Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-27-2026
Abstract
Large language modelshavefundamentallychallengedtraditional methods ofverifying doctoral competency as AI-generated text becomesincreasingly difficult to distinguish from human scholarship. This paper argues that thesiscommittees and doctoral supervisors must reclaim the oral defence as a critical checkpoint for assessing authentic threshold crossing rather than a ceremonial rite of passage. Drawing on historical examples from medieval oral disputations through tothe rise of written theses,this paper asserts the necessity of returning torigorous oralassessment. Given the limitations of detection technologies and the growing use of AI in thesiswriting, oral defences must move from confirmatory questions that permit regurgitated responses to exploratory inquiry that demonstrates genuine conceptual transformation. This requires developing assessment literacy among examiners to distinguish candidates who have achieved deep disciplinary understanding from those who have merely assembled AI-generated text, thereby revealing human capacities for critical thinking, spontaneous reasoning, and scholarly judgment.
College/Unit
College of Education
Academic Department
Doctoral Studies
Publication or Event Title
Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education
Issue
39
First Page
1
Last Page
8
ISSN
1759-667X
DOI
10.47408/jldhe.vi39.1809
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Storey, V. A. (2026). When AI Writes the Doctoral Thesis: Reclaiming the Oral Defence as a Learning Development Intervention. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (39), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi39.1809
