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Speaker 1: Now to the universities. Some universities are apparently reverting to

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Speaker 1: pen and paper exams to cut down on cheating. Pen

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Speaker 1: and paper exams we're, of course the only kind of

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Speaker 1: exam for a lot of unique courses for centuries. But

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Speaker 1: since the pandemic, we've seen a number of students at

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Speaker 1: their tests online. And while these digital exams do come

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Speaker 1: with systems designed to prevent cheating, some students are finding

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Speaker 1: ways around that, aren't they. Stephen Marshall is the director

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Speaker 1: of Victoria University Center for Academic Development and with us

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Speaker 1: Now host Stephen.

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Speaker 2: Get A.

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Speaker 1: What are you guys doing? Are you back to pen

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Speaker 1: and paper?

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Speaker 2: Well, we do a bunch of things. It depends a

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Speaker 2: little bit on the course and what the needs of

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Speaker 2: the students are and where they are in terms of location.

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Speaker 2: But we are returning in some cases for good reason

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Speaker 2: to pen and paper, particularly while we transition towards other

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Speaker 2: forms of assessment in the future.

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Speaker 1: What are the other forms of assessment?

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Speaker 2: Anything where you can get people talking to each other

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Speaker 2: and observing what they're talking about and seeing evidence of

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Speaker 2: them doing the sort of complicated, rich things that people

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Speaker 2: do in modern collaboration environments.

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Speaker 1: Basically oral exams and potentially.

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Speaker 2: That's one of the formats, but also collaborating around the

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Speaker 2: creation of something on a collaborative tool that might be

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Speaker 2: about visual material or written material working together. There's a

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Speaker 2: bunch of different ways people now work, and we need

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Speaker 2: to be assessing those skills as well as the traditional

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Speaker 2: long form test type skill.

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Speaker 1: You guys seen cheating on the digital exams.

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Speaker 2: We've had a few instances where there were some issues

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Speaker 2: that the proctering environment flagged as potentially an issue, A

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Speaker 2: very small number, to be honest, it's actually very difficult

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Speaker 2: to really nail down exactly what might be happening in

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Speaker 2: a remote environment on a remote device. We haven't actually,

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Speaker 2: to my knowledge, pursued very many formal cases, if any

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Speaker 2: at all, when we were using the digital proctering tools.

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Speaker 2: For a bunch of reasons.

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Speaker 1: How do kids get around this stuff? I mean, I

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Speaker 1: would have thought it would be pretty straightforward. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: you'd be able to run some sort of an AI

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Speaker 1: device over the thing and see if there's been cheating

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Speaker 1: going on? Is it not simple? Are they just smarter

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Speaker 1: than us? They just get around it.

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Speaker 2: It's not as simple as some people would make it sound. Like,

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Speaker 2: depending on the type of tool that you use to

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Speaker 2: control what somebody is doing, you can lock down most

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Speaker 2: of the sort of immediately obvious ideas that people have,

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Speaker 2: such as using another device, or having someone else being

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Speaker 2: able to communicate with you, or perhaps using a virtual

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Speaker 2: machine or some sort of technical wizardry like that. The

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Speaker 2: really solid platforms that we've tested will lock machines down

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Speaker 2: so that some of those things are very difficult, if

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Speaker 2: not impossible, to do. The problem is that in so

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Speaker 2: doing they create an environment that's technically quite brittle, and

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Speaker 2: that leads us to creating more harm as we put

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Speaker 2: students through a proceed that they're already stressed. They're already

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Speaker 2: wound up because it's a big deal doing.

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Speaker 1: Well, you want to Tex Steven, how stressed out do you?

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Speaker 1: How stressed out are they having to write an entire

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Speaker 1: exam out with pen and paper? Do you remember having

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Speaker 1: to do it at school?

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Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, and practice, right.

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Speaker 1: You would have been practiced at writing with a pen.

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Speaker 1: These kids aren't. And even then your wrist was sold

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Speaker 1: by the end of it. Now, how are they coping

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Speaker 1: with this?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: It is.

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Speaker 2: It is a problem. We're doing some things. Actually we're

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Speaker 2: shortening tests. So many of our end of year paper

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Speaker 2: tests where we're doing it in pen and paper, are

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Speaker 2: now only two hours rather than three hours, and and

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Speaker 2: part of that is because we do know that they're

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Speaker 2: not as skilled and trained at writing with a pen

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Speaker 2: as they have been in the past. The other feature,

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Speaker 2: of course, is that it affects marking time of people's

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Speaker 2: handwriting really disintegrates under pressure and lack of practice. It's

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Speaker 2: that much harder for our staff to really understand what

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Speaker 2: they've written and give them the proper credit for it,

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Speaker 2: so it's not high deal.

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Speaker 1: Yay, Stephen, listen, Thank you very much, really appreciated. Stephen Marshall,

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Speaker 1: Director of Victoria University Center for Academic Development. Jees, I

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Speaker 1: feel for these kids. Do you remember we used to

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Speaker 1: write with pen and paper all the time, But sitting

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Speaker 1: through a three hour exam and writing of the pen,

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Speaker 1: you dread it. Now, imagine these kids all they do

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Speaker 1: all the time is they sit there. All of the

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Speaker 1: kids nowadays this now whole life. I don't even know

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Speaker 1: what it means to write on pen and paper anymore.

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Speaker 1: Then it's terrifying for them.

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Speaker 2: For more from Heather Duplessy, Alan Drive Listen live to

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