Stress and Performance in Face-to-Face and Asynchronous Oral Assessments

Oral assessments play a crucial role in many evaluation methods. Given the high stress levels experienced by students during assessments, especially oral ones, it is important to examine their impact in the higher education context. “In this study, we measured the stress levels of 168 first-year university students during two types of oral evaluations: face-to-face (F2F), where students were assessed directly by the teacher (control groups), and asynchronous with video response (VR) (experimental groups), in subjects covering mathematics, physics, and chemistry. It was observed that students' performance on oral assessments is lower when they experience higher stress levels and that, in turn, students with lower stress levels perform better, either because they have better stress management resources or because they handle the demands of oral assessments more effectively. Likewise, students with better stress management perform better in face-to-face oral assessments than in asynchronous oral assessments with video responses. As for students who experience high levels of stress, they perform poorly regardless of the type of assessment they face.