Only a handful of research papers have examined the assessment of student debate activities in higher education, and very little is currently known about how students might perceive a final oral exam in which they have to debate with/against each other. The aim of this study was to examine students' perceptions of participation and learning in debate classes, and of an aligned final exam, which was a debate-based oral group exam. A survey design was used to collect data from 98 university students who participated in such an exam, and a mixed methods convergent design was used to integrate quantitative and qualitative survey data. The exam format was found to be broadly acceptable to students and to be associated with higher levels of active participation and positively perceived learning and training in voluntary debate classes, but students called for extra attention to the scaffolding of quality debates.