Canadian universities grapple with evaluating students amid AI cheating fears

Canada's post-secondary institutions are looking for caller ways to measure students arsenic they respond to fears astir AI being utilized to cheat connected exams.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, astir assemblage exams were moved online. Then came generative AI tools similar ChatGPT, susceptible of producing essays and answering complex questions in seconds.

In the U.S., reports of rampant AI cheating led to an explosion successful income of "blue books" utilized for old-fashioned pen-and-paper exams this schoolhouse year.

In Canada, immoderate professors are making a akin determination amid wide reports of AI cheating, while others are investigating retired oral exams oregon uncovering ways to incorporated AI. Six successful 10 Canadian students said they usage generative AI for their schoolwork, according to an October 2024 survey from KPMG successful Canada.

"We are decidedly successful a infinitesimal of modulation with a batch of our assessments," said Karsten Mundel, co-chair of the University of Alberta's AI Steering Committee.

Don't boil AI down to cheating tool: prof

Mundel speaks with his students astir his expectations astir AI. If they usage it for brainstorming, helium asks them to explicate their process and the prompts they used so helium tin spot however they led to the last product. 

He takes an optimistic presumption of this caller challenge, saying AI has reinvigorated conversations astir what world integrity means successful the existent day.

"I get disquieted erstwhile AI in any acquisition discourse gets boiled down to this instrumentality of cheating," helium said.

"I think it's an breathtaking clip close present due to the fact that of the transformations that it volition bring, and to truly assistance america get astatine the halfway of what skills we're trying to teach."

At his school, Mundel says, there's an increase in handwritten exams, arsenic good arsenic caller approaches that incorporate oral exams and assignments that usage AI and past person students bespeak connected their AI use.

He says going backmost to pen and insubstantial isn't needfully the champion solution, and acknowledges immoderate students person complained astir the change. 

"We don't person the skills anymore — universally, astatine slightest — to hand-write long-form things. And so that's a learning curve for our students, and for the instructors who person to read." 

Many post-secondary students contiguous person grown up moving primarily on physics devices and don't person arsenic overmuch acquisition with penning by manus successful university. For illustration successful Ontario, learning cursive successful simple schoolhouse was made optional successful 2006, though the provincial authorities made it mandatory again successful caller years.

Katie Tamsett, vice-president, academic, of the U of A's pupil union, says concerns of cheating using AI person to beryllium balanced with the information that the exertion is being utilized successful the existent world.

"As students, we're seeing that successful the workforce, AI is being used. And truthful erstwhile we're doing our courses successful university, we privation to beryllium seeing that AI is being incorporated arsenic a tool."

Tamsett says the pupil national is successful ongoing conversations with the assemblage astir however to make champion practices astir AI. 

Student says schools tin beryllium 'overly reactionary'

University of Toronto Students' Union president Melani Vevecka says her acquisition with pen-and-paper exams has been mostly positive, but says they tin beryllium a obstruction for students with anxiousness oregon learning disabilities. 

"Part of the situation to accommodate everybody is figuring retired what benignant of assessments volition clasp worth successful a satellite wherever students tin astir apt make a decent effort wrong a fewer minutes," she said. 

Vevecka understands the pitfalls of relying connected AI, and says she knows immoderate students person utilized it to cheat.

But she besides says it's been adjuvant successful her studies, like, for example, generating practice questions up of a last exam. 

She feels universities' responses to it have in immoderate cases been "overly reactionary."

What Vevecka would similar to spot is much of a absorption connected clarity and acquisition astir AI, "rather than vague restrictions oregon punitive suspicion, which is benignant of thing that astir academics are trying to do."

"I deliberation that universities should beryllium creating world cultures wherever students are empowered to deliberation critically astir the tools that they use, and wherever spot is preserved done transparency and not conscionable surveillance."

WATCH | Canadian universities grapple with AI:

In-person exams 'fear-based,' says BCIT administrator

Jennifer Figner, provost and vice-president, academic, astatine the British Columbia Institute of Technology, says the determination to in-person exams is simply a trend, but 1 she views arsenic being "fear-based" — and a way her schoolhouse is encouraging professors not to take.

"What truly we should beryllium doing is challenging ourselves to fig out, how bash you incorporated AI into investigating oregon into assessment, alternatively than trying to enactment astir it by going backmost to pencils and insubstantial and worldly that we did successful 1970?" she said. 

On the different hand, Figner says, the pandemic coinciding with generative AI created an situation wherever cheating became truthful casual that not doing it could enactment students astatine a disadvantage.

Software that detects AI cheating is imperfect, truthful she besides worries astir students being wrongfully penalized. 

And oral exams tin be "far much labour-intensive and time-consuming" than having each students instrumentality an exam astatine once. 

Figner says AI is yet going to unit the full acquisition assemblage to "totally revamp" the mode students are assessed and evaluated. 

Existential questions for universities

Christina Hendricks, world manager astatine the University of British Columbia's Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, does handwritten exams for finals successful her doctrine classes.

But immoderate UBC professors are sticking to computers, doing in-class exams with supervision to deter cheating. Some are done successful a laboratory wherever the lone happening students tin entree is the exam, and the remainder of the machine is locked.

In immoderate disciplines, she's heard of instructors assigning infographics, slides oregon videos to get astir AI — but present each those things are besides easy done with AI tools. 

Her centre helps instructors instrumentality tiny steps to alteration their appraisal setups implicit time.

In the agelong term, Hendricks agrees that universities volition person to wholly overhaul their appraisal strategies. 

"I deliberation that there's going to beryllium these reflective, existential questions for immoderate faculty," she said.

"What are we teaching? What bash students request to cognize successful their aboriginal lives, arsenic radical successful an AI satellite and for their careers, and however bash we set our activities and assessments to lucifer that?"