More universities are turning to “oral defense” exams to verify learning in the generative AI era, according to reporting from campuses including Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. Professors are pairing or substituting traditional take-home formats with live, spoken assessments that require students to explain their work face-to-face. Cornell’s biomedical engineering instructor Chris Schaffer is using oral defenses—an Ancient Greece-style approach—to address a perceived skills gap: written work may come back polished, but students struggle to articulate reasoning during follow-up. Penn is running faculty workshops on oral exams and adding structured in-person components to courses, reinforcing concerns that AI-assisted submissions can erode cognitive capacity and creativity if students cannot demonstrate mastery during discussion.