Oral Exams Make a Comeback in Universities, and AI Could Be the Reason Why

An evaluation method once considered outdated by many universities is now making a strong comeback: the oral exam. According to eSchool News, more professors are choosing to speak directly with students about their work instead of assigning traditional written homework, in order to ensure that what's submitted truly reflects the students' own thinking and effort.

A personal assignment, transformed by context

The case of Catherine Hartmann, a professor at the University of Wyoming, illustrates this shift well. In 2023, in a course on the history of meditation, she gave students an unusual assignment: practice a contemplative technique and then write a reflective analysis of the experience. The task was designed to be deeply personal and difficult to fake or generate artificially, precisely to encourage genuine engagement from students.

However, the emergence and rapid spread of generative AI tools has radically changed the academic landscape. Even assignments that once seemed impossible to "cheat" using AI have, in practice, proven vulnerable to AI-generated text that's hard to distinguish from a student's authentic writing.

The return of direct dialogue

Faced with this challenge, more educators are turning to assessment methods based on direct interaction. Oral exams, in-class presentations, and one-on-one discussions with professors are once again becoming valuable tools, as they allow real-time verification of a student's actual understanding of the material—not just the quality of a final written product.

This shift doesn't necessarily signal a rejection of technology, but rather a pedagogical adaptation. According to eSchool News, professors acknowledge that traditional written assessment methods need to be rethought in an era when AI can produce coherent, convincing text in a matter of seconds.

What this means for education

The return of the oral exam raises important questions about the future of academic assessment: how can the efficiency gained from digitizing education be preserved without losing the ability to genuinely measure students' knowledge? The answer seems to lie in a balance between technology and direct human interaction—where, paradoxically, dialogue remains the most reliable "detector" of originality.