A friend who’s more optimistic about AI than I am sent me a list of tough questions about oral assessments. In this short episode, I answer them as honestly as I can.
The short version: the oral piece is 15 points on each major test, about 7% of the course grade. I grade by gut, not a rubric, and I’m still deciding whether that’s okay. I record only with permission. I’m figuring out how to scale this to six sections, and I’d love to hear how you’d handle a class of 35.
Key moments (raw timestamps, so adjust after edits):
0:00 A skeptic’s questions
0:21 How much of the grade?
1:40 Same questions for everyone?
3:00 Am I cutting anything to make room?
4:13 The pogo-stick question
5:21 Scores, and why I don’t use a rubric
7:01 Quiet students: “Stop talking and let me think”
7:53 Am I recording these?
8:47 Can this scale to five sections of 30?
10:19 “Building the airplane in the air”
