The advent of artificial intelligence tools and large language models has created acute concerns about academic integrity in higher education regarding student assessment. The use of online or asynchronous exams, which became popular in the COVID era, is often now discouraged and many universities urge faculty to return to traditional timed in-classroom pen-and-paper exams, while new tools are being developed and promoted for online exam proctoring. Oral examination has a very long tradition and arguably constitutes the oldest assessment format; and yet, it often receives less attention as an alternative. Oral defenses of dissertations (viva voce) are standard in most university systems, but oral exams for other courses are relatively uncommon. As an alternative, they are popular in in Italy and Norway and found in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East particularly in fields like law and medicine. Oral examinations are much less common in East and Southeast Asia, where large written exams remain the norm. The paper will survey basic literature about the format of online examinations, paying particular attention to their institutionalization in Italy and Norway. It will proceed to discuss concerns about their use, particularly inter-grader variability and the equivalence or the repetition of questions asked to different students, which can be an acute problem in large courses where students are examined sequentially. The last part of the paper will present analysis of data collected by the author based on his own experience at an English-language university in Spain teaching survey history courses.

Authors:
Evan Liaras, IE University, Spain

About the Presenter(s)
Evan Liaras is a faculty member of the School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs at IE University in Spain. His interests include history, ethnicity, nationalism, minorities, conflict and conflict resolution.

Connect on Linkedin
https://es.linkedin.com/in/evangelos-liaras-a368b793

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