Using Oral Exams to Motivate and Assess Learning from Ungraded Homework in Engineering
Provost’s Working Group on Innovation in Assessment
Meinig Family Professor of Engineering, Dean of Faculty
Learning Outcomes
Context
Chris Schaffer has been co-teaching BME 3030: Biomedical Circuits, Signals, and Systems with Steven Adie, associate professor in the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering, for the last six years. The 5-credit course is required for biomedical engineering majors and includes lectures, discussion sections, and a lab. Over time, the two instructors have worked to integrate the mathematical and theoretical aspects of the course, particularly signals and systems, with the hands-on experimental circuits work that students complete in the lab.
Students apply what they’ve learned in a final experimental design project, in which they develop and test their own hypotheses about how heart rate changes in response to an intervention. Based on their hypotheses, students design and build heart rate measurement systems and data processing algorithms, then collect, analyze, and interpret their own data. Homework plays a critical role in preparing students for this capstone assignment for the course. However, when it became clear in Fall 2025 that AI could easily generate correct solutions to nearly all the homework questions, the instructors became concerned that grades on submitted homework solutions no longer reflected students’ understanding. They wanted to preserve the pedagogical value of longer and more challenging homework problems while restructuring the assessment to reduce academic integrity concerns and promote meaningful engagement with the material to prepare them adequately for the final project. In response, they redesigned the role of homework in the course. Homework is no longer graded; instead, students submit solutions to problem sets in preparation for a graded oral exam.
Implementation
The instructors assign five problem sets during the semester, typically one every two weeks. These assignments are not graded. After submitting each problem set, students can access solutions and schedule an oral exam. Together, the five oral exams comprise 20% of the final course grade.
Schaffer and Adie, along with graduate and undergraduate TAs, conduct the oral exams, rotating so that students are tested by a different examiner each time. Prior to each round, the instructors meet with the TAs to discuss the problem set, go over solutions, identify the key concepts to be assessed in the oral exam, discuss strategies for testing students on these ideas, and develop a shared rubric. These meetings help ensure a common understanding of the content and purpose of the exams. From this discussion, a written guide for each oral assessment was developed that included multiple strategies for testing each key concept on the homework assignment together with scoring criteria.
Each oral exam lasts about 20 minutes and aims to test three broad concepts that are aligned with the main topics of the problem set. The examiner might ask the student to explain a design choice or a critical step from one of their submitted homework solutions, solve a new but similar problem in the moment, or discuss a conceptual issue underlying the problem more generally.
For each of the three topics, the TA or instructor evaluates the student’s performance using a 4-point scale and provides direct feedback highlighting areas that may need further attention. Students may retake an exam to improve their performance, though only a small percentage of oral exams were repeated over the course of the Fall semester. Schaffer and Adie emphasize that the oral exams function as formative assessments: opportunities to guide student learning rather than to catch students in gotcha moments.
Challenges
- Student Concerns & Preparation: Oral exams are new for many students and can be a source of anxiety. While it takes time for students to adjust to this assessment style, transparency about what they can expect, along with the instructor’s vision for how the exam should function (e.g., as discussions that also serve as learning opportunities), can help allay these concerns. Completing the problem set and knowing that the oral exam topics will focus on the content of the homework helps students prepare and develop a clearer sense of what to expect.
- Assessment Logistics & Time: Schaffer and Adie rely on the help of two graduate and five undergraduate TAs to administer oral exams for a class of approximately 75 students. Coordinating and administering these exams over the course of a week requires significant time and organization. Because this model depends on substantial TA support, sustaining the assessment approach may become challenging if TA support changes.
- TA Preparation: TAs may require additional training to become comfortable and flexible in how they ask questions and follow up on student responses during oral exams. Ensuring that TAs are prepared to facilitate these conversations consistently remains an ongoing consideration.
Reflection and Future Directions
Schaffer has found that administering oral exams allows him to get to know his students more personally. Because TAs are involved in all aspects of the exams, they develop broader expertise across course topics, which improves their ability to support students during office hours. Shifting away from graded homework has also reduced the time required to manage problem sets, approximately balancing the additional time required to give the oral exams. Finally, oral exams have made it easier to determine what students understand and what they are finding challenging and to provide one-on-one feedback to each student in the course, multiple times over the semester.