Integrevise AI Viva Pilot at Lindenwood University — Preliminary, Mixed Evidence on Verifying Student Understanding

In late 2025, Integrevise, a startup based in Newport, Wales, began piloting an AI-supported 'viva' tool designed to check whether students truly understand the coursework they submit, rather than simply detecting whether text was AI-generated. Students pair a written assignment with a short, adaptive spoken conversation in which an AI system asks them to explain their reasoning and defend their work aloud. Lindenwood University, a private liberal arts institution in St. Charles, Missouri, ran the tool across Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 as two separate implementation cycles.

In the Spring 2026 cycle, 52 vivas were completed. Only 7 students completed a formal survey afterward: 14.3% agreed the oral exercise deepened their thinking, while 57.1% disagreed or strongly disagreed. Session-level feedback data was incomplete — 22 sessions logged positive reactions, 10 logged negative reactions, and 20 had no feedback recorded at all.

The peer-reviewed pilot report, co-authored by a Lindenwood faculty member and two Integrevise staff, is explicit that the results are preliminary: it cites technical issues (voice lag, application freezes) and some student resistance to the AI-mediated format, and states the findings support further investigation rather than any claim of proven efficacy or readiness to scale. The vendor's own marketing separately claims far more favourable figures (80% reporting stronger confidence, 75% saying the approach could reduce disengagement) that do not match the peer-reviewed survey data — a gap worth flagging for any institution considering adoption.

This is preliminary, mixed evidence from a small, single-institution pilot with an incomplete survey response and an author conflict of interest (two of three authors are vendor staff); it supports further investigation, not a claim of proven efficacy.