Having listened to many educators from primary school to higher education over the last few months, the worries surrounding AI lie within assessment.
The essay still rules in higher education and now there are worries beginning to mount. Turnitin say they can detect AI written pieces. The results say otherwise. Anyway, you can get ChatGPT to generate an essay then re-prompt until it has a smooth consistency and then, shudder, you can then manually add your own writing to it!!!
What other ways can we assess student’ understanding whilst swerving around the deep potholes of AI over-reliability? As in that the AI does the thinking behind and knowledge assimilation of the entire assessment.
Live Assesssments
You ever present your knowledge and understanding whilst standing in front of a presentation where the slide has, at max, 5 words? It kinda shines a spotlight on to your understanding of the content front and centre. Maybe you might be able to memorise your spiel but are you going to be able to navigate the intense question session afterwards? Could take the form of only oral examination….not dental.
Personable Assessments
Constructing assessments that direct students to create personal connections to their personal or educational life allows for the individual to peek out from behind the process of understanding. Cue the clickbait title “Staunch toe-the-line professors will hate this form of assessment!!1”
Formative Assessments
Nothing new here, move along. A learning journal or portfolio of the learning journey with personal reflections and connections to the curriculum content presents a natural and authentic method of presenting an evolving sense of understanding from the learner’s perspective. With feedback along the way from instructor/peers.
Pencil and Paper Examinations
“Hello, 1950? Yes, we have your assessment type right here. It’s been crying, saying you forgot it.”
Desparate professors have already (re)turned to this method. We are one step closer to getting the inkpot holes in our classroom desks again.
Project-based Assessment
A more lengthy assessment which culminates in a more mult-modal assessment piece. Often transdisciplinary which makes the process and product a more complex artefact to assess.
Creative Assessments
Learners actually create something. Something real. Could be digital, but a product, not a written piece. This could be the end result of a project based assessment. Other assessments, in a more formative nature, provides the scaffolding for this.
Alright, I’ll stop. That’s about as much I can think of right now. The only other thing I will say is that educators need to start doing rather than saying “we should….”. The time for redesigning your assessment pieces is now. It’s going to be difficult, but maybe the assessment type you didn’t know you loved was the assessment you (and your students) needed all along…
AI’ll be back.