There are significant opportunities to improve the speaking skills of Australian graduates while also addressing assessment integrity, Griffith University Vice-Chancellor Carolyn Evans has said.
Speaking to Future Campus, Professor Evans said oral exams should be part of the solution to help equip graduates with relevant skills, in the face of the AI boom.
“Universities have been long moving away from the three hour, closed book, sit down exam, because it’s just not very good at giving you a set of skills that you ever use anywhere else in your life. Your business is not demanding a whole lot of people who can sit down and remember a whole bunch of stuff quickly and write with reasonably legible handwriting,” Professor Evans said.
While there might be a temporary increase in the number of handwritten exams set by universities as an initial response to generative AI, there will also be a rise in more authentic and effective forms of assessment, she said.
“We will need to be thinking a little bit more imaginatively about how assessment is applied into broader areas like arts and commerce and more generalist degrees.
“I’m actually very hopeful that it will see, and we’re already seeing this at our university, a shift to oral examination as part of the mix, because I do think Australia has not taught oral skills well.
“If you listen to the average American, they are very articulate and very capable of standing in front of a classroom or a camera talking in very coherent sentences. That has not been so much of a skill (possessed by Australians).
“With the advent of AI, the capacity to communicate orally will be critical.”
