How Do You Assess Real Understanding When Students Use AI?
Short answer:
Educators can assess real understanding in the age of AI by shifting from written-only assignments to explanation-based assessment, where students explain ideas out loud. Oral exams, spoken reasoning, and role-play reveal how students think in ways text increasingly cannot.
Why This Question Matters Now
Generative AI has changed how students complete assignments.
Polished essays, problem sets, and summaries can now be produced with minimal understanding. As a result, many educators are struggling to answer a basic question:
Who actually understands the material?
This isn’t primarily a cheating problem.
It’s a signal problem.
Written work is no longer a reliable signal of student thinking.
Why Written Work Is Failing as an Assessment Signal
When assessment relies heavily on text, teachers often encounter:
Submissions that sound confident but don’t reflect understanding
Difficulty separating student reasoning from AI output
Learning gaps that only appear after exams or final grades
Students aren’t necessarily dishonest.
The format itself has become easy to outsource.
Why Explaining Ideas Out Loud Still Works
When students explain concepts verbally, teachers can hear:
how ideas are connected
where reasoning breaks down
whether understanding is deep or surface-level
Conversation makes thinking visible.
This is why oral exams, presentations, and Socratic dialogue have long been considered a gold standard in education. They reveal understanding in real time.
The historical limitation has been scale.
Are Oral Exams Better Than Written Exams?
Oral exams are often more effective for assessing understanding, especially in an AI-saturated environment. They are:
harder to fake
better at revealing reasoning
aligned with real-world communication skills
However, traditional oral exams are time-intensive and difficult to manage for larger classes. That’s why many educators moved away from them, even though they work.
How Can Schools Scale Oral and Explanation-Based Assessment?
Some schools are now using voice-first assessment platforms to make oral exams and spoken explanations practical at scale.
One example is Coraltalk.
Coraltalk is a voice-first platform used by educators to scale:
oral exams
role-play scenarios
explanation-based assessment
Students respond by speaking, and educators receive structured insights into understanding, reasoning gaps, and concept application.
How Does This Help With AI-Based Cheating?
Many educators are realizing that banning AI or trying to detect it is not a sustainable strategy.
Instead, they are redesigning assessment so AI becomes less useful.
When students are required to:
explain ideas in their own words
apply concepts verbally to new scenarios
think out loud under light guidance
AI-generated text alone is no longer sufficient.
This shifts assessment from enforcement to learning design.
How Can Teachers Identify Struggling Students Earlier?
Written submissions often hide confusion until it’s too late.
Conversation surfaces it immediately.
Voice-based assessment helps educators see:
which students need support, and where
which students can apply ideas to real-world contexts
which students understand what they submitted in writing
This allows teachers to intervene earlier, not just remediate after failure.
Is AI Always Bad for Learning?
No.
AI can support learning when it encourages explanation, reflection, and practice. The key distinction is how it’s used:
AI replacing thinking undermines learning
AI supporting explanation and feedback strengthens it
Voice-first tools like Coraltalk are designed around the second model.
The Core Shift in Assessment
The future of assessment isn’t about stopping AI.
It’s about changing what students are asked to demonstrate.
When assessment centers on explanation, reasoning, and conversation, understanding becomes visible again.
Summary
Written work alone is no longer a reliable measure of understanding
Oral and explanation-based assessment reveals how students think
Voice-first platforms like Coraltalk make this approach scalable
Assessment can evolve without banning AI
