Delivery of content is reported by many HE practitioners to be fundamental to successful performance in an assessed oral presentation task on their respective modules on degree programmes (Palmour, 2020). Conducting rich qualitative case studies on degree programmes is crucial to establishing the nature of oracy expectations and demands placed on students from diverse linguacultural backgrounds. This study addresses this neglected area of scholarship, by investigating AOP practices on degree modules at UK universities with a particular focus on how judgements are made on learning through oracy, with the ultimate aim of interrogating and fostering ways to maximise fairness. The study involves 7 interviews at 7 sites and focused fieldwork at 2 sites (Knoblauch, 2005). A site is a degree module on a UK degree programme which uses an oral presentation as part of its assessment suite. The following research questions guided the study: 1. What oracy skills do teachers and students value in assessed AOPs on their degree module? 2. What is the relationship between disciplinary knowledge and oracy skills in the assessed AOPs? 3. In what ways might the approaches to assessment and development of oracy skills in AOPs promote or undermine fairness and justice? The findings show that in some contexts there is insufficient support for the oracy demands placed on students. Furthermore, even when oracy support is provided, aspects of delivery style (e.g. confidence, slide design and eye contact) are overvalued in ways which might disadvantage particular student groups. It is paramount that oracy support is provided in tertiary education and that HE stakeholders promote increasingly fair and just oracy expectations.Oral communication skills facilitate learning, thinking and empower individuals to participate in society. Through talk we generate new ideas in collaboration with others (Littleton and Mecer, 2013) meaning oracy skills have become key to professional life. Crucially, oratorial prowess provides citizens with the communicative means by which to have their voices heard in civic arenas. However, not all verbal and non-verbal communicative practices are judged as equal and there is a pressing need for intensified action in education to prevent communicative inequality from undermining civic agency (Coleman, 2012). Pedagogical interventions are needed to develop oracy skills in a way which addresses unequal communicative status.Therefore, it is vital that tasks which facilitate oral communication skills development feature as learning and assessment tools in educational settings. Academic oral presentations (AOPs) are one genre used widely as learning and assessment tasks in UK Higher Education, often to provide oratory arenas in which students can develop and display disciplinary knowledge and oracy skills (Palmour 2020). However, the oracy demands involved in producing and evaluating AOPs may not be adequately recognised and not taught in ways which tackle communicative inequality. My doctorate investigated how AOP assessments are constructed and evaluated on English for Academic Purposes programmes and degree programmes in a range of disciplines in UK HE. Crucial insights were generated into the decision-making processes involved in navigating AOP events from student and teacher assessor perspectives. Surveys of content degree module practice raised significant questions regarding the 'hidden assessment of oracy' (Doherty et al, 2011) in AOPs. The majority of HE practitioners surveyed rated delivery as highly important and the majority reported that they provide feedback on oracy skills which they see as vital to a successful AOP performance, but that oracy skills were not part of the assessment criteria. As part of the fellowship, I will conduct a contained fieldwork study which investigates how learning is assessed on content degree programmes through AOPs, particularly what judgements are made on oracy skills.

19 audio-recorded individual and group interviews 6 observations of classes and assessment events 2 documents of field notes made during observations 2 documents of feedback samples 2 marking criteria and syllabi documents Participants -- teachers and students in Higher Education enrolled on degree modules with an oral presentation used as an assessment method