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This is already the case for Master's degrees and above in Denmark. I've been the opponent examining students. We ask Master's students to give US instruction o

This is already the case for Master's degrees and above in Denmark. I've been the opponent examining students. We ask Master's students to give US instruction on a topic (drawn randomly on a card in front of them, from a list they know a few days in advance). They do a chalk and talk on a topic for about fifteen minutes with three to five professors being "dumb students". It works fantastically and at the end it's very apparent to both student and teachers how well a topic is understood. Marks are rarely contested and in my experience most students think the process is fair. Of course, woe betide those with social phobias....

viccis 2mo ago
>Of course, woe betide those with social phobias I can see this being a problem in the US when it comes to "accommodations" in general. Students with an ADHD diagnosis can claim it causes just about any difficulty and get accommodations for it. The local (top ranked, but everyone's seen all the stories coming out of the Ivies...) college here gives students with ADHD double time on exams and has them take it in a special disabilities proctoring center where it's a struggle to get the staff there to even enforce those time limits. Obviously this also makes it infinitely easier to outright cheat as well. Not a chance you will get past the "my ADHD makes it hard for me to think about these things verbally" challenge at institutions like this.
- bonoboTP 2mo ago
  European universities also have accommodations and extra time etc. And yes it's an arms race. Though at some point it will simply inflate away the value of the degree, but educators will stand there baffled, not understanding how it could happen.
- eutropia 2mo ago
  as someone with ADHD who always finished exams first or was the designated spokesperson for group presentations... I have no idea why you'd want to be taking a test a second longer than you already have to. Either you know the material or you don't, anything taking a lot of time is borderline stuff where you're scrapping for points you might not deserve in the first place lol
  - fnord77 2mo ago
    > I have no idea why you'd want to be taking a test a second longer than you already have to. After I got treated, I understand why. Too look for mistakes. Now I don't understand why people don't take the maximum alloted time
  - fn-mote 2mo ago
    Absolutely not saying this is even the most common case but: people “without ADHD” but with a diagnosis can use the extra time effectively. It is most clear when there is some kind of problem solving involved. An extra 30 min to figure out the trick or plan a detailed approach is a real benefit. The other case is where there’s some missing knowledge but with a bunch of extra effort you can figure out how to do it. That would be something like re-constructing a self-balancing binary tree from some half-remembered lecture notes.
  - Aurornis 2mo ago
    > I have no idea why you'd want to be taking a test a second longer than you already have to. The theory was that ADHD students have trouble sustaining concentration, so extra time allows for thought breaks and distractions. The idea was that 2 hours for the ADHD student would be similar to 1 hour of concentration for a non-ADHD student, and therefore the inequity had been partially compensated. The teachers I know have the same observation that you do: The extra test time isn’t usually used by the ADHD students, but when other students (or maybe more accurately, parents) discover that extra test time was available, most of the high performing students suddenly got diagnosed with ADHD at the same time. They were the ones staying extra long to proofread their work. For the elementary/junior high teachers I know the schools’ solution was to give everyone the same extended test taking time. Easiest way to remove the incentive to seek out a fake diagnosis without taking anything away from anyone.
  - vector_spaces 2mo ago
    ADHD is known to be able to affect speed and consistency of output, even of mastered material, and in a variety of ways -- hence "I have no idea..." Standard diagnostic questionnaires commonly reference this. The last part of your comment reflects a lack of understanding of both human cognition and recall and ADHD in particular.
- bbminner 2mo ago
  Oh, at least in the post Soviet tradition of oral exams, you are given plenty of time to think and prepare your argument before you start an actual conversation with the examining professor. And if you need to think more during the exam to answer a tricky question, the professor just shifts to talk to another student who is ready to present their case for the time being. So it is less of a public speaking and more of a conversation where you can take a pause to think through an argument, or a proof, or a problem.
- jrapdx3 2mo ago
  Treating many ADHD adult students some did take advantage of accommodations available to them. Problems with test-taking varied, but common issues were getting distracted by extraneous stimuli in "regular" classrooms. Frequently ADHD students were slow readers and really did need/use extra time. But the biggest problem was test-taking anxiety, often quite prominent, contributing to difficulty with tests. Interestingly, more than not ADHD students were reluctant to ask for accommodations. Some never availed themselves of this benefit. Others only used part of the options they could use. In my practice were a number of ADHD adults admitted to nursing school, some having serious academic difficulties and eventually asking for accommodations. The assistance was effective. Notably, none of these student-patients failed or dropped out, all graduated. A pleasant footnote to add is a subset of these nurses developed exceptional skill earning them leadership positions in their institutions. Reputable clinicians wouldn't give an ADHD diagnosis or support academic accommodations without sufficient clinical evidence.
  - viccis 2mo ago
    Part of the problem here is that this college has <5% acceptance rate. Very hard to get into and prestigious. The students who get in have been minmaxing and exploiting every advantage they can for their entire life.
    - jrapdx3 2mo ago
      > The students who get in have been minmaxing and exploiting every advantage they can for their entire life. Not a school I'd be tempted to apply to. Scholastic competition is one thing, but scrapping for every conceivable speck of "I'm better than the next guy" is not a bit attractive. I wonder about the campus atmosphere. Seems likely contesting would be a hard to break habit. I feel tense just thinking about it :/ Of course, ADHD students are less likely to achieve near-perfect grades than non-ADHD peers. Though it's not impossible for an ADHD student to succeed. Anyway, not at all uncommon for a student to do very well until subjects become more complex and challenging. Conceivably a student could look promising, but then suddenly have great difficulty keeping up. So a safe bet that at least a few students at the top-level school have ADHD. If the school offers little or no accommodation, affected students probably have to accept getting educated elsewhere. Fortunately, more than not ADHD treatment is effective, a favorable response can make a pivotal difference in the student's outcome.
- lll-o-lll 2mo ago
  > college here gives students with ADHD double time on exams No offence, but this is a ridiculous thing to get worked up about. Various neurological conditions exhibit in people just being “slow” in exams. No one ever diagnosed me with anything (probably too long ago), but teachers somehow understood that I was one of these and gave me extra time on exams. I didn’t want it (who wants to be in an exam a minute longer than required!). But I did need it through high school. In university I was able to complete in time (mostly); I suspect because I had practiced doing exams so much by then that I’d figured out how to optimise for time (maybe everyone knows this and I was just very slow to learn it?). I’m someone who excelled academically, and it was an important part of my identity at that time. And I do remember exams (before teachers gave me more time) where I’d get a lower grade as I’d only completed 70%. It was incredibly painful; I knew the material, if only I could get it down on paper in time! (I’ve also been an incredibly slow writer). Extra time for someone who struggles to complete on time isn’t cheating - it’s allowing people to demonstrate what they can do.
  - noAnswer 2mo ago
    > teachers somehow understood that I was one of these Are you sure your parents weren't involved in the background? > Extra time for someone who struggles to complete on time isn’t cheating - it’s allowing people to demonstrate what they can do. For me it becomes cheating when its no longer allowed to be mentioned on the certificate that extra time was given.
vardalab 2mo ago
So, I grew up in the former Soviet Union. Starting with ninth grade entrance entrance and exit exams were like that. I remember I had to take university physics exam just to be able to qualify for a consideration. It was fairly rough, but I think in a way, good system because it sifted out the wannabes early on.
- bbminner 2mo ago
  Same. The focus on written exams rated blindly and uniformly at the US higher education system always puzzled me. I guess that's the only way to scale things up when you pay professors and teachers living wages?
  - Andrex 2mo ago
    The blind aspect (I would assume) is meant to cut down on favoritism and discrimination. With the US I understand how that would come about. Whether it succeeds in that goal is a separate topic.
- dzhiurgis 2mo ago
  It does indeed sound great except that everyone was corrupt to the bone
  - Barrin92 2mo ago
    the STEM academic world in the Soviet Union was extremely meritocratic. largely shielded from outside influence and maybe the best talent pipeline anyone has ever invented to produce scientific expertise. Exception being biology as Lysenkoism at some point infected the field. Corruption affected history or economics because it was ideologically relevant to authorities but math and physics proceeded on its own.
  - cleaning 2mo ago
    This is an oversimplification. Yes, there was corruption, but it was much less corrupt than the US system, especially today. The US system doesn't try to hide it either, everyone knows about legacy admissions and "school spirit"/donations.
bunderbunder 2mo ago
I expect a lot of the social anxiety can be mitigated by arranging things so that students get a chance to know the examiners and build a rapport with them ahead of time. (E.g., if they’re an instructor then make sure they have office hours and encourage students to go.) I’ve got my mental health challenges but that’s how things worked in my grad school and I got by just fine.
- thomasahle 2mo ago
  > I expect a lot of the social anxiety can be mitigated by arranging things so that students get a chance to know the examiners and build a rapport with them ahead of time. That's not my experience. Standing in front of somebody who's been your teacher and you might look up to is way scarier than some rando.
dzhiurgis 2mo ago
[flagged]
obscurette 2mo ago
64 year old nerd with social phobias here. When I was in school, I had to practice oral knowledge tests since grade one. I had my first oral exam in grade six (math) and 2-3 oral exams every year since then. If I hadn't had that experience, I would never have gotten into university. I still don't like verbal communications with people (especially in a tense situations like exam), I'm slow etc, but it's manageable because I had to practice it a lot. I don't think I would have survived in modern "the environment must be made suitable for everyone" school/university.
- catlikesshrimp 2mo ago
  Would it help to be interviewed in a room where there is no other person, and you can be seen through a camera and communicate through magnetic speakers?
  - layer8 2mo ago
    That probably would be worse, because you aren’t seeing how your examiner reacts and will be imagining the worst.
- SoftTalker 2mo ago
  I have some anxiety about public speaking or presenting to a group. Not debilitating but more than normal, or so I feel. But I find that once I get going it fades. Starting off is the peak of stress. So if the examiners are trained how to encourage a person to start talking, perhaps with some introductory conversation, and when questioning not being confrontational, that might help. The goal is to find out what they know, not how polished their presentation or debating skills are.
- adastra22 2mo ago
  I’m a generation younger but I concur. I hated presenting and my anxiety was crippling. But the solution for that is to practice more, not to avoid it.
  - icantevenhold 2mo ago
cm2012 2mo ago
If you want to be an adult functioning in society, being able to briefly talk about your ideas with strangers is important.
- jtafurth 2mo ago
  I doubt the question here is about willingness, but inability due to real medical conditions. Assuming real and sufficiently severe ADHD.
  - BoingBoomTschak 2mo ago
    Then maybe you're not suited for the task. Most intellectual professions (keyword being profession, please don't bring up the lone mad scientist fiction thing) require the ability to communicate clearly. If you're blind, you won't be a racing driver, that's just how it is.
  - wpietri 2mo ago
    As an ADHDer, I think talks and discussion are way better than written exams. The most common treatments for ADHD are stimulants, but human interaction is a natural stimulant, and the real-time feedback of a human audience is more engaging.
pinkmuffinere 2mo ago
> We ask Master's students to give US instruction on a topic (drawn randomly on a card in front of them, from a list they know a few days in advance) This is also an absolutely great way to ensure the participants really understand what they’re saying, even aside from ai-related concerns. You could always pull definitions straight from textbooks, and write something which mostly makes sense but that you don’t really understand. But you really can’t teach something unless you do understand it, imo. The best command I ever got on a topic was due to TA’ing
- varjag 2mo ago
  This happened to me back in the 1990s when I was assigned presenting Boltzmann machine to the class. I read up on it naturally, could explain each step in isolation but couldn't still quite internalize how it all came together. But as I was presenting it, all suddenly clicked into place. It was remarkable transition from loosely connected foggy concepts to instant clarity which made me break mid sentence. Once re-composed I couldn't help but notice that the manner of my presentation has changed. The professor (strict uncompromising man hated by most of the class) then remarked, "now I see you really figured it out".
fierycatnet 2mo ago
That's how my school did it even for high school courses. End of the year exams were infront of the committee. Same thing, you pull a ticket and have few minutes to prepare the answer. I aced physics course, that was a proud moment but credits didnt transfer when we moved overseas...
analog31 2mo ago
>>> Of course, woe betide those with social phobias.... True but maybe a blessing in disguise. As a shy college kid once (although not with any real disability), being forced to get up in front of people helped me get over it. And I was 10x better after a semester of teaching during a break in my career.
cwnyth 2mo ago
This is also the case for many graduate programs in the US as well, but what this article is suggesting is that there are now specific oral exams to defend a student's paper, not just general oral exams.
talon8635 2mo ago
I have always disliked public speaking and oral defense since I was a child, to the point of fairly profound anxiety. But please withhold you woe—these people are, as I am today, adults. Masters students. Coddling them and holding low expectations has proven to be a sort of “killing them with kindness” approach to handling modern youth. People need to be encouraged (and required) to do things they don’t like to become proper functioning adults. I didnt like it, and I still don’t, as it the case with most everyone. But we all grow from it.
- zem 2mo ago
  > But please withhold you woe as a side note, "woe betide you" roughly means "you're in for a very bad time", not "I feel sorry for you".
  - LoganDark 2mo ago
    "Woe" is also sometimes used to tell someone to just suck it up and deal with it. In those cases it is a way to make fun of someone for being too sensitive or complaining too much.
    - zem 2mo ago
      sure, but what I was pointing out here is that "woe betide you" is a specific idiomatic phrase. it's usually used as a threat, i.e. "woe betide you if you do that".
      - LoganDark 2mo ago
        I didn't see it as a threat here at all. I think it was just pointing out an underserved part of the population when it comes to this. And I think "withhold your woe" was meant to say that getting out of your comfort zone can be beneficial sometimes (or in other words, that it's not necessarily actually underserving).
        RandomTisk 2mo ago
winter_blue 2mo ago
This is truly awesome and fantastic, and I hope it becomes a thing all around the world.
whateverboat 2mo ago
> Of course, woe betide those with social phobias... The professors at my grad school had a very amazing tact to get through this as well. They had enough time for specific students who they knew struggled with such issues during the mid semester orals and then had an amazing way of getting answers from them even in the discomfort. It is amazing how much can be done with soft talking, slow progression and pauses in between from professors who care.
nc55g3g 2mo ago
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fryanyway_swe 2mo ago
Welcome to the real world. One cannot be coddled forever.
chasd00 2mo ago
that's interesting, i do something similar when helping my 16 year old with his homework. I ask him to teach me the topic first (it's been a while since i took physics and calc hah). By the time he's able to answer my questions so that i can help him then he's answered his own questions pretty much. I do this at work too. When doing code review i actually do mostly listening and then some questions. If the developer can teach me the code and i understand what they're doing and why then it's usually pretty good code already.
Athas 2mo ago
Clarification for non-Danes: this post is not entirely accurate. Not all Master's courses in Denmark have oral examinations, and many courses before the Master's level (including elementary school) have oral exams. It is unrelated to the academic level, and instead related to the academic discipline and the size of the course. The latter is in my experience the main constraint, as oral exams are difficult to scale. They usually take 20-30 minutes per student, and if you have a course with 200 students, well, you're in for a long time. The oral exam format described is also somewhat unusual, in my experience. It is usually the case that there is one internal examiner and one external examiner in the room. More than that would be ruinously expensive. The format varies; usually it's a combination of a short presentation and questions asked by the examiner. Drawing a random topic is very common. Source: I am a university teacher in Denmark who teaches master-level courses without oral exams, and I have been an examiner for many oral exams at university level.
- cycomanic 2mo ago
  There was an interesting talk I heard a while ago about the scalability of oral exams vs written. They did quite a bit of study of typical exam preparation and marking times and the cross over point where oral exams were actually taking longer than written exams was surprisingly high, around 180 students or so. To be fair though I think they considered 15 min oral exams, but the gist is that in the scalability argument people tend to forget to account for marking and exam design time appropriately.
  - Athas 2mo ago
    The problem is not the total time commitment, but the flexibility of when that time can be spent. The time expenditure for a written exam (writing the exam set, testing it, correcting submissions, having a grading meeting) can be spread over many weeks, with plenty of room to move things around to take care of other responsibilities, and easy tolerance for delays. Oral exams have to be scheduled in a dense block because students are only available during designated exam weeks, and any delays have cascading effects.
fooofw 2mo ago
This is not general to all subjects in Danish universities. I studied physics in Denmark and while the majority of my exams after the second year match this description (though not all), my impression is that this is not at all the norm. Students in the humanities in my dorm, for example, seemed to have an overwhelming majority of several-day take-home written exams (with no associated oral defense).
cloudie78 2mo ago
Hi, former student with social phobia and terrified of public speaking. Today: adult with no problems doing public speaking in front of hundreds. What fixed me: more public speaking and not having the option of avoiding the task.
- maxlin 2mo ago
  I second this.
- da_chicken 2mo ago
  That's part of what fixed it for me. What really fixed it was three things: 1. Actually being very knowledgeable about the subject in question, to the extent that I can offer facts or well-reasoned opinion on the topic on essentially any reasonable question. In other words, not being a junior high school student asked to do a 15 minute speech on a topic drawn from a hat. 2. Not having the idea that the audience expects a correct and immediate answer to every possible question. 3. Not doing every single speech literally in front of 15% of my entire peer group, including all my friends, all the people I admired, and all the people who treated me poorly. I still hate doing Zoom calls without slides or a screen to share because I can't stand having 20 people staring intently at me. It's just distracting. But otherwise I have no problem at all talking for hours on a topic I know well.
  - sandworm101 2mo ago
    One thing doctor, and to a lesser extent lawyers, have to do is project confidence when they may in fact not have much. A doctor/lawyer regularly has to quickly become an expert on a subject, or seem like one, often overnight but sometimes much faster than that. Briefing something you are still new to, without getting it horribly wrong, is a skill that must be developed. I run into this in the military too. "The person to do the ethics/roe/safety/drugs/mental health brief just called in sick. Two hundred soldiers will be here at 0800 tomorrow. Read fast."
    - morningsam 2mo ago
      I would much prefer for a doctor who isn't sure to signal that fact somehow. It was annoying enough for LLMs to confidently lead you down wrong paths most of the time (they've gotten much better by now), we don't need humans doing it too. For lawyers it makes sense, of course.
soxj28 2mo ago
That’s not entirely true. It varies from master’s programme to master’s programme even inside the same Danish university. Assessment is defined by the corresponding programme board. Thesis/dissertations do have to be defended, but for course assessment that is not a given. (I run a course and teach as well on other Master programmes.)
ghaff 2mo ago
Fairly normal, in my experience, for Masters with a thesis in the US as well. And I have not uncommon group project presentations undergrad as well--in addition to grad school.

viccis 2mo ago

>Of course, woe betide those with social phobias I can see this being a problem in the US when it comes to "accommodations" in general. Students with an ADHD diagnosis can claim it causes just about any difficulty and get accommodations for it. The local (top ranked, but everyone's seen all the stories coming out of the Ivies...) college here gives students with ADHD double time on exams and has them take it in a special disabilities proctoring center where it's a struggle to get the staff there to even enforce those time limits. Obviously this also makes it infinitely easier to outright cheat as well. Not a chance you will get past the "my ADHD makes it hard for me to think about these things verbally" challenge at institutions like this.

bonoboTP 2mo ago
European universities also have accommodations and extra time etc. And yes it's an arms race. Though at some point it will simply inflate away the value of the degree, but educators will stand there baffled, not understanding how it could happen.
eutropia 2mo ago
as someone with ADHD who always finished exams first or was the designated spokesperson for group presentations... I have no idea why you'd want to be taking a test a second longer than you already have to. Either you know the material or you don't, anything taking a lot of time is borderline stuff where you're scrapping for points you might not deserve in the first place lol
- fnord77 2mo ago
  > I have no idea why you'd want to be taking a test a second longer than you already have to. After I got treated, I understand why. Too look for mistakes. Now I don't understand why people don't take the maximum alloted time
- fn-mote 2mo ago
  Absolutely not saying this is even the most common case but: people “without ADHD” but with a diagnosis can use the extra time effectively. It is most clear when there is some kind of problem solving involved. An extra 30 min to figure out the trick or plan a detailed approach is a real benefit. The other case is where there’s some missing knowledge but with a bunch of extra effort you can figure out how to do it. That would be something like re-constructing a self-balancing binary tree from some half-remembered lecture notes.
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  > I have no idea why you'd want to be taking a test a second longer than you already have to. The theory was that ADHD students have trouble sustaining concentration, so extra time allows for thought breaks and distractions. The idea was that 2 hours for the ADHD student would be similar to 1 hour of concentration for a non-ADHD student, and therefore the inequity had been partially compensated. The teachers I know have the same observation that you do: The extra test time isn’t usually used by the ADHD students, but when other students (or maybe more accurately, parents) discover that extra test time was available, most of the high performing students suddenly got diagnosed with ADHD at the same time. They were the ones staying extra long to proofread their work. For the elementary/junior high teachers I know the schools’ solution was to give everyone the same extended test taking time. Easiest way to remove the incentive to seek out a fake diagnosis without taking anything away from anyone.
- vector_spaces 2mo ago
  ADHD is known to be able to affect speed and consistency of output, even of mastered material, and in a variety of ways -- hence "I have no idea..." Standard diagnostic questionnaires commonly reference this. The last part of your comment reflects a lack of understanding of both human cognition and recall and ADHD in particular.
bbminner 2mo ago
Oh, at least in the post Soviet tradition of oral exams, you are given plenty of time to think and prepare your argument before you start an actual conversation with the examining professor. And if you need to think more during the exam to answer a tricky question, the professor just shifts to talk to another student who is ready to present their case for the time being. So it is less of a public speaking and more of a conversation where you can take a pause to think through an argument, or a proof, or a problem.
jrapdx3 2mo ago
Treating many ADHD adult students some did take advantage of accommodations available to them. Problems with test-taking varied, but common issues were getting distracted by extraneous stimuli in "regular" classrooms. Frequently ADHD students were slow readers and really did need/use extra time. But the biggest problem was test-taking anxiety, often quite prominent, contributing to difficulty with tests. Interestingly, more than not ADHD students were reluctant to ask for accommodations. Some never availed themselves of this benefit. Others only used part of the options they could use. In my practice were a number of ADHD adults admitted to nursing school, some having serious academic difficulties and eventually asking for accommodations. The assistance was effective. Notably, none of these student-patients failed or dropped out, all graduated. A pleasant footnote to add is a subset of these nurses developed exceptional skill earning them leadership positions in their institutions. Reputable clinicians wouldn't give an ADHD diagnosis or support academic accommodations without sufficient clinical evidence.
- viccis 2mo ago
  Part of the problem here is that this college has <5% acceptance rate. Very hard to get into and prestigious. The students who get in have been minmaxing and exploiting every advantage they can for their entire life.
  - jrapdx3 2mo ago
    > The students who get in have been minmaxing and exploiting every advantage they can for their entire life. Not a school I'd be tempted to apply to. Scholastic competition is one thing, but scrapping for every conceivable speck of "I'm better than the next guy" is not a bit attractive. I wonder about the campus atmosphere. Seems likely contesting would be a hard to break habit. I feel tense just thinking about it :/ Of course, ADHD students are less likely to achieve near-perfect grades than non-ADHD peers. Though it's not impossible for an ADHD student to succeed. Anyway, not at all uncommon for a student to do very well until subjects become more complex and challenging. Conceivably a student could look promising, but then suddenly have great difficulty keeping up. So a safe bet that at least a few students at the top-level school have ADHD. If the school offers little or no accommodation, affected students probably have to accept getting educated elsewhere. Fortunately, more than not ADHD treatment is effective, a favorable response can make a pivotal difference in the student's outcome.
lll-o-lll 2mo ago
> college here gives students with ADHD double time on exams No offence, but this is a ridiculous thing to get worked up about. Various neurological conditions exhibit in people just being “slow” in exams. No one ever diagnosed me with anything (probably too long ago), but teachers somehow understood that I was one of these and gave me extra time on exams. I didn’t want it (who wants to be in an exam a minute longer than required!). But I did need it through high school. In university I was able to complete in time (mostly); I suspect because I had practiced doing exams so much by then that I’d figured out how to optimise for time (maybe everyone knows this and I was just very slow to learn it?). I’m someone who excelled academically, and it was an important part of my identity at that time. And I do remember exams (before teachers gave me more time) where I’d get a lower grade as I’d only completed 70%. It was incredibly painful; I knew the material, if only I could get it down on paper in time! (I’ve also been an incredibly slow writer). Extra time for someone who struggles to complete on time isn’t cheating - it’s allowing people to demonstrate what they can do.
- noAnswer 2mo ago
  > teachers somehow understood that I was one of these Are you sure your parents weren't involved in the background? > Extra time for someone who struggles to complete on time isn’t cheating - it’s allowing people to demonstrate what they can do. For me it becomes cheating when its no longer allowed to be mentioned on the certificate that extra time was given.

vardalab 2mo ago

So, I grew up in the former Soviet Union. Starting with ninth grade entrance entrance and exit exams were like that. I remember I had to take university physics exam just to be able to qualify for a consideration. It was fairly rough, but I think in a way, good system because it sifted out the wannabes early on.

bbminner 2mo ago
Same. The focus on written exams rated blindly and uniformly at the US higher education system always puzzled me. I guess that's the only way to scale things up when you pay professors and teachers living wages?
- Andrex 2mo ago
  The blind aspect (I would assume) is meant to cut down on favoritism and discrimination. With the US I understand how that would come about. Whether it succeeds in that goal is a separate topic.
dzhiurgis 2mo ago
It does indeed sound great except that everyone was corrupt to the bone
- Barrin92 2mo ago
  the STEM academic world in the Soviet Union was extremely meritocratic. largely shielded from outside influence and maybe the best talent pipeline anyone has ever invented to produce scientific expertise. Exception being biology as Lysenkoism at some point infected the field. Corruption affected history or economics because it was ideologically relevant to authorities but math and physics proceeded on its own.
- cleaning 2mo ago
  This is an oversimplification. Yes, there was corruption, but it was much less corrupt than the US system, especially today. The US system doesn't try to hide it either, everyone knows about legacy admissions and "school spirit"/donations.

bunderbunder 2mo ago

I expect a lot of the social anxiety can be mitigated by arranging things so that students get a chance to know the examiners and build a rapport with them ahead of time. (E.g., if they’re an instructor then make sure they have office hours and encourage students to go.) I’ve got my mental health challenges but that’s how things worked in my grad school and I got by just fine.

thomasahle 2mo ago
> I expect a lot of the social anxiety can be mitigated by arranging things so that students get a chance to know the examiners and build a rapport with them ahead of time. That's not my experience. Standing in front of somebody who's been your teacher and you might look up to is way scarier than some rando.

dzhiurgis 2mo ago

[flagged]

obscurette 2mo ago

64 year old nerd with social phobias here. When I was in school, I had to practice oral knowledge tests since grade one. I had my first oral exam in grade six (math) and 2-3 oral exams every year since then. If I hadn't had that experience, I would never have gotten into university. I still don't like verbal communications with people (especially in a tense situations like exam), I'm slow etc, but it's manageable because I had to practice it a lot. I don't think I would have survived in modern "the environment must be made suitable for everyone" school/university.

catlikesshrimp 2mo ago
Would it help to be interviewed in a room where there is no other person, and you can be seen through a camera and communicate through magnetic speakers?
- layer8 2mo ago
  That probably would be worse, because you aren’t seeing how your examiner reacts and will be imagining the worst.
SoftTalker 2mo ago
I have some anxiety about public speaking or presenting to a group. Not debilitating but more than normal, or so I feel. But I find that once I get going it fades. Starting off is the peak of stress. So if the examiners are trained how to encourage a person to start talking, perhaps with some introductory conversation, and when questioning not being confrontational, that might help. The goal is to find out what they know, not how polished their presentation or debating skills are.
adastra22 2mo ago
I’m a generation younger but I concur. I hated presenting and my anxiety was crippling. But the solution for that is to practice more, not to avoid it.
- icantevenhold 2mo ago

cm2012 2mo ago

If you want to be an adult functioning in society, being able to briefly talk about your ideas with strangers is important.

jtafurth 2mo ago
I doubt the question here is about willingness, but inability due to real medical conditions. Assuming real and sufficiently severe ADHD.
- BoingBoomTschak 2mo ago
  Then maybe you're not suited for the task. Most intellectual professions (keyword being profession, please don't bring up the lone mad scientist fiction thing) require the ability to communicate clearly. If you're blind, you won't be a racing driver, that's just how it is.
- wpietri 2mo ago
  As an ADHDer, I think talks and discussion are way better than written exams. The most common treatments for ADHD are stimulants, but human interaction is a natural stimulant, and the real-time feedback of a human audience is more engaging.

pinkmuffinere 2mo ago

> We ask Master's students to give US instruction on a topic (drawn randomly on a card in front of them, from a list they know a few days in advance) This is also an absolutely great way to ensure the participants really understand what they’re saying, even aside from ai-related concerns. You could always pull definitions straight from textbooks, and write something which mostly makes sense but that you don’t really understand. But you really can’t teach something unless you do understand it, imo. The best command I ever got on a topic was due to TA’ing

varjag 2mo ago
This happened to me back in the 1990s when I was assigned presenting Boltzmann machine to the class. I read up on it naturally, could explain each step in isolation but couldn't still quite internalize how it all came together. But as I was presenting it, all suddenly clicked into place. It was remarkable transition from loosely connected foggy concepts to instant clarity which made me break mid sentence. Once re-composed I couldn't help but notice that the manner of my presentation has changed. The professor (strict uncompromising man hated by most of the class) then remarked, "now I see you really figured it out".

fierycatnet 2mo ago

That's how my school did it even for high school courses. End of the year exams were infront of the committee. Same thing, you pull a ticket and have few minutes to prepare the answer. I aced physics course, that was a proud moment but credits didnt transfer when we moved overseas...

analog31 2mo ago

>>> Of course, woe betide those with social phobias.... True but maybe a blessing in disguise. As a shy college kid once (although not with any real disability), being forced to get up in front of people helped me get over it. And I was 10x better after a semester of teaching during a break in my career.

cwnyth 2mo ago

This is also the case for many graduate programs in the US as well, but what this article is suggesting is that there are now specific oral exams to defend a student's paper, not just general oral exams.

talon8635 2mo ago

I have always disliked public speaking and oral defense since I was a child, to the point of fairly profound anxiety. But please withhold you woe—these people are, as I am today, adults. Masters students. Coddling them and holding low expectations has proven to be a sort of “killing them with kindness” approach to handling modern youth. People need to be encouraged (and required) to do things they don’t like to become proper functioning adults. I didnt like it, and I still don’t, as it the case with most everyone. But we all grow from it.

zem 2mo ago
> But please withhold you woe as a side note, "woe betide you" roughly means "you're in for a very bad time", not "I feel sorry for you".
- LoganDark 2mo ago
  "Woe" is also sometimes used to tell someone to just suck it up and deal with it. In those cases it is a way to make fun of someone for being too sensitive or complaining too much.
  - zem 2mo ago
    sure, but what I was pointing out here is that "woe betide you" is a specific idiomatic phrase. it's usually used as a threat, i.e. "woe betide you if you do that".
    - LoganDark 2mo ago
      I didn't see it as a threat here at all. I think it was just pointing out an underserved part of the population when it comes to this. And I think "withhold your woe" was meant to say that getting out of your comfort zone can be beneficial sometimes (or in other words, that it's not necessarily actually underserving).
      - RandomTisk 2mo ago

winter_blue 2mo ago

This is truly awesome and fantastic, and I hope it becomes a thing all around the world.

whateverboat 2mo ago

> Of course, woe betide those with social phobias... The professors at my grad school had a very amazing tact to get through this as well. They had enough time for specific students who they knew struggled with such issues during the mid semester orals and then had an amazing way of getting answers from them even in the discomfort. It is amazing how much can be done with soft talking, slow progression and pauses in between from professors who care.

nc55g3g 2mo ago

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fryanyway_swe 2mo ago

Welcome to the real world. One cannot be coddled forever.

chasd00 2mo ago

that's interesting, i do something similar when helping my 16 year old with his homework. I ask him to teach me the topic first (it's been a while since i took physics and calc hah). By the time he's able to answer my questions so that i can help him then he's answered his own questions pretty much. I do this at work too. When doing code review i actually do mostly listening and then some questions. If the developer can teach me the code and i understand what they're doing and why then it's usually pretty good code already.

Athas 2mo ago

Clarification for non-Danes: this post is not entirely accurate. Not all Master's courses in Denmark have oral examinations, and many courses before the Master's level (including elementary school) have oral exams. It is unrelated to the academic level, and instead related to the academic discipline and the size of the course. The latter is in my experience the main constraint, as oral exams are difficult to scale. They usually take 20-30 minutes per student, and if you have a course with 200 students, well, you're in for a long time. The oral exam format described is also somewhat unusual, in my experience. It is usually the case that there is one internal examiner and one external examiner in the room. More than that would be ruinously expensive. The format varies; usually it's a combination of a short presentation and questions asked by the examiner. Drawing a random topic is very common. Source: I am a university teacher in Denmark who teaches master-level courses without oral exams, and I have been an examiner for many oral exams at university level.

cycomanic 2mo ago
There was an interesting talk I heard a while ago about the scalability of oral exams vs written. They did quite a bit of study of typical exam preparation and marking times and the cross over point where oral exams were actually taking longer than written exams was surprisingly high, around 180 students or so. To be fair though I think they considered 15 min oral exams, but the gist is that in the scalability argument people tend to forget to account for marking and exam design time appropriately.
- Athas 2mo ago
  The problem is not the total time commitment, but the flexibility of when that time can be spent. The time expenditure for a written exam (writing the exam set, testing it, correcting submissions, having a grading meeting) can be spread over many weeks, with plenty of room to move things around to take care of other responsibilities, and easy tolerance for delays. Oral exams have to be scheduled in a dense block because students are only available during designated exam weeks, and any delays have cascading effects.

fooofw 2mo ago

This is not general to all subjects in Danish universities. I studied physics in Denmark and while the majority of my exams after the second year match this description (though not all), my impression is that this is not at all the norm. Students in the humanities in my dorm, for example, seemed to have an overwhelming majority of several-day take-home written exams (with no associated oral defense).

cloudie78 2mo ago

Hi, former student with social phobia and terrified of public speaking. Today: adult with no problems doing public speaking in front of hundreds. What fixed me: more public speaking and not having the option of avoiding the task.

maxlin 2mo ago
I second this.
da_chicken 2mo ago
That's part of what fixed it for me. What really fixed it was three things: 1. Actually being very knowledgeable about the subject in question, to the extent that I can offer facts or well-reasoned opinion on the topic on essentially any reasonable question. In other words, not being a junior high school student asked to do a 15 minute speech on a topic drawn from a hat. 2. Not having the idea that the audience expects a correct and immediate answer to every possible question. 3. Not doing every single speech literally in front of 15% of my entire peer group, including all my friends, all the people I admired, and all the people who treated me poorly. I still hate doing Zoom calls without slides or a screen to share because I can't stand having 20 people staring intently at me. It's just distracting. But otherwise I have no problem at all talking for hours on a topic I know well.
- sandworm101 2mo ago
  One thing doctor, and to a lesser extent lawyers, have to do is project confidence when they may in fact not have much. A doctor/lawyer regularly has to quickly become an expert on a subject, or seem like one, often overnight but sometimes much faster than that. Briefing something you are still new to, without getting it horribly wrong, is a skill that must be developed. I run into this in the military too. "The person to do the ethics/roe/safety/drugs/mental health brief just called in sick. Two hundred soldiers will be here at 0800 tomorrow. Read fast."
  - morningsam 2mo ago
    I would much prefer for a doctor who isn't sure to signal that fact somehow. It was annoying enough for LLMs to confidently lead you down wrong paths most of the time (they've gotten much better by now), we don't need humans doing it too. For lawyers it makes sense, of course.

soxj28 2mo ago

That’s not entirely true. It varies from master’s programme to master’s programme even inside the same Danish university. Assessment is defined by the corresponding programme board. Thesis/dissertations do have to be defended, but for course assessment that is not a given. (I run a course and teach as well on other Master programmes.)

ghaff 2mo ago

Fairly normal, in my experience, for Masters with a thesis in the US as well. And I have not uncommon group project presentations undergrad as well--in addition to grad school.