Thank you for a fascinating piece. I would celebrate a return to oral exams and tutorial / seminar like discussions. As you say, these do encourage you to think, to prepare — and give you a voice, wonderful and powerful in itself. One caveat: surface fluency should not be thought synonymous with the ability to talk, think, listen, and persuade. Going back to Socrates debating in the stoa, testing and challenging ideas, needs an accommodation of all voices, both fluent and dysfluent. STAMMA is already worried that AI might misinterpret / mark down people who stammer during automated interviews, just as today's fraud and phone gate-keeping systems sometimes do. Vivas, great in themselves, carry the need for reasonable adjustments and a general willingness to value different voices.
Thank you for a fascinating piece. I would celebrate a return to oral exams and tutorial / seminar like discussions. As you say, these do encourage you to think, to prepare — and give you a voice, wonderful and powerful in itself. One caveat: surface fluency should not be thought synonymous with the ability to talk, think, listen, and persuade. Going back to Socrates debating in the stoa, testing and challenging ideas, needs an accommodation of all voices, both fluent and dysfluent. STAMMA is already worried that AI might misinterpret / mark down people who stammer during automated interviews, just as today's fraud and phone gate-keeping systems sometimes do. Vivas, great in themselves, carry the need for reasonable adjustments and a general willingness to value different voices.