While traditionally the viva voce examination had a central role in student assessment it fell out of favour as higher education expanded. In some disciplines the viva voce examination has had something of a resurgence in the past 10 years although it remains a very high stakes mode of assessment. This paper describes the development of a digital video viva examination to promote a more authentic and lower stakes method of assessment for students in their final under-graduate module. The module is specifically designed to enable nursing students to transition from student to their first post as a registered nurse. The programme team were keen to develop an assessment which could promote employability by allowing students to consider interview type questions around leadership, management, problem solving and self-awareness.
This paper describes the challenges of developing a truly authentic assessment when faced with the academic requirements of the programme. The use of video assessment is explored and in particular the problems associated with broadband speeds and file sharing. The authors were able to develop a more authentic, lower stake assessment with students on average recording and re-recording their viva submission 3.41 times and rehearsing it 3.67 times. Issues with digital skills of student and staff clearly effect student satisfaction when using this approach although it does highlight deficiencies in addressing these skills as part of the development of graduate attributes.