Introduction
In this article, we'll walk you through how to set up an Oral Assessment activity from the perspective of a teacher.
Oral Assessment allows students to take part in a live assessment conversation with an assessor. You can prepare the topics and questions in advance, record the assessment, and provide feedback to students afterwards.
Tool In Action
How this article is structured
Setting up an activity follows three stages, shown at the top of the activity whenever you're in edit mode:
Build activity — get an overview of your activity and its learning steps.
Edit steps — configure each step individually.
Finalize activity — configure settings that apply across the activity, such as deadlines and grade weighting.
Everything below describes what you can configure before the activity is published — students cannot access the activity at this stage. You can still edit some settings after publishing; however, once students start making progress, certain options lock to protect their work and data. Wherever that applies, we'll note it.
Note: When you open a published activity, you'll land on the Active Assignment view by default. To return to setup, click Edit in the upper-left corner.
Accessibility
We're devoted to making our tools as accessible as possible for all learners. To read more, see Accessibility: Within FeedbackFruits Tools.
Stage 1 — Build activity
The Build activity stage gives you an overview of the learning steps in your activity.
The setup shown in this article contains:
Read instructions
Hand in
Oral Assessment
Feedback by teacher
Read received feedback
The Hand in step is optional and can be used when students need to submit work that provides context for their oral assessment.
The Feedback by teacher and Read received feedback steps allow teachers to provide feedback after the assessment and students to review the feedback they receive.
Once your activity structure is ready, continue to Edit steps.
Stage 2 — Edit steps
Here you configure each learning step individually. A Student preview is shown alongside the settings so you can see how the activity will appear to students.
Step 1: Read instructions
Add the instructions students will see when they begin the activity. Use this section to explain the purpose of the assessment, what students should prepare, and what they can expect during the activity.
Step 2: Hand in
If students need to submit work before the oral assessment, configure their submission requirements here.
Students hand in as
Choose how students submit their work:
An individual — each student submits their own work.
A group — students submit one contribution as a group.
Required files
Set how many files students are required to submit. You can choose:
Minimum — students must submit at least the number of files you specify.
Between — students must submit within a specified range.
Exactly — students must submit exactly the number of files you specify.
Allowed file formats
Choose which types of files students are allowed to submit:
Document
Video
Website
Image
Audio
Other
Select only the formats that are relevant to the assessment.
Submitter anonymity
Enable Submitter anonymity if you want student contributions to appear anonymously to other students. Please note that teachers can still see who submitted the work.
Advanced settings
Click Advanced settings to configure additional options for the Hand in step.
Plagiarism check
Enable Plagiarism check to have submitted documents checked using Turnitin.
Visibility of hand ins
You can choose who can access the submitted work. For example, you can limit visibility to the reviewer or reviewers allocated to the student.
Optional instructions for this step
Add instructions that apply specifically to the submission, such as formatting requirements or what students should include in their work.
Step 3: Oral Assessment
Configure the live oral assessment students will complete with an assessor.
AI highlights
Enable AI highlights to surface AI-generated highlights from students' recorded assessment conversations.
These highlights can help educators find relevant moments in a recording more easily when reviewing the assessment afterwards.
Topics & questions
Click Edit next to Topics & questions to configure the structure of the assessment.
Use topics to organise the conversation into different areas, and add questions within each topic to guide the assessment.
Advanced settings
Click Advanced settings to configure additional settings for the Oral Assessment step.
Visibility of recordings
Choose who can access students' assessment recordings after they have been completed.
Notify educators on recording completion
Enable this option to notify educators when a student completes their recording. This can help you know when an assessment is ready to be reviewed.
Guiding instructions
Add additional instructions to guide the oral assessment. Use this field for information that can help structure the conversation or clarify how the assessment should be conducted.
Step 4: Feedback by teacher
Configure how teachers provide feedback to students after the oral assessment.
Feedback criteria
Click Add criteria to define what teachers should focus on when providing feedback.
Criteria can help structure the feedback and ensure students are assessed consistently against the areas you want to evaluate.
When do students see their feedback
Choose when feedback becomes available to students. For example, select Immediately if students should be able to view their feedback as soon as it has been provided.
AI coach
Enable AI coach to provide AI-powered, real-time support during the feedback process.
Advanced settings
Click Advanced settings to configure additional options for the feedback step.
Explanation cards
Click Edit to add and manage explanation cards. Explanation cards can be used to provide additional guidance or supporting information alongside the feedback process.
Step 5: Read received feedback
This step is where students access the feedback they receive from their teacher.
Feedback on feedback
Enable Feedback on feedback to allow students to rate how useful they found the feedback they received. Students rate the usefulness of their feedback on a scale from 1 to 10.
Stage 3 — Finalize activity
The Finalize activity stage contains settings that apply across the activity.
Deadlines
Turn on Deadlines to add end dates to applicable learning steps. Use deadlines to define when students should complete the different stages of the activity.
Grade weighting
Turn on Grade weighting to configure how the graded components of the activity contribute to the overall grade.
Once everything is configured, click Done.