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There Is Still a Place for Oral Exams in Education

Credit: iStock.com/xavierarnau
Credit: iStock.com/xavierarnau
While written assessments are the most common tool for measuring learning today, the earliest form of assessment was oral. The Socratic dialectic used by the ancient Greeks, and still used today in Oxford’s tutorial system, combined learning and assessments through a conversation with the student. Those who have gone through the Oxford tutorials universally swear by their benefits, yet they’re rarely used in academia.

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