Business schools bring back oral defences as student AI use rises

European business schools are switching to oral defences and pen-and-paper assessments in response to artificial intelligence rendering some longstanding evaluation methods obsolete, according to a report.

The report from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), based on interviews with deans of leading business schools, says that AI “has broken traditional evaluation” as students can use the technology to instantly generate “competent” responses to case studies.

One of the deans interviewed, Insead’s Francisco Veloso, said the traditional case study assessment method, invented at Harvard University is “dead”, since students use AI to find the answers, and then “spend an hour trying to convince the faculty members that they know the answers”.

Instead, Insead is developing AI-powered interactive cases where students engage directly with an avatar, while other schools are spending more time asking students to defend their work orally.

Peter Todd, dean of Imperial Business School, described assessment as having moved towards the “performative arts”.

“Unless you lock them in a room with a pencil and a piece of paper, or have them stand up and deliver something, you cannot be sure what you are getting anymore. Integrating the notion of performance into the student experience is going to become more important,” he said.

“That helps us know what they know, and how they think.”

Another school which participated in the study, HEC Paris, described alternating between “machine off” and “machine on” assessments, with some completed with pen and paper to verify foundational knowledge, and others completed with AI to test problem framing and implementation.

Nalisha Patel, GMCA’s regional director for the Americas and Europe, said: “Employers and candidates need to know that a qualification remains a reliable signal of capability. The response to AI should strengthen that trust by making the standards behind assessment clearer and more meaningful.”

frances.jones@timeshighereducation.com