The CDIO standards stress the importance of using a variety of examination methods for effective learning assessment as well as active learning methods to help the students develop skills in applying knowledge to new settings. Oral assessment methods in a more traditional form where students answer questions in oral form instead of in written seems to be underrepresented in practice as well as in the literature although it has many benefits in supporting active learning and reaching learning outcomes. The oral examination method has been used during ten years within the field of Industrial Engineering and Management at the School of Engineering at Jönköping University in Sweden. The aim of this paper is to show how the oral assessment method has been successfully used in contributing to active learning in engineering education and lessons learned from this experience. The experience shows that by having students undertaking the assessment in groups, an active learning occasion is created by interaction between students as well as students and teacher. Through the design of the assessment the teacher has the opportunity to help the students to make connections between detailed knowledge and system understanding as well as among key concepts and to the application of knowledge to new settings. The assessment procedure also supports the teacher to discern the learning outcomes from each student. Further, the interaction between the teacher and the students during the assessment helps the teacher to capture what improvements need to be made in teaching and learning.