Students’ views of oral performance assessment in mathematics: straddling the ‘assessment of’ and ‘assessment for’ learning divide

Abstract

. (2015) 'Students' views of oral performance assessment in mathematics :straddling the`assessment of ' and`assessment for' learning divide.', Assessment and evaluation in higher education., 40 (7). 971-987 . Further information on publisher's website: Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Students' views of oral performance assessment in mathematics:straddling the 'assessment of' and 'assessment for' learning divide This paper explores the views of a group of students who took an oral performance assessment in a first year mathematics module. Such assessments are unusual for most subjects in the UK, but particularly within the generally homogenous assessment diet of undergraduate mathematics. The evidence presented here resonates with some, but not all, of the existing literature on oral assessment and suggests that, despite concerns about anxiety and fairness, students see oral assessments as encouraging a focus on understanding, being relatively authentic and reactive to their needs. We argue that, suitably implemented, oral assessment may be a viable assessment method for straddling the 'assessment for' and 'assessment of' learning divide in higher education.

University students’ perceptions of summative assessment: The role of context

“…Note that the first two research questions replicate those in Iannone and Simpson (2015), but are recontextualised to education, while the other two research questions compare the results of the previous mathematics study with the study reported here. Iannone, P. and Simpson, A.…”

“…We previously reported on a study of mathematics students' assessment preferences which indicated that these were in marked contrast to the common message from most other studies in higher education (Iannone and Simpson 2015). That study suggested that a cause of this disparity lay with problematic sampling bias within that existing literature.…”

“…To avoid conflating effects for institution and discipline, we conducted the study with students at the same institutions as Iannone and Simpson (2015), referred to as Uni1 and Uni2, two research-intensive universities in the UK. As a recontextualised replication study, we used the same methods of the previous study except where highlighted below.…”

“…Table 4 gives the summary of the survey sample for the mathematics students (which is detailed by Iannone and Simpson [2015]). The mathematics cohorts are much larger than the education cohorts at the two participant institutions and the larger sample represents a similar proportion of respondents.…”

Research on Teaching and Learning Mathematics at the Tertiary Level: State-of-the-Art and Looking Ahead

“…They also see oral examinations as a very good way to assess for ability in mathematics. In a follow up study (Iannone and Simpson 2015b) show how English students appreciate the oral examination method for its immediacy of feedback and perceive this assessment method as requiring conceptual understanding. Iannone and Simpson (in press) also investigated the reasons why mathematics students' perceptions are different from those reported in the literature via a comparative study between mathematics and education students and found very different results.…”