A simple prediction:

Use of AI by university students has already seen a return of focus on exams as the key way of testing student abilities & learning;

for courses that include projects, long-form research reports or dissertations, we will now see the expansion of the use of the in-person verbal examination.

While this has always been used for PhDs, the use will now likely reach down into assessment of any undergraduate long-form work, expanding staff work-loads (again).

#universities #AI

@ChrisMayLA6 though to be fair, the kind of communication skills you need for that kind of examination are often sorely lacking in people I interview in my line of work.

Appreciate need for the resourcing to be there, but if this led to supporting young people to be able to articulate complex ideas verbally, essentially on the fly, then that would be beneficial.

@Knittingdancer

I examined over twenty PhDs during by professorial career, and the range of communication skills on offer varied widely, with only later on universities finally formally supporting candidates to develop the specific skills needed to defend their thesis..... so certainly, I agree with your point!

@ChrisMayLA6 @Knittingdancer

Yes, but...

As my (civil engineering) tutor told me early on "you don't need to know the contents of every book, you need to know how to use the index and find the book, & then understand what's in it" We had (some) open book exams as a result, but they were much harder than the regular ones.

In IT, search engines & AI do the same role, so assuming they're not going away, knowing how to use them effectively is just as important.

Big caveat: for some subjects

@Pionir @ChrisMayLA6 @Knittingdancer There's a bunch of textbook-level knowledge that professionals need to have internalised. E. g. understanding the discipline's principles, pitfalls, threshold concepts. This is the stuff that uni education is trying to teach.
GenAI makes it very easy for students to shortcut the learning, so they don't build the mental frames, or cross the thresholds.
Designing learning activities and open book exams is a *very* different challenge now from 5yrs ago.