Students at Victoria's Pipitea campus told RNZ it would not be an easy transition to go back to paper. File picture. Photo: 123rf.com
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.
University of Auckland law exams all done digitally
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.
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