A new approach to oracy Assessment

Supporting oracy with Voice 21

Voice 21 are a national oracy education charity. We are proud to be supporting them with their Comparing Talking Project which will explore the applicability of Adaptive Comparative Judgement as a new approach to oracy assessment.

Last month I was fortunate enough to attend the Voice 21 conference (The Oracy Imperative: how talk improves learning and life chances) in London. This helped me to better understand why oracy is such an important education domain. The knowledge and passion of the presenters and the audience hugely impressed me. At its heart there is a basic requirement around entitlement and social justice for all children, but especially those least advantaged.

Assessing oracy - that sounds tricky?

It is! RM Compare is uniquely placed however to move things forward.

The Comparative Judgement process is particularly well suited to open-ended tasks that produce divergent responses. It encourages creative responses while at the same time allowing for comparison and assessment.

The software has a number of unique features that lends itself particularly well to this project. It can accommodate lots of different types of media including audio and media files, images and web hosted material.

RM Compare can also allow for a richer comparison beyond simply choosing one item over another. It can also allow teachers to provide feedback to explain why the made the judgements they did and can also allow them to offer direct comments about each item they see.

What next?

The Voice 21 Comparing Talking Project is multi-phased and we look forward to seeing it progress.

RM Compare continues to develop rapidly in response to the diverse needs of our users. Right now we are nearing the completion of some work that will make data aggregation much easier. This will allow users to combine and manage multiple sessions, for example by bringing together groups of schools.