contributions to research.
Our approach
We developed a 20-minute oral assessment, which typically carries 30% of the module’s overall 40 credits. It is framed as a Personal Professional Review (PPR) that offers students a space to discuss the outcomes of their research, the reasoning behind key decisions, and to reflect critically on their intellectual, personal, and professional growth during and after the project. It allows students to reflect on what they did, why they did it and what they might do differently in future by engaging actively with the feedback on their primary project outputs.
The assessment’s questions are designed to guide students’ reflections with these points of focus in mind. Separate questions direct attention towards the past by reflecting on the project process, the present by situating project work within their degree as a whole, and to the future by asking how the learning gained might prime them for their next steps. Taught workshops and one-to-one supervisions provide students with models for reflective practice that they can draw upon as they develop their answers.
Questions are supplied in advance via a standard assessment brief to provide good scope for student preparation. This mitigates some student anxiety around an unseen assessment approach found in other exam contexts. Additionally, providing pre-sight of questions mirrors interview practices that are increasingly standard across many industries and so provides relevant experience for students as professional applicants.
Running the PPR Activity
During the assessment, two markers are present with the supervisor always acting as the first marker and interviewer who poses the questions. This ensures that at least one assessor has detailed knowledge of the student’s work and clear insight into their process. This also serves to provide a familiar assessment environment which counteracts any potential nerves or anxiety that may restrict students from performing to their fullest ability.
Students may bring only one A4 side of notes into the review, which discourages scripted responses that may be more susceptible to inappropriate use of AI tools. After all allotted questions have been answered, students are asked follow-up questions that invite elaboration on points that have already been raised in their earlier answers. This strikes a balance between prepared work and live interactive thinking whilst maintaining accessibility for students with certain relevant Student Support Plans. Moreover, it guarantees that assessment does not privilege fast recall or spontaneous improvisation over a student’s ability to demonstrate deep and considered reflections.
All PPRs are recorded for internal and external moderation purposes. Alternative assessment adjustments are possible where appropriately necessitated by PEC and/or SSP. They may be conducted on Teams or, as was recently the case, delivered via two recordings produced within a short timeframe. The first submission provides an initial response to the questions and the second responds to examiners’ follow-up questions. This preserves the interactive element without unduly disadvantaging students with disabilities
Scheduling the sessions
Delivering this assessment can be labour intensive but we feel strongly that its benefits justify the outlay of resource. Working across PS and academic job families we schedule a timetable of assessment around individual student exam timetables. Students are provided with slots for the PPR and are given clear parameters to request changes where clashes occur with other academic commitments. The PPR sessions are scheduled in the final teaching week of Semester 2 and the first two teaching weeks of the exam period. To enable students to respond to project feedback in the review, projects are submitted earlier than other capstone assessments, allowing feedback to be returned three weeks in advance of the review.
Marking
The two assessors confer immediately after each review, comparing notes and consulting the assessment criteria to agree on a mark. Feedback is delivered via an audio recording that is normally recorded immediately following the markers’ discussion. This streamlines the assessment process as it takes place in real time immediately after the review and avoids the additional pressure of further individual marking afterwards. If a third marker is needed to cast a deciding vote, this is easily accommodated as the assessment is recorded.
Value for students
The PPR enriches students’ learning in three ways:
- It teaches students to think about the different forms of value that their capstone work embodies;
- It develops a more holistic understanding of their education as they situate the capstone project within a wider context of learning and development; and,
- It provides alternative credit weighting to the project output element in ways that benefit students’ engagement.
Firstly, the PPR encourages students to understand the different values that their project embodies. Our experience of delivering this assessment has shown us that it is not guaranteed that students who are capable of producing strong work are always able to articulate the significance of their research beyond its literal findings. Reflective learning allows students not only to produce excellent work but to understand more deeply the nature and value of that excellence. That might relate not only to matters of academic rigour or disciplinary discovery but also to skills that inhere in the research process itself and apply to a range of contexts, such as problem solving, design thinking, and independent & collaborative working. Moreover, it provides students with a unique opportunity in their degree to develop their ability to verbally express the value of their learning and to be rewarded for doing so.
Secondly, it helps students to make connections between seemingly distinct elements of their degree. By situating the project in relation both to prior experiences of learning and to future plans, students perceive their degree as more than the sum of its parts. We have found that capstone reflection can productively reframe how earlier stages of their degree have played a contributory role to their development. This supports students to identify key aspects of their degree and express the internal coherence of their programme of study in new and surprising ways.
Lastly, this additional assessment element challenges assumptions that the measure of a project’s success lies in a numerical mark. The PPR gives all students (but especially those who may be disappointed with their project mark) the benefit of gaining credit via reflection. By loosening the link between success and a given mark, the PPR provides important nuance to students’ understanding of their projects’ value. Our view is that developing this active and reflexive self-knowledge is a key skill for graduates to possess in an increasingly competitive job market in which it is vital not simply to have a “good” degree but also to be able to signal to employers an individual range of distinctive qualities, behaviours and characteristics.
Another benefit of diversifying the credit-bearing elements is that it mitigates tendencies associated with the project mark being overrepresented in the degree outcome. By assuming that capstone work can make or break degrees, students can become excessively risk averse in their project choices. With the knowledge that their overall mark is shaped by both production and reflection, students have greater freedom to take calculated risks in their project choices because they can benefit from reflection on those choices even if they are not uniformly successful. Our view is that it is important that all students can benefit from demonstrating what they have learnt from their own work, irrespective of the mark.
Appropriate assessment criteria
The assessment criteria allow markers to gauge each student’s performance on the basis of four aspects:
- Critical Reflection on Research Findings and Research Process;
- Understanding of the Relationship between the Research Project and the degree as a whole;
- Evidence of reflection on the value added by the project to the student in a range of graduate settings; and,
- Their presentation structure.
When designing the more detailed rubric around presentation, we felt it was important that criteria remain inclusive to all students and therefore avoided rewarding presentation style (i.e. confidence, maintaining eye contact, developing rapport, linguistic fluency) which are not in themselves measures of intellectual academic attainment. Instead, we emphasised the extent to which information was presented in structures that managed complex information in terms that offered it in clear and persuasive terms to the listener.
Student partnership
Student partnership is central to our pedagogical ethos. We share the assessment brief and criteria with students in advance, ensuring they understand and agree on them with us. Students are invited to suggest changes to both (whilst remaining within the parameters set by the MOF), which we discuss and revise in response to their feedback. We hope that co-designing the criteria—such as clarifying what constitutes excellent criticality—supports deeper understanding of assessment expectations.
We have also in the past consulted students on the weighting ratio for this assessment element. By expressing a preference for 35%, 30% or 25% weighting, students have greater agency in their learning and assessment. The cohort can determine its overall level of confidence with reflective assessment and appropriately adjust the assessment weighting to match their levels of confidence with respective assessment. In all cases, however, the primary output remains the larger portion of the overall mark.
The impact
While we have not had the opportunity to conduct a sustained evaluation of the assessment format with students, informal student responses are generally very positive. Discussions before and after the PPR allow us to frame the review as tool to boost students’ professional skills and awareness of their degree, and provide an opportunity to capitalise on aspects of the project that went wrong, rather than feeling subject to them.
Lessons learned
Reflective learning requires substantial scaffolding, which is particularly challenging when students have not engaged in reflection at earlier stages in their degree. Where reflective skills have not been actively developed via teaching, responsibility can often fall either to individual students to develop reflective skills or to supervisors to teach reflection. Both responses produce uneven outcomes for cohorts.
As such, we encourage colleagues interested in a similar activity to develop reflective skills through teaching sessions and module-wide recommended practices. By providing tools, worksheets or platforms for recording the supervision process, students can trace how they encountered and resolved challenges in research and draw on this in their reflective preparation. We have found this preparatory scaffolding can be vital as it should not be assumed (by staff or students) that those who display strong cognitive ability in academic domains possess equally developed metacognitive awareness.
Lastly, it is important to consider the wider assessment framework on the module when adding an oral component. Whilst it adds diversity of assessment, we have had to be careful to ensure that student workload remains manageable and that they are not over-assessed. This may result in shorter capstone outputs but in a deeper and more holistic understanding of the research.
Tips for colleagues
Consider how this mode of assessment may be scaled in your school. Consider the availability of first and second markers and judge what constitutes a manageable number of dissertation students per supervisor.
Building in the development of student reflective skills is particularly important in programmes where dissertation work is highly independent and students may lack prior engagement with reflection.
Framing oral assessment in terms of professional skills development, degree awareness, and the opportunity to learn constructively from setbacks is particularly beneficial to students.
Shifting the emphasis from getting higher marks to the application of knowledge supports students in articulating what they have learned and how they can capitalise on that learning across academic and professional contexts.
Moving away from assessment criteria such as confidence, eye contact or rapport-building can foster equity and remove bias.
Skills and attributes
Students were able to develop the following attributes:
Education for Life Strategy
This case study reflects the following aims of the Education for Life strategy:
- Equity: To provide a core, universal offer for all students, including tailored provision where needed, to ensure equity of access, experience and in outcomes for all, regardless of background, identity, nationality, location or mode of study.
- Fit for the future: To ensure our students are fit for their future, our teaching is fit for the future of our offer, and our colleagues are fit for the future of HE
Authors
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Dr Sadek Kessous, on behalf of the Combined Honours Unit Lecturer School X sadek.kessous@newcastle.ac.uk |