[semilin]

This seems like a mistake. On the one hand, other commenters' experiences provide additional evidence that oral communication is a vastly different skill from the written word and ought to be emphasized more in education. Even if a student truly understands a concept, they might struggle at talking about it in a realtime context. For many real-world cases, this is unacceptable. Therefore the skill needs to be taught.

On the other hand, can an AI exam really simulate the conditions necessary for improving at this skill? I think this is unlikely. The students' responses indicate not a general lack of expertise in oral communication but also a discomfort with this particular environment. While the author is making steps to improve the environment, I think it is fundamentally too different from actual human-to-human discussion to test a student's ability in oral communication. Even if a student could learn to succeed in this environment, it won't produce much improvement in their real world ability.

But maybe that's not the goal, and it's simply to test understanding. Well, as other commenters have stated, this seems trivially cheatable. So it neither succeeds at improving one's ability in oral communication nor at testing understanding. Other solutions have to be thought of.