Oral exams return in the face of AI advancements

BarcelonaThe use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools is becoming increasingly common in both professional and personal settings. According to the 2024 study byEmpantallados.com And according to GDA3, 82% of teenagers use AI for schoolwork, and 91% of families have not established rules for its use. This new reality poses new challenges for the educational community because currently there is no technological tool that can 100% guarantee that a job done with AITherefore, teachers must resort to other strategies to assess work.

Miquel Àngel Prats, a tenured professor of educational technology at Blanquerna - Ramon Llull University, suggests moving on to asking students orally about what they have done and giving them the opportunity to explain their reasoning. From their responses, one can infer whether their explanation coherently aligns with the assignment or if there are inconsistencies and it lacks the same level of rigor. When there is sufficient suspicion, one can deduce that the final result is a product of AI.

The intelligence that revolutionizes everything

From the moment generative AI appeared, especially ChatGPT, which allows for the easy creation of final products, the faculty of the Vedruna Catalunya Educació Foundation schools decided they needed to rethink assessment. "Although the current Education decree promotes formative assessment and mentions different tools for evaluating and collecting evidence throughout the entire process, we often still focus on the final products," acknowledges Montserrat Jiménez, a secondary school teacher, trainer, and pedagogical advisor at various Vedruna Catalunya Educació Foundation schools.

She comments that right now, the final product or project is an unreliable indicator of the learning process: "We need dynamics that incorporate metacognition during evaluation, where students discuss in the classroom how the product can be improved, what went wrong, and where dialogue, reasoning, presenting arguments, and defending their work are key." She says that accountability is achieved through explanations of what they have submitted or learned.

"I suspect that oral work will eventually carry more weight than written work. The distribution of assessments in undergraduate and master's theses has already changed," explains Miquel Àngel Prats. The assignments given to students are now being redefined and given new meaning: if they use AI, they must explain how and why they use it. In addition to the written work, the process of monitoring and tutoring, as well as two oral defenses, come into play. He emphasizes that AI is not so much a technological tool as a knowledge management tool, which can be a valuable ally for learning, enhancing and accelerating the processes of research, writing, and development: "Therefore, it represents a new way of managing, administering, and communicating knowledge."

Learn to ask questions and not settle.

It is necessary to teach students how to use AI. Teacher support, assistance, and guidance are always necessary, but with these new tools, they are even more crucial. Students cannot simply ask a question and accept the first answer without verifying or comparing it. Prats suggests simulating a kind of tennis match, analyzing the first draft generated by the AI, then reviewing, verifying, comparing, reworking, and redefining the written work. "It's about sending the AI back for a new result, and so on until it's no longer needed," explains the professor, understanding the AI as a kind of co-pilot, a alter ego which provides contrast, helps to write and take into account aspects that perhaps the person had not considered at first.

This new approach means that teachers must be good role models and demonstrate how to use it through their teaching practice. Students may find the first answer plausible and satisfactory enough, and not feel the need to ask follow-up questions. "That's why adult intervention is even more necessary, not only in the classroom but also at home," says Prats.

Changes for everyone

In practice, this change means more work for teachers, and a problem given the long-standing lack of time and resources in schools. "There's too much bureaucracy, and we lack the time to train, share knowledge, reach consensus, and support each other in the change process, because not everyone adapts at the same pace; we need mentorship," says Jiménez. Creating these new spaces in the classroom where students give oral presentations is slower and more complicated than grading exams and requires more teaching resources to carry out formative assessment, taking time away from other activities.

Similarly, Àngels Vila, a Catalan language teacher at the Narcís Monturiol Institute in Figueres and a member of the group promoting the Alt Empordà Oratory Competition, explains that they do assess some content orally, but the idea of replacing everything with an exclusively oral evaluation is unthinkable: "The number of students requires it." Regardless of this detail, which is not insignificant, she comments that it is also important for students to write and practice, especially considering that more and more The handwriting is less legibleThey pay less attention to spelling mistakes and sentence structure. This is probably because they are used to using spell checkers or generative AI tools.

Develop new skills

Students also need to learn. "In this learning process, they will have to unlearn, which is difficult because we come from a very standardized and uniform system," Vila points out. A new perspective will have to be implemented, one that focuses less on the final product and much more on the process. Homework assignments will also have to change; they will need to be meaningful, forcing children and young people to think, compare, and connect with real-world experiences. These tasks, therefore, cannot be done by machines. Montserrat Jiménez emphasizes the purpose of what they are asked to do: "It's a significant shift in perspective."

This paradigm shift means that communication skills take center stage. Skills for communicating effectively and also for interacting with the machine. Not all families can support their children in the learning process with AI, "which is why schools must cultivate critical thinking, teaching them to ask questions, analyze responses, verify the AI's claims, identify areas for improvement, and continue working until they achieve the best possible results." But again, this requires time, which would mean sacrificing other activities.

The goal isn't to focus the entire assessment on oral communication, but rather to make students understand that AI tools cannot compensate for basic deficiencies. "They need a solid foundation from which to produce quality work, and they need to be able to explain it in their own words. Previously, especially in high school, most of the more theoretical explanations were given in the classroom; however, now they are given materials to review the theory at home and are even left to work with paper and pencils. They think and structure their ideas, especially with languages, so they can develop a coherent discourse. They need the foundation to know how to structure language, and the only way to achieve that is through practice," Vila concludes.