Measuring Academic Performance in Psychology in the Era of AI: The benefits of an oral viva in assessing undergraduate dissertations

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs), challenge psychology educators’ ability to assess students’ understanding and judgement through written coursework. We argue that this issue is especially acute for the compulsory empirical project required for British Psychological Society (BPS) accreditation and that interactive oral examinations (vivas) offer a discipline-aligned and scalable response. Grounded in the epistemic features of psychology, the viva enables direct assessment of students’ conceptual understanding, methodological justification, and reflective thinking in ways written reports cannot reliably capture in an AI-saturated environment. In this paper we propose an operational framework for implementing project vivas across final-year cohorts and argue that viva assessment should be viewed not as a defensive measure, but as a future-oriented approach that enhances authenticity, equity, and educational quality in psychology.