Determine how students can/cannot use GenAI
Whether you decide to make small adjustments or completely overhaul your assessment methods, the advent of GenAI offers an opportunity to revisit assessment practices.
Decisions about making changes to your assessment methods depend on multiple factors including your context and class size, your discipline, your tech savviness and your personal values around GenAI more generally. Regardless of whether you decide to make small adjustments or completely overhaul your assessment methods, the arrival of GenAI is also an opportunity to revisit good assessment practices.
While the jury is out on whether AI helps or hinders assessment in higher education, work in the scholarship of teaching and learning has shown that there are assessment practices that both help students learn and highlight what excellent teachers do and value (Jankowski, 2023; Lindstrom et al, 2017; Rust, 2002; Suskie, 2018).
Evidence-based sound assessment practices
Six practices are briefly defined alongside the potential impact GenAI technology may have on it.
What this means
Aligning assessments with learning outcomes is the basis for understanding assessment as an integral part of a student’s learning journey in a course (and not simply an add-on or the assigning of grades). Assessment tasks should be opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know, value or can do in a course. Every learning outcome should be included in one or more assignment so that instructors can gauge the attainment (or not) of the learning outcome.
Why it’s a sound practice
It shifts the focus from completing tasks to learning and allows for an assessment process wherein student work is measured against what they are supposed to learn thereby making the assigning of grades valid and fairer.
What this means in age of GenAI
Requires consideration of which human-centred knowledge or skills students should be learning and demonstrating, as well as reflection about if, where and how GenAI can be meaningfully integrated into student learning. Test your assignments by feeding them to GenAI to see if you need to adapt them. It’s possible that after this reflection and test you’ll need to revise your learning outcomes.
What this means
Increasing assessment literacy entails teaching your students the what, why and how of your course’s assessment planning and design.
Why it’s a sound practice
Explaining your assessment choices, design and principles to students allows them to better understand the role of the assignments in the course and how they relate to, inform and measure their learning. This increased awareness of the role assessments plays in their learning counters a sense of grading being subjective and unfair.
What this means in age of GenAI
The rapid pace of change in GenAI makes literacy crucial for instructors and students alike. Leverage explaining how assessment works in your course to speak to how and why GenAI will be allowed/invited/prohibited in your course. Teaching students to better understand the role of assessments in their learning may also encourage them to engage more intentionally with GenAI.
What this means
In this context, promoting transparency means being clear about your expectations, for example, by using grading criteria and aligning tasks with learning outcomes, informing students who will grade (you, TA, marker), and sharing the grading rubric with students when the task is assigned.
Why it’s a sound practice
Acting transparently gives assessments validity and makes grading fairer. It also helps cultivate a climate of trust and fairness around assessments. Ensuring a shared understanding among all students of what they need to do to meet your expectations is an inclusive practice.
What this means in age of GenAI
Be clear about when and how GenAI can or cannot be used in your course’s assessment tasks and explain why. Inform students about whether they are allowed or expected to use it. Should you use GenAI in any teaching related materials, disclose how and why you used it. These practices become opportunities to engage in assessment and GenAI literacy alike.
What this means
Assessment isn’t something done to students. Involving your students can mean checking in with them to ensure that the assignments are meaningful and expressed in ways that make sense to them.
Why it’s a sound practice
Explaining to students how the assessments are aligned with learning outcomes can help them shift their focus from grades to learning. This practice can make your assessments more equitable as involving students (e.g., by reviewing instructions, criteria or rubrics) can help reveal biases in assessment design.
What this means in age of GenAI
Tell your students why you have designed the assignment in the way you have and ask them for feedback vis-à-vis the GenAI component (or its absence). Ask them if there are elements they would change and why.
What this means
Assignments that focus on sense of belonging allow students to see their relevance – be it in terms of connecting to their lived experience, their personal and professional future goals or real-world scenarios.
Why it’s a sound practice
Students’ motivation and engagement increase when asked to complete assessment tasks that are relevant, contextual and meaningful to them. This inclusive practice allows all students to speak to their own lived experience.
What this means in age of GenAI
Lived experience, collaborating with human peers, building community and experiential learning are all things GenAI is not good at (for now!) and are decidedly important human skills that our students will need and that our world needs of them.
What this means
Reorienting assessment from output to process implies shifting the focus of assignments from high-stakes cumulative tests of knowledge and skills to include the process(es) involved in producing the final products.
Why it’s a sound practice
Scaffolding learning in this way allows students to get feedback and address difficulties to improve learning and produce better quality final work (which in turn is easier to grade).
What this means in age of GenAI
To avoid students off-loading learning onto GenAI, break down large, high-stakes tasks into smaller assignments and encourage students to reflect on their progress and integrate feedback.
Disclosure notice: This resource was developed and written by a human without Generative AI assistance and was revised based on peer feedback. Microsoft Copilot was used in the formatting of the references, and its accuracy was checked.