Overview
- Argues that the viva in higher education empowers examiner and student alike; both gain greater self-understanding
- Discusses why the viva remains globally important and yet we know so little about it
- Examines the history and current global practice of the viva, or oral as it is sometimes known
- Advocates the pivotal role played by examiner judgments
- Showcases and applies validity concerns to the viva in such a manner that critical engagement with current validity debates becomes possible?
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: The Enabling Power of Assessment (EPAS, volume 6)
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About this book
This book makes the case for a revival in interest in the viva. As an oral assessment of a treatise or dissertation or of a student’s performance in art or dance the viva has a long history dating back to the time of the Greeks. It can be found today in the form of professional, vocational and academic vivas, where a judgment of oral performance is required to gain entry into a profession or community of scholars.
In a time when there are scandals about students selling essays to other students, the viva provides a fertile ground for probing the student to see whether they are in fact the authors of the work being assessed and know its content and how to think cognitively or otherwise.
Given that we actually know so little about the viva, the book theorises the viva based on a unique sample of vivas that have been filmed or in which the author himself has been participant, and discusses why its format is so different in Anglo-Saxon languages and Latin and other languages.
The book offers educational policy-makers and examiners a trade-off between arguments in support of the viva and the demand for other, ever more cost-effective forms of assessment as the numbers of both undergraduate and postgraduate students threaten to increase. It also argues that with demand in the labour market for qualified graduates who are better equipped with transferable skills, such as the ability to communicate complex ideas verbally in a competent, well-argued fashion and not merely through the use of rhetoric, what appear to be cost-effective forms of assessment in the short run (e.g. written exams with standardised questions or multiple choice) may actually in the long run be of less value if we are investing in a future workforce with so-called 21st century communication skills.
If the viva were abandoned, the student would be robbed of the opportunity to stage a defence.
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Keywords
- Research of the doctoral viva
- Viva as a form of assessment
- 21st Century skills
- History of the viva
- Social practice of the viva
- Theorizing the viva
- Theorizing the viva in higher education
- Assessing the viva voce
- Oral defence
- Public defence of the viva
- Professional viva
- Academic viva
- Surviving the viva
- Validity argument model of the viva
- Validity argument of the viva
Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“This book gives a powerful insight into how the key 21st Century skill of communication, and its assessment, is addressed through the viva.” (Emeritus Professor Gordon Stobart, Institute of Education, University College London, United Kingdom)
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Assessing the Viva in Higher Education
Book Subtitle: Chasing Moments of Truth
Authors: Stephen Dobson
Series Title: The Enabling Power of Assessment
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64016-7
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Education, Education (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-64014-3Published: 04 September 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-87700-6Published: 11 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-64016-7Published: 24 August 2017
Series ISSN: 2198-2643
Series E-ISSN: 2198-2651
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXIII, 194
Number of Illustrations: 8 b/w illustrations
Topics: Assessment, Testing and Evaluation, Higher Education, Educational Philosophy