Where did August go and how is it already September?!? While I can’t deliver this blog post orally to prove it, you’ll be happy to know that it is 100% grade-A human written text (typos and awkward phrasing provided at no extra charge). In this week’s issue, I discuss how a growing trend to counter AI cheating might not be the solution we hope it to be. I then close with three Sparks about transfer credit, a new college, and dual enrollment.  

Can You Explain it to Me? 

From The Return of the Oral Exam | The Chronicle of Higher Education 

Beth McMurtrie looks at how some faculty are trying oral exams in response to AI cheating.  

Our Thoughts  

Like so many this summer, I made a special trip to our local IMAX theatre (sadly, not the 70 mm) to see Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. It's amazing that such a story, traditionally passed down orally through the ages, has not only survived but still resonates with modern audiences. The ancient poets, who had to deliver this story live in front of an audience, had hundreds of years to refine it, reacting to the unique environment with each retelling. The good ones were certainly experts on the stories, ready to answer questions from the audience to keep them entertained throughout. And although writing certainly has its place to help individuals refine their thoughts, there is a certain level of mastery demonstrated through conversation and questioning that writing cannot replicate.  

I suppose that’s why we see a growing number of faculty returning to this tradition with the rise of AI. It seems like a handy solution to the problem of machine-generated responses—ask the students live to explain their answers. In some ways, this seems like a good fit for the arguments I’ve been making about learning being the thing we actually want to assess, and the artifact being only the proxy for it. The article discusses numerous success stories, even pointing to a published study that found roughly 70 percent of students agreed the exams increased their motivation to learn, with a similar share saying the same about their understanding of the material. But that same studyran into the issue that all campuses will eventually hit—scale.  

I’ve talked before about the expense of human labor in the learning process. Collectively as a society, we say we want students to learn more, but when the reality of that cost hits, we are less enthusiastic. Even the study had to stop its successful oral exam strategy after its NSF grant funding ran out because it found that the cost of proceeding was more than the institution could afford. By their own estimate, the oral exam model needed one instructional resource for every 24 students to work. I know from my experiences that we have a rich history in higher education of being unable to fund promising results. Student success is probably my favorite example. We hire three new advisors to reduce caseloads and help improve retention and graduation rates. It starts to work. Rates improve. Then someone leaves in a down budget cycle, the position isn’t ever replaced, caseloads go back up, and rates start dropping. Our sector struggles to transform pilots into lasting practice. 

Additionally, there’s an operational element to consider. What happens if everyone on campus wanted to give oral exams? Even accounting for Zoom, there will still be faculty who want or need to give their oral exam in person. If you had a large lecture section of 300 students who needed 15-minute oral exam slots, that’s 75 hours of one-on-one time that needs space. Multiply that across your campus during final exam week, and any registrar will quickly see you’ll run out of space. Plus, how would you manage that fairly during the exam period for students? The student who gets Monday afternoon has less time to study than the student who gets Wednesday morning, and those students have probably shared the exam material by then. Add to that questions of grade appeals (what do you judge when there’s no artifact) and no-show policies (illness, conflicts, etc.), and you start to see how oral exams begin to unravel.  

I say this not to be a wet blanket on the idea. We need to experiment with a variety of approaches to see which options are most effective at overcoming AI cheating. And perhaps oral exams have their place in certain situations or courses. I just don’t want someone to think they are the solution to this challenge. So, if you hear conversations about oral exams on your campus, that is the time to ask the hard questions about how they’ll work and whether the person proposing them has thought through the ramifications of their choice. After the exams are given with no reviewable record of their performance, it will be too late to figure out how to address a student grade challenge.  

Sparks 

• ‘Start From Yes’ Initiative Challenges Transfer Credit Skepticism (Inside Higher Ed) - A new campaign, supported by nineteen higher education organizations, aims to improve transfer credit acceptance. As a former registrar, I support this initiative.
• Business, government and education leaders try to reinvent college from scratch  (The Hechinger Report) - An entirely new college, the Greenway Institute, is trying to reinvent higher education by returning to its educational roots. This will be interesting to watch if only to see how many of the “expensive frills” they ultimately decide are worth including in their new college.
• Dual enrollment failure rates offer these important lessons (University Business) - A recent study found that socioeconomically disadvantaged students were more likely to fail dual enrollment courses but were still more likely to attend college later. With the explosion of dual enrollment, we need more studies like this.