Macquarie University’s Virtual Peer now carries the weekly coursework in both subjects, and taking part in it is optional: marks come from exams and research tasks alone.

Macquarie University has removed face-to-face teaching from two mandatory psychology units, which now run online on an AI chatbot, readings, quizzes and optional tutorials. Virtual Peer works through the weekly coursework in both units, putting questions to students and walking them through scenario-based exercises. Both subjects were still taught in person in the first semester of 2026.

By the university’s account the AI activities supplement the core online teaching of readings, quizzes and videos, and none of the weekly material is required either way. Students can skip the chatbot. They can no longer attend in person.

Paid tutors remain on both subjects and run optional Zoom sessions each week: six for the introductory subject’s 400 students, ten for the final-year subject’s 700 — roughly one session for every 70 students enrolled. Students who want feedback from a person are urged to come along, and the university said turnout varied, rising as assessment deadlines approached.

One student told the Guardian that problems with their degree structure had left them no choice but to enrol in the online-only version. An individual psychology subject costs $2,174 in 2026 for an Australian student holding a commonwealth-supported place, and a three-year undergraduate degree now runs past $50,000.

Macquarie says Virtual Peer was built together with teaching staff, to support them rather than take their place. The academics who use it load in and vet the material it draws on, which the university argues fits it to the course better than a general-purpose tool would. Experts say closer curation can leave such a tool somewhat less prone to hallucination, or inventing content without evidence. The university can also monitor student conversations on the service.

Virtual Peer was running in other subjects long before these two went online-only, and its use has accelerated: just under 80,000 student questions across the whole of 2025, and almost that number again in the first six months of 2026, the bulk of them on administrative matters. When surveyed, the university says, staff and students overwhelmingly found the tool valuable or recommended its use.

Meena Jha, an associate professor at Central Queensland University who researches AI in higher education, told the Guardian she had not come across another institution scaling back in-person teaching and bringing in an AI chatbot at the same time. Her own university is piloting one called Birdy across 24 units, and she has built an AI avatar in her likeness to answer her students’ questions on subject matter. “You have to give a bit of time for people to try it, use it, see value in it,” she said, “and in doing so you need to guide them how they can use it.”

Macquarie says in-person teaching returns to the two subjects in 2027, running in alternating semesters so students can pick whichever mode fits their circumstances.