[sershe]

Not sure how scalable this is but a similar format was popular in Russia when I went to college long before AI. Typically in a large group with 2-5 examiners; everyone gets a slip with problems or theory questions with enough variation between people, and works on it. You're still not supposed to cheat, but it's more relaxed because of the next part, and some professors would say they don't even care if people copied as long as they can handle part 2.

Part 2 is that when you are ready, an examiner sits with you, looks over your stuff and asks questions about it, like clarifications, errors to see if you can fix them, fake errors to see if you can defend your solution, sometimes even variations or unrelated questions if they are on the fence as to the grade. Typically that takes 3-10 minutes per person.

Works great to catch cheating between students, textbook copying and such.

Given that people finish asynchronously you don't need that many examiners.

As to being more stressful for students I never understood this argument. So is real life.. being free from challenge based stress is for kindergarteners