How Deakin University will stop students using ChatGPT to cheat

The emergence of new software has sparked fears students could get robots to write their essays.

Deakin University has dismissed calls to revert to pen-and-paper exams amid fears students could use AI software to complete assessments.

Deakin University has dismissed calls to revert to pen-and-paper exams amid fears students could use artificial intelligence (AI) software to complete assessments.

Concerns about the use of AI by students follows the release of new ChatGPT software that has the ability to quickly form complex responses to a range of questions from users.

University of Sydney Business School’s Dr Marcel Scharth said the software used

“machine-learning algorithms to process vast amounts of text data, including books, news articles, Wikipedia pages and millions of websites”.

“By ingesting such large volumes of data, the models learn the complex patterns and structure of language and acquire the ability to interpret the desired outcome of a user’s request,” he said.

Deakin deputy vice-chancellor Professor Liz Johnson said she was aware of concerns students could use the software to cheat, but said the university remained committed to online assessment.

Prof Johnson said the university worked with students and student groups to support and promote academic integrity, including through compulsory modules that all students must complete.

“The recent emergence of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools have sparked calls for a return to traditional exam hall testing,” Prof Johnson said.

“This fails to recognise this mode of assessment had significant flaws of its own, especially challenges with the relevance of assessment tasks to real-world skills and difficulties with access to onsite testing locations experienced by some students.”

She said it was the university's view that traditional pen-and-paper exams did not represent the type of context and roles that graduates would work in.

“Indeed, many students may be required to use AI or similar technologies in their future careers,” Prof Johnson said.

“As an innovative and proactive educator, our focus is to instead support our students to develop awareness, knowledge and skill in the ethical and responsible use of these tools so they graduate as digitally fluent citizens and employees.

“As digital work, life and study accelerates, we will continue development of secure and relevant assessment tasks.”

She said there were “no plans to return to pen and paper exams.”

“Students will be asked to acknowledge when AI tools have been used and shown how to use them appropriately,” she said.

“We will monitor assessment submissions with multi-layered authenticity tools, which are also evolving rapidly.”

La Trobe, Swinburne, Deakin and Melbourne universities told NewsCorp they would “continue to review” the impact ChatGPT would have on assessments.

Originally published as How Deakin University will stop students using ChatGPT to cheat