Actually assessing students could mean, you know, testing them orally instead of handing them assignments. Or at least letting them have a written exam in front of you.

This is true. The best scheme is the formal written exam, because oral exams can have issues with bias.

Assignments can be useful for learning, as a way to keep students on-track. In my undergraduate days, assignments were optional, and scores on them were ignored if the exam had a higher score. That struck me as a good approach, but nowadays I think it would lead professors to create easy final exams, to avoid the low scores that lead to student complaints and problems at tenure time.