Take Home Assessments - NSW HSC

From as early as next term, Year 12 students in New South Wales could be barred from undertaking take-home assessments as part of their Higher School Certificate Studies. The first cohort to be affected would be the Year 12 cohort for 2027.

I can understand the reasoning behind the decision - that students have increasingly outsourced assessment tasks to Artifcial Intelligence (AI) and that as a result, students wont develop skills in knowledge, critical thinking but also the ability to locate, select and communicate information. Ultimately it affects the originality of the work submitted; it is not a true reflection of what the student really knows or can demonstrate.

I was reminded of a conversation I had with an English Teacher last year. They knew the students had used AI to prepare their work but couldnt mark their work down, as they could not prove that the work submitted was not truely a students own work. It was a case of there was "nothing that they could do". 

But a different conversation this week also got me thinking too. If universities are now encouraging or supporting the use of AI (as long as its within appropriate and ethical boundaries), shouldn't students be entitled to the same, not to mention the need to be educated on it?

Schools have also begun implementing their own approaches or strategies to encourage the responsible use of AI in assessment tasks. Some even require students to record when AI was used and how it was used to construct their work as proof of originality. 

There was a teacher at my school last year, who asked her students to assess whether or not an AI generated essay would conform to the marking criteria for a question. The students discovered that AI may look on the surface to provide them the perfect essay, but didn't necessarily answer the question. This is like university students who pay others to prepare an essay but still dont receive full marks because the work didnt answer the question. 

I do think we need to educate our students on responsible use of AI, especially as teacher librarians. AI can help in many ways e.g. helping one to organise information, organise notes, provide scaffolds, proof read written work. Shouldnt we encourage it if it helps us collect information and help us organise it. I think even keeping records of chats etc in a chatbot can help. At the end of the day, one should not rely on a chatbot to do all the writing

Member's Reading Room, Parliament House Brisbane

During the recent school holidays, I went to Brisbane to attend State of Origin III, which New South Wales won convincingly, and to spend some time away from home.

I decided to do a free tour of Parliament House in Brisbane. I had previously done the tour back in 2006, but armed with a better camera, I wanted to capture the building itself. Generally, in these tours, photography is allowed as long as people are not in it.

The tour included a visit to the Members' Reading Room, which acted as the original parliamentary library until 1979, when it was relocated to the Parliamentary Annexe Building.

It is located between the Legislative Assembly and the now non-existent Legislative Council. For Queensland MPs, they can use the reading room to make phone calls and undertake work. The books and resources on the shelves have been digitised.

In preparing this entry, I had no photos of the reading room from the 2006 visit. I cannot recall whether I was shown the room back then.

Below are some photos I took of the reading room.