Danny Bedingfield: AI education expert on Victoria University barring laptops from law exams to cut down on cheating

Victoria University's upcoming law exams will be laptop-free - in a defence against using AI to cheat.

Law dean professor Geoff McClay told pupils yesterday they'll be hand-writing their three-hour exams in June.

One student has told The Post their grade will suffer, because they're out of practise at writing and can type faster.

AI education expert Danny Bedingfield agrees written tests are the best way to stop cheating.

"You would like to think that you've got digital tools that will predict or be able to detect this - but unfortunately, there's nothing reliable out there at the moment."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Victoria University students. Well, they're apparently shocked because they're going
to be forced to rewrite their exams next month by hand.
It's not everyone, it's just the students of two papers
and third year law and it's basically to try and
get around AI.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Danny Beddingfield is an expert in AI usage in education. Hey, Danny, Hi,
hever Danny. It seems to me that it's probably one
of the only ways to get around the AI right
to do handwriting or to do oral exams.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Is it about right at the moment? Unfortunately? Yes. You know,
you would like to think that you've got digital tools
that will predict or be able to detect this, but
unfortunately there's nothing reliable out there at the moment. Why not,
I guess the meaning is that, you know, artificial intelligence
is designed to mimic human behavior, and every time you
put a prompt into an AI tool, it literally will

(00:47):
produce something different, even if the prompt does exactly the
same because it's rewritten by the AI tool every single time,
and we'll use different sources and different ways of writing
every time it writes it.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
So if there's an I mean, do you think into
the future going to be impossible to try and track
it down.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
We just need to basically accept that, I think absolutely.
I think the problem at the moment is that we're
still trying to think in old school ways. We're still
trying to be able to detect cheating by using essays
and just passing them through a number of different softwares.
But there's always been ways of kind of getting around
that if the student was savvy enough to and had
the want to investigate ways online to be able to

(01:25):
do it.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Do you think that we basically need to acknowledge that
kids are going to be using AI, We are going
to be using AI, and we need to incorporate into
just incorporate it into what they're doing at university.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Absolutely. Look, people in university, people in high school now
it's going to be a tool of choice that they're
going to be using when they leave, when they lead
the education and go into the real world. So I
think we should be using it more as a learning tool,
something that has the great ability to help improve processes
and save time and make us more productive. And unfortunately,
at the moment, our education is system isn't set up

(02:01):
to assess in different ways, and I think that's what's
got to change the way that we assess our students.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Danny, thanks very much, really appreciated. Danny Beddingfield, AI and
education expert.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
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