One Scotland’s largest universities will return to in-person exams after concerns about the use of AI in online assessments.
The University of Glasgow gave students studying life sciences two months notice that examinations would revert back to the closed-book, handwritten format, a change from the open-book, online tests introduced during the pandemic.
The university said the decision to return to in-person exams was due to concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) tools being used by students.
A spokesman said the university wanted students and their future employers to be confident that their grades were reliable.
But students say they have not been given enough time to return to the old format, that they had been told their end-of-year tests would be online and that the change had caused a lot of distress.
Advertisement
Rosie McCrone, a fourth-year microbiology student from Perth, told the BBC the change meant that she would be sitting in-person university exams for the first time.
“Up until now we’ve been tested on the way we format an argument, we’ve never been tested on our ability to recall information. That’s something we are going to need to teach ourselves,” she said.
“It’s a source of anxiety for a lot of people now that they’ll have to do it after never doing in-person exams before.”
Third and fourth-year life sciences students will be affected by the change.
McCrone added that students could not resit the year if they failed the exams unless they had a medical reason.
Advertisement
She claimed there had been little support to ease students into the change. “There was no real indication of when they would go back to in-person. It’s not even the start of the semester,” she added.
The university spokesman said a range of measures had been put in place to provide support.
He added: “The university has made the change to invigilated, in-person, handwritten exams in life sciences exams for year three and four in response to the rapidly changing capabilities of generative AI tools, as a result of which online exams in many scientific disciplines are becoming more susceptible to misuse by these tools.
“The university is committed to adapting and redesigning our approaches to learning, teaching and assessment in ways that recognise the importance and huge potential of AI for the workplace.
“We are taking this step so that we can assure all students — together with the quality bodies that accredit degrees, as well as future employers — that the life sciences exams are reliable and the grades awarded are too.”
Advertisement
Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, can produce various types of content including text and images in response to prompts.
Stacey Harris, a third-year human biology student, questioned why the university had now raised concerns about the use of AI.
“If it’s because of AI, why is it so sudden? AI was about in December during our last assessments,” she told the BBC. She added that the last time she sat an in-person exam she was 15 years old.
“It is insane that they think it is OK to spring this on us last-minute, and they are showing no remorse,” she said.
The return to in-person exams comes after figures revealed chatbot websites were accessed thousands of times by Scottish university students last year amid cheating concerns.
Advertisement
Between May and August 2023 Glasgow University recorded 150,647 connections from its campus buildings and wi-fi networks to ChatGPT.
Robert Gordon University, in Aberdeen, said it was logging an average of 2,434 visits a month to the same site, while Abertay University in Dundee revealed that it had recorded 19,101 hits over the early summer months.
