Perfect homework, blank stares: Why colleges are turning to oral exams to combat AI
Colleges in the US are turning to oral exams to combat AI cheating, with professors at Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, and New York University adopting this method to assess students' understanding. Educators worry that students are losing critical thinking skills as they increasingly rely on generative AI to complete written assignments.
Professors at several US colleges are adopting oral exams to combat cheating with generative AI. At Cornell University, Chris Schaffer's biomedical engineering class requires students to defend their work orally. Emily Hammer, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, pairs oral exams with written papers, citing concerns that students are losing cognitive capacity and creativity. The University of Pennsylvania is running faculty workshops on oral exams, part of a trend that started during the COVID-19 pandemic. Huihui Qi, an engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego, has been studying how to scale oral exams and has been invited to provide faculty workshops. New York University is also seeing a rise in oral assessments, with more faculty requiring office hours and assigning presentations.
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