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Thursday 4th May 2023 | No. 862
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Anxiety, frustration, and solidarity:
Level 4 Physics vivas cancelled as students share mixed reactions to marking boycott Nicole Ireland, Becks Fleet and Emily Doughty News Editors and Editor-in-Chief As the University and College Union (UCU)’s national marking and assessment boycott begins, Durham University has told students to study and submit work as usual. However, it has been revealed that the Department of Physics have chosen to cancel all level 4 Physics vivas impacting students in their fourth year of study.
The viva voce, commonly known as the ‘viva’, is an oral exam taken by level 4 students in which they are assessed on their understanding of the ideas and theories in their work, and to ensure all work is their own. It is conducted at the end of the 4th year research project, with the module itself being worth 50% of the year. In an email to all level 4 Physics students, the department stated that “As it is highly likely that at least half of the L4 project interviews (‘vivas’) will not take
place because of the marking and assessment boycott, we have decided that the fairest approach is to cancel all the L4 vivas. We will not be rescheduling them later. “Obviously, this means that a component of your marks will be missing. Boards of Examiners have long-established ways of mitigating for missing marks and we will use these to ensure you are not disadvantaged. “All your other Physics assessments over the coming weeks will happen as planned, so please do
attend them as expected. This has been a rapidly developing situation and unfortunately, we have not been able to consult students as would be our normal practice, for which we apologise.” As the marking boycott begins, Palatinate has been contacted by students about their feelings towards the boycott. Many students who spoke to Palatinate voiced their frustrations over the cost of tuition fees compared to the experience they were having.
A third-year student from Josephine Butler College also spoke about the fact that the marking boycott is just part of their damaged university experience: “I didn’t matriculate (covid), no fieldwork (strikes), and now might not graduate. Fed up”. In their statement to students, the University stated that “Our top priority will be to ensure you will get your marks and degree classification and can carry on with your plans for the future”. Continued on page 4
The calm before the storm of exams (Emily Doughty)
Durham opts out of Turnitin’s ChatGPT detection system Elliot Burrin News Reporter As of 4th April 2023, Turnitin can now identify the use of AI writing tools, such as ChatGPT, in submitted pieces of work. The plagiarism detector claims to have a 98% accuracy rate in determining
whether a sentence was written by a human or not. The software is able to distinguish the likelihood of AI input in individual sentences even if the author had edited the original AI-produced writing. Durham University’s policy on AI writing tools can be found in the Teaching and Learning Handbook,
where the University states that, “the requirement that submitted work must be a student’s own means that inappropriate use of generative AI in the production of assessed work is likely to constitute academic misconduct”. The University advises that, “if students have any queries, they
should contact their department”. Speaking to Palatinate, a spokesperson from Durham University said, “inappropriate use of generative AI in the production of assessed work is likely to constitute academic misconduct. “Any student work may be
uploaded to a plagiarism detection system to check for possible academic offences. “We frequently review our policies to take account of new developments. We currently have no plans to use Turnitin’s AI detection tool.” Continued on page 3