AI has made it ‘close to impossible’ to assess university coursework, regulator says
TL;DR
England's higher education regulator, the Office for Students, says universities should return to traditional exams and in-person presentations after lecturers complained that AI has made coursework close to impossible to assess. Its investigation found that heavy use of AI in essays, dissertations and open-book exams threatens the credibility of English degrees. Students also told the regulator that classmates boasted about using AI without staff noticing.
Nauti's Take
A return to in-person assessment is an opportunity to make knowledge and reasoning visible again, for example through oral presentations. The risk is that a pure retreat to closed exams tests skills for a workplace where AI is already standard.
Universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland should consider a mix of supervised exams and open assignments where students document how they used AI.
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