tutorials

Participation in these activities is, however, an integral part of the professional life of the specialist, and practical work should be guided and assessed at all stages.

Participation in tutorials and seminars is rarely assessed; consequently many students pay little attention to what is potentially the most effective source of instruction at university. Being lectured at is no substitute for personal involvement in the major issues and the opportunity to ask questions. Successful tutorial work depends, however, on adequate preparation and willingness to participate, both of which would be enhanced if students were more or less informally assessed by their tutors. Naturally such evaluation must not be such as to discourage participation: students who ask questions should be praised for doing so, not penalised for their ignorance.

A special case of the assessment of such performance is the oral examination. Oral examinations have long been popular in Europe, although they are subject to the same kind of abuse as traditional examinations. They can. like traditional examinations, provoke anxiety and nervous breakdowns; and the validity and depth of the evaluation they provide rcmains severely limited. Nevertheless, they have their uses if they are conducted casually and sceptically. They are, or should be, discussions and learning situations as well as examinations, and not just third-degree grilling sessions.

The final instrument, the traditional examination, has already been discussed at length, and I can only reiterate here that it should play a very much reduced role in the total assessment process. If time-limited examinations must be given, they should consist primarily of multiple-choice questions like those mentioned earlier, and only one or two essay topics.