Universities already have systems in place to allow students with disabilities to take alternate forms of assessments. So, perhaps, students who can't deal with oral exams can choose to give written exams.
Btw, I was a professor and I saw students on both ends of the spectrum. Students who would bomb an oral evaluation because of anxiety but would do well in written exams. And student who would bomb written exams, but would totally ace an oral evaluation. Since, a professor's job is to create well-rounded individuals, courses should include a mix of different assessment types, so students slowly build up the skills to handle all of them. Of course, augmented by guidance and feedback on how they can build those skills.
The older I get the more convinced I am that a core skill schools should teach—started from early grade school—is speaking. Reading is probably the single most important skill, period, but—and I write this as someone with a bias toward writing—I think speaking is more important than writing, for most people. Not that learning to write doesn't teach skills relevant to speaking! Not that we should stop teaching writing! But I think getting over that kind of anxiety is exactly the kind of thing that every school ought to teach, and I think if the only way to accomplish that were to sacrifice some writing instruction, it'd be worth it.
If I were a professor though, I would use a baseline for every student.
At the beginning of the semester, have an oral exam for a difficult topic that the students are expected to already know. Material from a prerequisite class would be good.
I would always give 100% for that oral exam if the student showed up. And that exam would become that student's baseline; their future oral exams would be judged based on that.
They'll probably be more nervous in front of the professor the first time than the last, so it would actually give them an advantage in later exams.
Definitely. Once word of this system gets out, it will be gamed by students who will throw the first exam deliberately. Even without this sabotage it would still feel extremely unfair to students who did well on the first exam and are now being punished for it.
Well, on future exams, they're still going to have to answer questions with some knowledge, and sabotaging wouldn't help so much with that.
But the other problem is harder to fix. I guess I could be much harsher in the first one, and go easier on the real exams later? Maybe that would reduce the number of students who do well on the first one?
What about students who are currently failing the written exams due to their neurological disabilities? How are you accounting for that? These students would excel in an oral exam.
Because of crippling anxiety.
So how do you account for that? Or autism? Or any other sort of neurological disability?