The doctoral defence is the oral examination of the doctoral thesis. While it is a major milestone for doctoral candidates, this event is often shrouded in mystery. In this article, I explore the doctoral defence from an international perspective. I have studied the format of the defence based on written testimonies as well as the literature on…

Rater variability has always been identified as an important source of measurement error in performance assessment, especially for oral proficiency tests. Rater training is commonly used as a means for compensating various sources of rater variability and adjusting their assessment quality. However, there is little research regarding the nature of…

This article reports the results of a mixed methodology analysis of the assumptions of academic staff and Masters students in an Iranian university regarding various aspects of the assessment of the Masters degree thesis, including the main objective for writing the thesis, the role of the students, supervisors and advisors in writing the…