Bailey Brannon
Auckland, April 10, 2023
A university lecturer believes that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to personalise learning and provide students with in-depth feedback.
AI-driven technology has been on the rise with open access tools such as ChatGPT, allowing people to ask the bot any question.
Students have been able to use the technology to help them write assignments, with some universities introducing ways to detect bot-written work.
Alex Sims, an Associate Professor in the Department of Commercial Law at the University of Auckland, said some benefits can come from AI tech within the classroom.
Individualised feedback
“It can give much more individualised feedback; it can take a lot of time to give feedback with 300 assignments to mark. We have to give students a list of common mistakes, but the students do not think that they have made those mistakes,” he said.
According to Mr Sims, academics have been able to use AI to tailor far richer comments for the students. Many assignments tend to test students’ writing ability rather than how well they know the subject.
He said that assessments will start to see redesigns in the future moving away from essay writing which in the end will level the field for students.
“I have taught students that have had dyslexia or English as a second language. They know the answer but have trouble communicating getting lower marks. Compared to someone else who does not know the content but can write it well, we now have tools that can write even better than people,” Mr Sims said.
There have been courses implementing ChatGPT having students critique the answer given by bots and fact-check the information.
Mr Sims said that there are already academics embracing AI, but there will be many that are going to find the change difficult.
“For many others, it is very challenging. What they have learned all their lives has changed, which will be difficult,” he said.
Beginning of plagiarism
The plagiarism software Turnitin has now begun updating the tool with the ability to start checking work for AI-generated content. The tool is used across all universities in New Zealand, but academics are sceptical about how accurate it will be.
Bailey Brannon is a Journalist at Radio New Zealand. The above Report and pictures have been published under a special agreement with www.rnz.co.nz
New software to detect AI usage
John Gerritsen
Universities’ arms race against cheats took a step forward with the activation of software that can detect the use of Artificial Intelligence systems such as ChatGPT.
Turnitin, which all eight New Zealand universities use, can now spot AI-generated material with 98% accuracy and it had switched on that ability for its New Zealand customers.
Academics told RNZ that the update would help, but they doubted it would be effective for long or for students who knew sophisticated ways of using the tools.
Offences and cheating
Turnitin Regional Vice-President for the Asia Pacific James Thorley said that the software estimated what percentage of a text was written by AI and highlighted the offending sentences.
Thorley said that AI-generated work was harder to detect than other types of cheating.
“Each time ChatGPT or any other AI writing tool generates anything it is unique so no two creations will ever be the same. You cannot detect it in the same way that you detect copy-paste plagiarism from whatever source. You are looking for this difference between how an AI writer would write and how a human would write but obviously that’s a lot more complex than simply matching the same text,” he said.
Tests indicated that Turnitin would be effective even if students edited AI-produced work to make it look like their own, Mr Thorley said.
“Surveys in the United States found that 25-30% of university students had used AI for various tasks. Everyone is excited about the potential of these kinds of tools. Detecting does not necessarily mean that there is misconduct happening or that it is wrong. It is all about getting a bigger picture of what is going on and starting conversations,” he said.
University of Canterbury Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Catherine Moran said that the University was redesigning its assessments because of AI and she expected Turnitin will be used for assignments that had not yet been changed.
Simon McCallum, a Senior Lecturer in Software Engineering at Victoria University said that the update to Turnitin would help catch misuse of AI, but he expected it would only be effective for a short time and when students work in an unsophisticated manner.
He said that a large number of students are using ChatGPT and similar large language model programmes.
“Some of them are getting very good at it and the ones who are good at prompt engineering are able to generate realistic work that looks like their own work in a shorter time than they would if they were having to write it themselves,” he said.
Long-term solution needed
He said that students should learn to use AI because it would be widely used in many jobs, but he was worried that some people are using it without thinking.
“They are not using their mind or making the effort to learn. We may need to consider every assignment as a group task because we have to think that every student has access to a group member, an AI, to do some tasks for them. So you have to ask, instead of treating it like your own work, how did you contribute to the group?”
ChatGPT and the like were so important that the entire education system should shut down to let teachers and lecturers figure out what to do, Mr McCallum said.
“This is a pandemic-level event. It is the kind of thing which is going to fundamentally change a lot of what we do. During the pandemic, we suddenly had to go online and teach in a new way and this is the same level of change that is needed. Let us close schools for six weeks or so for professional development,” he said.
Universities New Zealand Executive Director Chris Whelan said that universities and schools need not close but should rethink the ways they assessed students.
“Internationally, the best practice is to recognise that it is out there and to redesign assessments around it. So, in some cases, encourage assignments to be set using generative AI for a first draft and then provide an assignment around what is good or bad about it. But in other instances it is to set assignments that generative AI cannot replicate,” he said.
Whelan said the update to Turnitin would be hugely helpful.
University of Auckland Senior Lecturer Paul Geertsema said that universities should reconsider how they used essays as a form of assessment.
“We need to reassess why we are giving people essays to write. The truth is that ChatGPT and similar tools can write beautiful essays on most topics and we need to revisit what is that we want people to be able to do. This is a very powerful tool and society can benefit from its use. We should do whatever we can to encourage its adoption in industry and the workplace so we are able to compete effectively and generate wealth for our society.”
Secondary Principals Association President Vaughan Couillault said it would be difficult for teenagers to get away with using AI to generate school assignments because their teachers knew them well enough to spot work that was better than their normal standard.
“Teachers could also ask students to show their first drafts or set assignments for completion in class rather than at home,” he said.
John Gerritsen is Education Correspondent at Radio New Zealand. The above Report and pictures have been published under a special agreement with www.rnz.co.nz
