Episode 44- Accessibility and Oral Assessments
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:32 Welcome to episode forty- four. In today’s episode I am going to continue the conversation from the previous episode about the push towards different assessment strategies in a time of artificial intelligence and the importance of making sure that those assessments are accessible by talking about oral assessments.
0:51 Accessible pedagogy space has already had some rather in-depth conversations around presentation assignments and what to do to increase the accessibility of presentation assignments. Those conversations of course start with the learning outcomes of the course and the learning objectives of the assessments and reflection on if the presentation as a modality of demonstrating knowledge and skill, does so in a way that speaks to the outcomes. Some fields and disciplines have oral presentations or different kinds of presentations, like the sales pitch, or grant proposal pitches that are part of foundational skills of a program or discipline.
1:30 However, sometimes there are presentation components in courses that are added because those who designed the course thought that it was a way to have students physically show up to class, and also think about the clothes that they are wearing, which does not necessarily connect to the topic or the skills.
1:49 But presentations are a bit different than oral assessment conversations that I’m seeing in HigherEd space right now. So I’m thinking more along the lines of like these viva voce type things that we usually use in dissertation defences, are being used in different ways to show student learning. And these kinds of oral assessments need to be designed with care and with awareness of options that need to be part of the assessment design in order to make it more accessible.
2:20 So today I’m going to highlight three considerations that should be part of oral assessment design if this is something that you’re considering or if this is something that’s being forced on you by your discipline or your institution.
2:33 But before I get to the considerations I also want to talk a bit about my thought process that happened just now as I was getting my points together for this episode. I had completed what I thought were my talking points and then I said to myself, self okay, just wait another hour until it gets kind of dark and things get a little bit more quiet in the neighbourhood, maybe less barking dogs, maybe less really loud muffler sounds of cars and trucks, maybe less train horns. And then I realized that all of those things, all of those things that I mentally and physically try to account for, every single time, I record a podcast episode because I live in a house that has ridiculously low noise insulation, are the same things that could interrupt oral assessments. Coughs, sneezes, students in the hall speaking loudly about the great weekend they just had, fire alarms (which those of you who were at the workshop I gave this summer know all about). These are things that also need to be taken into account in this instantaneous nature of oral delivery. So I’m recording this episode now, around 6:30pm, when folk may be coming home from work, when dogs are still out yelling at squirrels, when kids are still running down the street with toys, to give you an audio feel of what you need to also take into account with oral assessment.
3:56 So let’s call this consideration zero point five I guess, and let’s see what lovely neighbourhood noises you can pick up in this episode, because you’re never going to have a completely silent space to do this kind of assessment. Says the human with tinnitus who reminded y’all a few weeks ago that it’s important to be authentic.
4:17 So consideration one, I’m super tempted to make consideration one be, please don’t do this at all. But alas I know this is well in motion in spaces across the globe, and so instead of that I will make consideration one be, allow the students to bring a cue card with them for the oral assessment. Yes, I know that many folk will say well that kind of defeats the purpose, but then I ask back, so are you testing and assuming that folk will be talking in a vacuum with no resources in the future? Because these oral assessments will be much more valuable if everyone involved think about the applicability to the scenarios as opposed to retention of things like, I don’t know, Avogadro’s number which they can easily look up. And if anyone is interested it’s 6.022 times 10 to the power of 23. Just in case you happen to need Avogadro’s number right now.
5:12 Consideration two, make this more of a conversation than a high-pressure testing situation that involves more memory than application. The more that these oral assessments are framed as, hey we’re just going to have a conversation, the better they will be. So for example hey, we’re just going to have a conversation about how the sublime appears in the late 18th century literature, because look, every once in a while I like to remind folk that my PhD is in English so I’m going to have random references to literature things. So say you’re talking about the sublime, you can frame it as a conversation, an understanding of how the concept connects to other things in our lives. However, some folk are really invested in making the question more like, okay I need you to tell me every 18th century work that has elements of the sublime in it, which is a lot more high pressure and honestly causes everyone to ask why we are doing it this way? Does the modality of expressing ideas echo the concept or the discipline?
6:14 What we need is more framing around oral assessments that factor in perspectives of concept and applicability, and being more in conversation with others, in conversation with ideas, in conversation with concepts, and less about rote memorization of facts which could readily be looked up in different ways in the context of their work. Is it important for you to remember all the novels that have the sublime in it, absolutely not, rather is it important for you to understand what the sublime is as a concept so that you can identify it when you see it or feel it at Niagara Falls, and then think about it and speak about it at a gathering of your very elbow-patched cardigan wearing friends at a café. You know, you get what I’m trying to say. If oral assessment is used as an attempt at getting folk to become more embodied Wikipedia, I think we’ve lost the point of what oral assessment opportunities are supposed to be about.
7:11 Consideration three, build in options into the assessment that can be seen in different ways. Such as you give them four topics and they have the option to talk about one of those topics, which I saw a professor design into something this week that they were building, and I loved it as an idea because it puts in more universal design for learning elements in that design. Or maybe the students have an option of how they want to position themselves for the oral assessment, so for example they can be like for or against a topic. Or further the students could have an opportunity to do the assessment in front of a larger group if they’re comfortable, and if not then they can do it just in front of the professor or the teaching team, or maybe just the teaching assistants. And again I know this is very context specific, and it depends on how many students you have in your class. But the more opportunity that the students have to do more one on one connection with the teaching team folk, either the professor or the teaching assistant, the less that it becomes this sort of pseudo-presentation in front of a large class. So again think about the learning outcomes and goals for this assessment.
8:15 So that’s it, that’s episode 44 of Accessagogy, as the plane flies in the sky, with a discussion of how oral assessments should be designed so that they’re more inclusive of different learners and also become an opportunity to showcase applicability instead of memorizing facts and data in a sort of life or death situation which is not really something that has real world applicability unless say you’re studying in a health care field. And a little bit of a real-life vibe to this episode with the cacophony of my neighbourhood to remind you of all the sounds that surround us that and that also need to be taken into account.
8:50 Remember as well that I want this to be a space where you can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So if there’s anything that I’ve mentioned here, or anything else that you feel I should discuss around how to make oral assessments more accessible, please let me know.
9:04 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you would like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I will try to include as many of these suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 44 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have an authentic week!