ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC—The Barbados-based Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) said Monday it has embraced artificial intelligence (AI) and is now creating an environment for academic integrity and safeguarding against “intellectual laziness.”
CXC’s Registrar and chief executive officer, Dr. Wayne Wesley, said AI interests the region’s premier examination body, adding, “We have embraced artificial intelligence.
“We believe… < UNK> we need to create the environment with the requisite safeguards, academic integrity, safeguarding against intellectual laziness. In other words, you want people to develop cognitively,” he said in an interview with the state-owned DBS Radio.
‘We want also to ensure that the information being created by AI is verifiable and accurate, so to prevent the hallucination that it tends to do,” said Wesley, who is leading a CXC delegation here ahead of the release of CXC examination results on Tuesday. Listen to audio
‘What we are currently doing for the region is creating a generative regional AI policy for the secondary education system. Some work has been done in Guyana at the tertiary level. Some work has also been done at the University of the West Indies on how AI should be governed. We are now doing it for the regional secondary education system that will provide the kind of guidance and framework within which teaching, learning, and assessment could be properly governed and utilized within the education system,” he added.
CXC was established in 1972 under an Agreement by the participating governments in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). It provides regional and internationally recognized secondary school leaving examinations relevant to the region’s needs and assists in Common Entrance and other examinations.
CXC offers a comprehensive suite of qualifications to meet the region’s needs, namely CSEC, Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence (CCSLC), Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ), Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), and the CXC Associate Degree (CXC-AD).
CXC director of Operations, Examination Services, Dr. Nicole Manning, told radio listeners on the issue of AI that the regional examination body is developing candidates not only academically but also collaboratively with the Ministry of Education. We are looking for candidates to ensure that integrity and ethics are a part of the vein of the candidate and how they operate.”
She said CXC also wants students who have sat the exams instead of regurgitating information; it is seeking to develop the learners in thinking critically.
“So the use of AI is not the issue; it is the facilitation of the assessment. In some of our subjects, we already have where, in terms of the presentation, a candidate has to provide the information literally, and they are questioned by a panel or otherwise.
“That’s where we are seeing to go. In other words, we are not asking them to present information; we are trying to help them learn through various assessment strategies to utilize those skills …”
She said that because of the ethical and integrity components, “we have our systems, so plagiarism is still a big thing for us. We want to encourage the candidates to be honest in terms of reporting the source of work because you want to give credit where credit is due.
“But at the same time, what CXC wants to do is to create those policies to facilitate the learning and assessment that happens within the environment, as well as concomitantly with that you have the actual creation of the candidate who is now operating as innovative beings.
“So it is a combination of things that we want to achieve,” Manning said, adding, “It will be a learning process for the candidate, how they manage themselves and how they manage the whole process of the utilization of AI and what we currently have in terms of the not …plagiarising and how we help them to do that”.
Manning acknowledged that “you do have checkers, but we do not want to restrict them (students).
‘What we want to say is be honest …. because when you get into the world of work when you are doing your entrepreneurial activities, you are going to use the information of this nature. Let us be realistic: you are, that’s where it is taking us, it is how you manage it, it’s the systems we put in place to ensure that candidates know they are creating activities and new things…
“It is something we are looking at in terms of policy to lead the region in this area, something futuristically we are going in that direction,” Manning added.
Download audio – CXC Registrar and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Wayne Wesley
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