Using Oral Exams to Assess Communication Skills in Business Courses
Abstract
Business, like many other fields in higher education, continues to rely largely on conventional testing methods for assessing student learning. In the current article, another evaluation approach—the oral exam—is examined as a means for building and evaluating the professional communication and oral dialogue skills needed and utilized by business graduates. Prior studies of oral exams in higher education are reviewed, along with the empirical findings from an exploratory investigation of an oral exam in an undergraduate human resource course. Implications for future research and the use of oral exams in business education are also presented.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Numerous studies on oral assessments report improved student performance, development of communication skills, and subject matter expertise.
“While numerous studies on oral assessments report improved student performance, development of communication skills, and subject matter expertise (Burke-Smalley 2014)”
From Utilising one-on-one interactive oral assessments as the major final assessment within a bioscience course (2025) · cites this paper as Burke-Smalley 2014
Students often perform better in oral assessments compared to written examinations.
“Research indicates that students often perform better in oral assessments compared to written examinations (Burke-Smalley, 2014;Dicks et al., 2012;Huxham et al., 2012)”
From Replacing Traditional Written Laboratory Reports with Interactive Oral Assessments: Enhancing Laboratory Skill Assessment in Undergraduate Genetics Education (2026) · cites this paper as Burke-Smalley, 2014
Cites
Nguyen, H.-H. D., & Ryan, A. M. (2008) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0012702 · Cited by 845 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Davey, S. K., Birbeck, D., Nallaya, S., Sallows, G., & Della Vedova, C. B. (2025) · Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education · doi:10.1080/02602938.2025.2502577 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
“While numerous studies on oral assessments report improved student performance, development of communication skills, and subject matter expertise (Burke-Smalley 2014), others high-light potential limitations, including lack of standardisation, the potential for bias, equity concerns for students…”
Della Vedova, C. B., Birbeck, D., & Davey, S. K. (2026) · Research in Science Education · doi:10.1007/s11165-026-10380-3
- Authors
- Burke-Smalley, L. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA
- Venue
- Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2014-06-27
- Volume
- 77
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 266-280
- ISSN
- 2329-4906 (ISSN-L)
- 2329-4922
- OpenAlex
- W2008008160
- Cited by
- 29
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 4.52
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Business and Professional Communication Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Management of Technology and Innovation › Management and Marketing Education
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education and Employability
- Social Sciences › Education › Student Assessment and Feedback
- Keywords
- oral examination, oral assessment, communication skills assessment, business education, professional communication, human resource management course, undergraduate assessment, alternative assessment
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
