I was grazing through one of the many mathematics forums a
few days ago and I stumbled on a post that suggested that the external
examiners’ reports for the last academic year (24-25) have now been released,
so I had a look for myself. Sure enough, they were there for most curriculum
areas, so I delved into the mathematics and physical science ones, since these
are applicable to my course of study. The common theme in all the reports that
I saw appears to be that GenAI is a massive problem for examinations taken
remotely, and the recommendation being that there should be a return to
face-to-face invigilated exams as soon as possible to avoid OU degrees being
regarded as sub-standard. It was also apparent that the OU senior management
were very reluctant to do this, almost certainly due to cost and logistical
reasons. I honestly think they don't have enough staff to make the
arrangements, as the exams used to be organised on a regional basis and the
regions were dissolved a few years ago. I don't think any of the remaining
centralised staff have the capacity to do it.
Of course, it's relatively straightforward to check a wordy
essay for plagiarism or AI assistance by running it through the appropriate
software, such as Turnitin, but science and mathematics-based content is much
trickier to scrutinise since the answers tend to be either correct or
incorrect, with very limited ways of reaching the same result or conclusion.
I'm alarmed therefore at the number of students who have been subjected to an
academic conduct review on the grounds that their submitted work has been
plagiarised. From looking on social media, it looks like the OU have been
somewhat overzealous on occasions in an attempt to maintain academic standards
and shore up assessment integrity. According to some Reddit and Discord
punters, the 'evidence' that the OU have used to make the allegation of
cheating is flimsy to say the least, and tends to be something along the lines
of 'we ran your answer through our magic software that detects plagiarism and
you used a phrase that wasn't in the textbook'. No hard evidence is presented
to the student, and the accusation vague enough to allow various
interpretations about the specific wrongdoing.
It reminds me a bit like the old days when disinformation
was disseminated that 'TV detector vans are operating in your area' and could
tell if you were watching the telly without a licence. The truth was that the
GPO (later outsourced to Crapita) had a list of all the postal addresses in
Britain and another list of all the addresses that had a TV licence. They
subtracted one from the other and banged on a few of these non-licenced doors
hoping to catch the occupants with Coronation Street on in the
background. The vans claiming to contain the 'sophisticated electronic
equipment' that could detect you watching Mavis getting a touch of the vapours
in the Rovers Return, were actually just a few empty metal boxes with analogue
dials and flashing lights which looked plausible in the material used for
propaganda purposes.
I suspect that many of the so-called academic conduct reviews are similar fishing expeditions, hoping that a few students will be intimidated into 'fessing up' in exchange for getting off with a semi-formal warning but still being allowed to continue with their qualification. The alternative would be to deny the allegation, which would put the release of the module result ‘on hold’ while a thorough investigation takes place. That could take months to complete, and nobody would want something like that hanging over them. There is, therefore, a big incentive to admit to something that may or may not have happened just to get the matter over and done with, even though the validity of the evidence is questionable. I'm not sure I like the sound of that.