The Forklift, the Gym, and the Renaissance of the Oral Exam

by Chief Financial Officer Chia-Hua (Phyllis) Chen

As the CFO of an AI learning startup, I spend a lot of time analyzing where the EdTech market is heading. Recently, a fascinating narrative has emerged from campuses across the country: to “AI-proof” their courses, professors are turning to the oldest technology available—the oral exam.

According to a recent Washington Post report, educators from the University of Wyoming to Vanderbilt are ditching take-home essays in favor of face-to-face interrogations. Whether it’s a philosophy seminar or an intro to data science class, the goal is the same: to ensure students—not ChatGPT—are doing the actual thinking.

You might think an executive in the AI space would find this trend alarming. On the contrary, I see it as a massive opportunity for the right kind of innovation.

The article features a brilliant analogy from Professor Catherine Hartmann. She tells her students that using AI to bypass an assignment is like “bringing a forklift to the gym.” Sure, the weight gets moved, but you don’t build any muscle. For too long, the “forklift” approach—cognitive offloading—has dominated the conversation around AI in schools.

However, the return of oral exams signals a market correction. We are moving away from tools that simply produce answers and toward tools that help students process them.

The report highlights a student named Carley King, who used ChatGPT not to write her paper, but to generate practice questions for a mock oral exam. This is the pivot. The value proposition of AI is shifting from being a substitute for effort to being a “sparring partner” for mastery.

If the classroom is the gym, our company isn’t here to sell forklifts; we are here to build the personal trainers and spotters. We are designing for the student who wants to walk into that professor’s office, sit down without a screen, and confidently demonstrate what they know.

This “renaissance” of oral assessment sets a higher bar for learning. It pushes us to build better, more ethical products. And frankly, as someone betting on the future of education, that is the only kind of AI worth investing in.

#BrainStream #EdTech #AI #HigherEd #LearningbyAI