{"id":681358,"date":"2026-11-11T09:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T09:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/681358\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T09:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T09:40:08","slug":"ai-has-made-it-close-to-impossible-to-assess-university-coursework-regulator-says-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/681358\/","title":{"rendered":"AI has made it \u2018close to impossible\u2019 to assess university coursework, regulator says | Higher education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Universities should go back to traditional exams and in-person presentations to grade students after lecturers complained that AI has made it \u201cclose to impossible\u201d to assess coursework, according to an investigation by England\u2019s higher education regulator.<\/p>\n

The Office for Students<\/a> (OfS) said the credibility of degrees from England\u2019s universities was under threat from the prolific use of AI in essays, dissertations and \u201copen book\u201d exams, with students reporting that their peers boasted of using AI undetected by staff.<\/p>\n

The regulator warned universities and other higher education institutions that failing to design \u201cvalid and reliable measures of students\u2019 knowledge and skills\u201d to combat AI could breach their conditions of registration and lead to sanctions being imposed.<\/p>\n

Josh Fleming, the director of strategy and delivery at the OfS, said AI use in higher education \u201cpresents a generational risk to the system as it stands, threatening to undermine students\u2019 learning and institutions\u2019 ability to assess them\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fleming added: \u201cWe need to see far greater efforts to tackle these risks, including far greater use of AI-free assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scale and pace of both the challenge and opportunity presents a novel challenge for the sector and us as the regulator. We will continue to work with universities and colleges to help them reap the benefits of AI while avoiding the risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The OfS said many institutions had already redesigned how they assessed students to reduce potential AI misuse, including greater use of in-person written exams or oral examinations known as vivas. Other examples include students critiquing or editing AI-generated output, or \u201cprocess-based\u201d assessments where students detail how they researched and produced their work.<\/p>\n

A Department for Education spokesperson said: \u201cWe expect universities to take this issue seriously and we expect the OfS to both enforce the existing standards effectively, and work at pace to ensure its regulatory framework is explicit, strong and durable on the use of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report by the OfS and Advance HE<\/a>, a charity promoting university governance and teaching, interviewed more than 300 students and staff at 127 universities and colleges this year, to gauge AI policies and use in teaching and assessment.<\/p>\n

One academic told the researchers: \u201cAI has put academic integrity at serious risk \u2026 coursework is now overwhelmingly written in part, or exclusively, with the help of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another university staff member said: \u201cI think we\u2019re realising that a number of our assessments may be unfit for purpose, and that pervasive use of AI may render our assessment of students close to impossible in some areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The survey found that AI use was rife, with students saying their colleagues completed assessments using AI \u201csometimes in just a few minutes\u201d and received similar grades to those who had completed an assessment without AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome students described their peers being unable to recall basic details about the assessment they had just submitted,\u201d the report noted.<\/p>\n

One student told the researchers: \u201cI\u2019ve had people admit, peer to peer, \u2018I wrote this whole essay with ChatGPT\u2019 \u2026 then they don\u2019t get caught, they get a good grade probably, and then because it worked the first time, they do it on their next assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Academics also described receiving large numbers of submissions that looked the same, referenced the same literature and were written in the same style. Others said they believed the assessments used by their institution were not fit for purpose or did not accurately measure students\u2019 knowledge and skills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Universities should go back to traditional exams and in-person presentations to grade students after lecturers complained that AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-681358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}