Latest news with #BryonyJames
RNZ News
23-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Trump administration halts enrolments for foreign students
world politics 25 minutes ago The Trump administration has halted Harvard University's ability to enroll international students - and ordered existing international students to transfer - in an escalating battle with the Ivy League School. The Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, says the aim is to root out anti-Americanism and anti-semitism on campus. Victoria University of Wellington's Provost, Professor Bryony James spoke with charlotte cook.
The Spinoff
08-05-2025
- The Spinoff
Why AI is forcing universities to rethink the way they run exams
A last-minute decision to return to pen and paper has put a spotlight on higher education's struggle to ensure academic integrity in the age of AI, writes Catherine McGregor in today's extract from The Bulletin. Handwriting makes a surprise comeback for some students As mentioned in Tuesday's Bulletin, Victoria University of Wellington's law school has announced that it is returning to handwritten exams for some courses this trimester, citing fears of AI-assisted cheating. The sudden decision affects students in two 300-level courses, both of which are externally regulated and require in-person, invigilated assessment. In a message to students, law dean Geoff McLay said the university lacked a reliable technical solution to prevent unauthorised AI use on laptops. The affected students seem unimpressed, with one telling the Herald it's 'backwards behaviour' that has 'left students in the lurch'. Vic's provost Bryony James has acknowledged the bad timing, but says handwritten exams remain 'the gold standard of ensuring integrity'. NZ's mixed assessment landscape While Victoria pushes back against AI in exams, other universities are taking different approaches. At Auckland University, all law exams remain digital, backed by lockdown browsers (which deny access to unauthorised websites) and in-person invigilators. At Waikato it's the opposite: all law exams are handwritten, with exceptions for students with accessibility needs. It's a mixed picture when it comes to other disciplines, too. An Auckland University spokesperson tells RNZ that 61% of all exams were digital in 2024. At Victoria University, it's only 30%. Among universities considering a return to handwritten (or 'blue book') exams, changes to the format may sometimes be required. According to Bryony James, 'one way to help students faced with handwritten tests [is] to make them multi-choice, or require answers in bullet-point form', RNZ writes. A warning from the US Victoria University's decision coincides with an alarming investigation by New York magazine (soft paywall) into rampant AI cheating at US universities. Author James D. Walsh paints a picture of widespread, almost casual reliance on tools like ChatGPT to complete assignments. Sarah, a Canadian university student, explains her dependence on AI bluntly: 'I spend so much time on TikTok. Hours and hours, until my eyes start hurting, which makes it hard to plan and do my schoolwork. With ChatGPT, I can write an essay in two hours that normally takes 12.' The problem isn't confined to essays – students are now using AI to pass coding assignments, solve complex maths problems and cheat in internship interviews, Walsh writes. Many professors are on the verge of giving up. One 'is now convinced that the humanities, and writing in particular, are quickly becoming an anachronistic art elective like basket-weaving'. Says the professor: 'Every time I talk to a colleague about this, the same thing comes up: retirement. When can I retire? When can I get out of this? This is not what we signed up for.' The detection dilemma While universities are going old-school to beat AI cheating in exams, many are relying on tech solutions to catch students who use AI to write essays at home. Massey University has leaned heavily on Turnitin's AI-detection feature, but its rollout has been mired in controversy. Last April the Sunday Star-Times reported that at least 20 Massey students had 'claimed amnesty' in exchange for confessing to using ChatGPT to cheat. Provost Giselle Byrnes said the university uses Turnitin's AI-detection 'as a last resort' but a number of students said they had been accused of cheating after receiving false positives, the Manawatu Standard reported. A recent Reddit post from another New Zealand student detailed their struggle with faulty detection tools. Under the headline 'AI has ruined my university experience', the user wrote that they 'truly put a lot of effort into my work [but] recently all of my assignments have been coming back as AI-generated … I'm sick of looking like a cheater, and I know none of my tutors believe me when I say I don't use ai.'
RNZ News
06-05-2025
- RNZ News
Return to pen and paper for some university exams tough for digitally savvy students
Students at Victoria's Pipitea campus told RNZ it would not be an easy transition to go back to paper. File picture. Photo: Students say going back to pen and paper after years of taking tests on a screen will be a challenging shift. Two third-year classes at Victoria University of Wellington, have been told they will be handwriting their upcoming exams, after concerns it will not be possible to prevent cheating with AI if students are allowed to use laptops. The exam period begins on 6 June. Students taking LAWS 312 - Equity, Trusts and Succession and LAWS 334 - Ethics and the Law, which the university explained were both externally regulated assessments, received a message from the dean, Geoff McLay, on Monday. He said despite laptops being allowed for previous in-person exams, he was worried advancements in AI had made it hard to be sure students' work was their own, and a technical solution for policing it was not ready yet. Students at Victoria's Pipitea campus told RNZ it would not be an easy transition to go back to paper. One second-year law student said: "We had high school and then it was Covid, instantly into the computers and then everything kind of went digital. I would be concerned and unfamiliar if I were to just go straight back to paper tests." Another said it created a time constraint: "It's not as quick when you're handwriting it, so it's definitely easier online." Victoria University provost Bryony James said they were working on a solution. "The most important concern [...] is to absolutely ensure the integrity of the assessment, because that ensures the integrity of the students' final qualification." And when they did commit to a solution, they wanted it to last. Across the university, 70 percent of exams across the university were still paper-based, but it was not just law courses that were also affected by the lack of an AI screening system. "There are other accredited degrees across the university that also have regulatory requirements, and they're addressing it the same way that law is this time around - by using handwritten exams - because that is still, I'm afraid to say, the gold standard of ensuring integrity," James said. One way to help students faced with handwritten tests was to make them multi-choice, or require answers in bullet-point form, she said, and the university would be working with students with disabilities or accessibility needs. Law students spoken to by RNZ said most of their exams were done digitally - but that varied by university. A spokesperson from the University of Auckland told RNZ all law exams this year were done digitally. "Across all disciplines in 2024, there were 81,267 digital exam sessions versus 52,552 paper-based exam sessions," it said - that's 60.7 percent digital. "For on-campus digital exams, we employ a secure lockdown browser within our digital exam platform that restricts access to unauthorised websites, applications and functions to prevent use of unauthorised materials, as well as in-person invigilation." But at Waikato University, a spokesperson said all law exams this trimester would be handwritten, with exceptions for students with accessibility needs. Jacob Leith, a fourth-year law student at the University of Canterbury, said most of his exams were handwritten too - and he preferred it that way. "When it's online, the opportunity to be unethical is there, which may be tempting to some," he said. Auckland University AI professor Michael Whitbrock said students who studied with the help of AI were likely to see better grades - but that could make it complicated to prevent them using it during exams. "These systems can be so helpful in education," he said. "Not only should we expect that students are using them as they study, and as they understand their courses, but we should be pleased that they're doing so." But he said AI was becoming increasingly complex, and preventing its use in exams was something schools at all levels would have to face. Massey University senior lecturer Collin Bjork said it was not as simple as turning off the wifi. "You'd like to think that if you cut off the internet that it would cut off the access to AI, but that's only the browser based AI platforms," he said. "For example, if you download certain AI platforms to your computer, and run them locally on your own machine." Those models could then be fed large amounts of text - something law students would be familiar with - and provide answers based on that. Bjork said that many students benefit from the use of computers. "When you move back to a pencil and paper exam, one thing that you're risking is disadvantaging students with disabilities," he said. He said it also raised questions about how much funding, and how much of educators' energy, should be going towards policing AI-use, rather than educating students. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
