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England’s university regulator urges more AI-free exams after OfS study
The Office for Students, citing research with Advance HE, said unsupervised coursework can often be completed with AI and called for more secure assessment, The Guardian reported Wednesday.
England’s higher education regulator said universities should make greater use of assessments that students cannot complete with generative AI, according to reporting Wednesday on new Office for Students research with Advance HE1,2.
The Office for Students said unsupervised work, including essays and similar take-home tasks, can often be finished to a high standard with AI tools, and that failing to use valid measures of knowledge and skills could breach registration conditions1.
The Guardian said the OfS and Advance HE spoke with more than 300 students and staff at 127 universities and colleges this year, and that staff described similar-looking submissions and doubts that some tasks still measured learning1.
Josh Fleming, the OfS director of strategy and delivery, said AI is both an opportunity and a risk to learning and assessment, and that the sector should expand AI-free assessment, The Guardian reported1.
The paper said some institutions have already shifted toward in-person written exams, oral vivas, critiques of AI output, or process-based work that records how a piece was produced1.
A Department for Education spokesperson said universities should treat the issue as serious and that the OfS should enforce existing standards and make its AI rules explicit, according to The Guardian1.
Techmeme circulated the same Guardian account without additional original reporting2.
Sources
How it’s being reported
2 sources
AI has made it ‘close to impossible’ to assess university coursework, regulator says
Leads with what someone said.
England's university regulator says AI makes grading coursework "close to impossible" and recommends a return to "AI-free assessment" methods like written exams (Richard Adams/The Guardian)
The regulator’s recommendation of AI-free methods.
Aggregates The Guardian’s account of the OfS warning and the call for AI-free assessment such as written exams.
Leaves out Department for Education comment and survey sample size.