Test in an AI world
The Taipei Times last week published an article on the value of oral exams in the artificial intelligence (AI) era (“Why colleges are turning to oral exams to combat AI,” March 27, page 11). There was a time when such tests (midterms and finals) were handed out the week before the exam date, for completion at home. Before AI, it was not really a problem and was a favorable method, as it made scoring exams a bit easier, as they arrived in my e-mail in bunches, and I could take care of them in separate packs.
However, with AI, I have found that students are employing the technology to completely write their written exams — they could even be doing that for written exams given in class. Although I had been using oral exams for several years before the advent of AI, oral exams have become essential.
Oral exams put a bit of pressure on students, but to be sure they provide a more direct solicitation of what students have learned, and students respond quite well to them. Some enjoy presenting what they learned directly to me, and do not want to depend on AI in any way. That is a break they actually like.
Students have said they do not use AI to entirely generate their homework, but only to check for errors, structural soundness, argument development and the like. Their “cognitive capacity and creativity” appears to remain, their problem solving is adequate, and they are developing “the skills they need to advance in upper-level classes and careers.”
AI would continue to have an impact on schooling, no doubt, but I discovered long before its arrival the value of oral tests, and I find that in any case it is not always a troubling aspect of ordinary schoolwork.
David Pendery
Taipei
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