2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Impact of Perceived Stress during Oral Examination on Student Performance Outcomes

Presented at Student Assessments and Tests

Perceived stress plays an important role in student performance during examinations. There has been substantial research on how examinations impact students' emotional experiences in diverse academic contexts in connection to validity, reliability, and equity of assessment. The potential of some exams to produce increased anxiety in a portion of students has been recognized as a serious threat to these three assessment attributes. In light of this, the need for further studies on the impact of perceived stress on student performance is critical with the recent rise in interest in oral examinations as an assessment tool for large undergraduate courses. This paper reports on the perceived stress associated with written examinations and oral examinations in the same courses. Building on our prior frameworks for conducting oral examinations, we assess student perceived stress associated with written and oral examinations based on self-reported surveys from over 450 students. Methods to reduce the negative impact of stress on students in the context of oral examinations were implemented. Our results show that perceived stress for oral assessments are consistently lower than written exams for both performance-based credit and participation-based credit courses. Other contributing influences such as language proficiency were found not to significantly affect perceived stress level using Kruskal-Wallis analysis. In this work we also investigated the relationships between student background, gender, GPA and perceived stress during written and oral assessments. Overall, our work provides a strong case for oral examinations as a form of assessment in large undergraduate classrooms by addressing concerns surrounding student perceived stress levels caused by oral examinations.

Authors

Dr. Alex Phan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2489-2886 University of California, San Diego [biography]

Dr. Phan received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California San Diego with a specialization in medical devices. He is currently an instructor for the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering focusing on hands-on education.
Dr. Minju Kim http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5878-7350 University of California, San Diego [biography]

Minju Kim is a postdoctoral scholar at the Engaged Teaching Hub at the UCSD Teaching+Learning Commons. Minju received her Ph.D in Experimental Psychology at UC San Diego. With Engaged Teaching Hub, Minju has designed TA training materials for oral exams and have conducted quantitative analysis on the value of oral exams as early diagnostic tool (Kim et al., ASEE 2022). Minju is interested in designing assessments that can capture and motivate students' deep conceptual learning, such as oral exams and the usage of visual representations (e.g., diagrams and manual gestures).
Marko V. Lubarda http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3755-271X University of California, San Diego [biography]

Marko V. Lubarda is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He teaches mechanics, materials science, design, computational analysis, and engineering mathematics courses, and has co-authored the undergraduate textbook Intermediate Solid Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He is dedicated to engineering pedagogy and enriching students' learning experiences through teaching innovations, curriculum design, and support of undergraduate student research.
Prof. Curt Schurgers University of California, San Diego [biography]

Curt Schurgers is a Teaching Professor in the UCSD Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. His research and teaching are focused on course redesign, active learning, and project-based learning. He also co-directs a hands-on undergraduate research program called Engineers for Exploration, in which students apply their engineering knowledge to problems in exploration and conservation.
Dr. Huihui Qi University of California, San Diego [biography]

Dr.Huihui Qi is an Associate Teaching Professor in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, at the University of California San Diego.

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