Joanna Slater, Washington Post (December 12, 2025): Professors are turning to this old-school method to stop AI use on exams

This article reports on a trend towards using oral examinations to prevent student AI use from all over the world and for a wide variety of educational disciplines, including religious studies, business (in classes with 600 students!), computer science, engineering, and communications. I would love to hear from folks are experimenting with oral exams in law school classes (not including the trial advocacy and appellate advocacy courses where oral “exams” are the norm).

When students in Catherine Hartmann’s honors seminar at the University of Wyoming took their final exams this month, they encountered a testing method as old as the ancient philosophers whose ideas they were studying.

For 30 minutes, each student sat opposite Hartmann in her office. Hartmann asked probing questions. The student answered.

Hartmann, a religious studies professor who started using oral examinations last year, is not alone in turning to a decidedly old-fashioned way to grade student performance.

Across the country, a small but growing number of educators are experimenting with oral exams to circumvent the temptations presented by powerful artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT.

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