University assessments completed in minutes using AI

The regulator for higher education in England has said that too many students can use AI to complete university assessments, making it “close to impossible” to assess coursework.

The Office for Students (OfS) has criticised the use of artificial intelligence by students to complete essays, dissertations, and ‘open book’ examinations. OfS said that “a significant proportion” of assessments were unsupervised, leading to widespread use of AI, with some systems completing the work in just a few minutes.

The OfS warned that this poses a “significant risk” to the credibility of degrees from English universities, and has called for a return to traditional closed-book and practical examinations, as well as in-person presentations in order to grade students.

New research from the OfS and Advance HE found that “a significant proportion of assessments” were in “unsupervised, non-controlled formats where AI can be accessed by students completing them”. They added that “Many of these can be completed to a high standard using AI tools with limited engagement from students,” and concluded that it was “frequently possible” for students to use AI “in ways that cannot be reliably detected”. One academic told the researchers: “AI has put academic integrity at serious risk … coursework is now overwhelmingly written in part, or exclusively, with the help of AI.”

Josh Fleming, director of strategy and delivery at the OfS, said artificial intelligence “presents a generational risk to the system as it stands, threatening to undermine students’ learning and institutions’ ability to assess them”. He added: “We need to see far greater efforts to tackle these risks, including far greater use of AI-free assessment.”

An university staff member told the research team: “I think we’re 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.”