Viva voce and the new structured oral examination

• The ISB makes a clear distinction between the traditional viva voce and the new structured oral examination.
• The viva voce was the traditional form of oral exam, where one or more examiners fired random questions at a candidate in a face-to-face interview or discussion. Each candidate might receive a different exam with regard to the assessment content, item difficulty and examiner leniency. The occasional examiner could be quite unpleasant and demoralizing to candidates who were struggling with their performance. One or two senior examiners seemed to take a perverse pleasure in asking impossible basic science questions and failing as many candidates as possible.
• This has all changed with the introduction of blueprinting, structure and careful standard setting. The current exam is a fair, consistent, valid and reliable method of assessment.
• The importance of probing the higher cognitive processes of candidates has been emphasized by the ICB and sampling of the curriculum is more robust.
• An assessment blueprint confirms that the exam tests a representative sample of all the appropriate curriculum outcomes and a representative sample of all the curriculum content.
• The complex nature of assessment in high-stakes exit exams, and the need for high validity and reliability, make the assessment blueprint an essential tool for examination planning and ensure content validity of the exam.
• The latest education evidence is applied to assessment methods and continually updated to ensure best educational practice.
• Political correctness is better observed these days. The examiners have to remind the candidate which oral they are sitting in order to give them time to settle and must be polite at all times. They are not allowed to give much candidate feedback at all such as ‘well done’ or ‘excellent’ and certainly no harassment of candidates is ever allowed and will be stopped by the co-examiner.
• A good robust discussion is a grey area; it may quickly turn into a robust argument and is probably best avoided.
• Examiners are not testing a candidate’s ability to stand up to rapid quick-fire questions and excessive probing. This was the norm in the late 1990s and could bring out the best in a candidate – has political correctness gone too far these days?
• In truth these methods were old fashioned and more often terrified and stressed candidates into performing poorly.