Abstract:

Reflection is an essential element in the development of professional competences in maritime education and training. Oral examinations in higher education online courses are a form of assessment that may enhance students’ discursive reflections such as explicating conceptual understanding (Akimov & Malin, 2020). The importance of examiner’s questions to promote students’ reflection is well accepted, but questions concerning whether and how examiners promote reflective practises in formal examination settings remain largely unanswered in the maritime research literature, but can be found in professional education in healthcare (e.g., Husebø et al., 2013; Kihlgren et al., 2015). Husebø et al. (2013) explored facilitators’ questions in nursing students post simulation debriefings using Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle to grade the facilitators’ questions into stages of reflections. Here, the aim is to explore the depth of reflections expressed in questions by examiners and responses from students during online oral examinations using Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle to explore master students’ development towards a reflective pedagogical practice in a course on teaching and learning in maritime contexts.

The research questions are:
1) How do examiners’ questions open for students’ reflections on teaching and learning during an online oral exam?
2) What stage of reflection did the examiners’ and students’ questions and responses reveal?

The reflective cycle of Gibbs (1988) is used as a conceptual framework since the model links reflection with learning. It includes six stages: descriptions, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan. The cycle can be used to encourage students to organize and structure their thinking and learning reflectively.

This study takes on an explorative and descriptive qualitative design inspired by Husebø et al. (2013) to explore our own teaching practice. The results are based on 9 video recordings of oral examinations, approximately 10 hours of data collected in November 2020 and February 2021. Reflections were analysed based on the reflective cycle of Gibbs (1988), which were used to grade examiners’ questions and students’ responses into stages of reflections. Next, the relationship between classified questions and responses were correlated, apart from those graded differently by the two authors. 9 students (3 females and 6 males) and 3 female examiners participated in the study. The course is a voluntary course during the fourth year and enable students to teach at maritime bachelor programs.

The final examination took place via Zoom and was organized as:
1) an individually prepared digital presentation of a topic from the curriculum (15 min), and
2) metareflections and questions from other topics facilitated by one of the internal examiners (10 - 15 min).

Results display that online examinations organized as prepared oral presentations followed by metareflections based on the curriculum and activities during the semester open for students’ reflections. Preliminary findings show how and why creating online spaces for meaningful reflection is a complex and delicate educational activity. In the empirical material, reflection builds on the mutual and continuous effort of both teachers and students to frame the subject matter in a way that opens up for advanced levels of reflection, which are necessary to reach for students’ to achieve learning objectives in advanced level master courses.

Keywords:

Student reflections, higher education, oral examination, online course, interaction analysis, video data, maritim education and training.