Last week’s EduTECH Australia conference in Melbourne gave many delegates an insight into the rapidly evolving landscape of education. The integration of Artificial Intelligence (#AI) is no longer a futuristic concept but a present reality. The ubiquity of Generative AI necessitates for teachers, school leaders, and education administrators a rethinking of traditional assessment methods. Studies now repeatedly indicate that distinguishing between AI-generated and student-generated texts is increasingly difficult for teachers. This reality highlights the need for rethinking secondary school assessment. In this context, I urge the adoption of innovative assessment strategies that prioritise, and truly value, deep student learning.
Recently, I shared A Roadmap for AI-Ready (Take Home) Assessment (See the Linkedin post HERE). I believe that the roadmap offered a robustly adaptive, comprehensive, and change-resistant template for assessment design in the age of #GenerativeAI. In this context, the concept of ‘take home’ assessment refers to assignments that students complete outside of the classroom. Such items are crucial aspect of the learning process for students as they offer the potential for students’ deeper engagement with their courses of study through reflection. However, this format also presents unique challenges in ensuring academic integrity and authentic learning outcomes.
As educators, we must adapt our approaches to teaching and assessment to harness the full potential of AI while maintaining ethical standards and promoting student growth. This article discusses my A Roadmap for AI-Ready (Take Home) Assessment.
A downloadable PDF of the Roadmap is available via the List of References. The Roadmap draws upon ideas initially articulated in my 2024 article ‘Here, Ready or Not!’: Teaching History in an AI World published in the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria’s journal. This is also linked in the List of References.
The Roadmap is structured around three guiding principles – “pins” – that highlight essential considerations for ethical, inclusive, and effective AI integration in education.
These pins act as milestones on the journey towards the ultimate destination of achieving AI-ready take-home assessments.
📌 Pin 1: Teach Ethics
All use of Generative AI within education must be grounded upon a strong ethical base. Promoting responsibility, respect, and integrity is foundational to the successful integration of AI in educational assessment.
Cultivating a sense of responsibility among students involves designing assessments that prioritise the learning process. This includes encouraging learners to take ownership of – responsibility for – their academic endeavours, ensuring they engage in proper reflection, and at times, overcoming personal challenges. By emphasising individual responsibility, students are empowered to grow in resilience and develop a deeper appreciation for their own academic achievements and those of others.
Respect and gratitude must be instilled in learners, emphasising the recognition of the hard work and dedication of others. It is imperative that students acknowledge the intellectual contributions they access, fostering a culture of respect.
An ethical approach to assessment in an AI age emphasises the need for students to honour the accomplishments of others through sincere and appropriate acknowledgments.
I currently favour students including with their submissions of assigned work a short statement of disclosure referred to as an ‘Acknowledgement of Assistance’. Such a statement is comparable to what many academic authors include in their theses or books under a title such as ‘Acknowledgements’. In this section, students might identify the assistance they received in the production of their submission, including the assistance received from tutors, family members, teachers, and so on. (Wall, 2024, pp.15-16)
Personal integrity should be a cornerstone of the learning process. Integrity flourishes within cultures of transparency. By building cultures of transparency, educators can support students in genuinely engaging with their learning. This transparency shifts the focus from a formulaic assessment as a product to a unique cognitive and developmental journey for each individual. In such cultures, learners openly use AI to actively engage in learning while expressing the value of their unique perspectives, producing original work that reflects their understanding and efforts.
Incorporating ethical considerations into AI-ready assessments is essential. By promoting these values, educators ensure that students develop a strong ethical foundation that will guide them not only in their academic pursuits but also in their personal and professional lives.
📌 Pin 2: Amplify Humanity
Enhancing student voice and agency is vital in the context of AI-ready assessment.
Creating opportunities for students to express their personal reflections, connection, prior and developing knowledge, their questions, their skills, their individual experiences, and their nuanced individual viewpoints and perspectives is essential.
Assessments should be designed to prompt students to engage deeply, requiring them to produce personalised responses that reflect their individual characteristics and preferences. This approach not only values student voice but encourages and amplifies their voice. Through schoolwork that enhances their ethical voice, students become further empowered and given greater agency within their lives and communities.
Fostering collaboration and inclusion is another critical aspect of amplifying humanity in education. As students engage with assessment, multiple safe opportunities should be created for learners to work with teachers, peers, families, and community members. Interactions such as these expose students to a range of real-world lived experiences and viewpoints. These ‘real-world’ interactions often engage and promote responses that transcend the current abilities of AI. Encouraging students to connect their personalised learning to wider ‘human’ contexts helps bridge gaps between the sometimes dispassionate, disconnected ideas of academic pursuits and the shared human condition. This bridging effect makes learning more meaningful. As such, amplification of the human experience within assessments – and learning experiences more generally – enhances students’ empathy, cultural awareness, and sense of belonging. As they engage on a personal level with others they are challenged: to connect, to embrace diversity, to reflect, to question, and to generate new perspectives drawn upon the evidence they uncover.
Promoting critical thinking and creativity is essential in preparing students for the complexities of the modern world. Assessments should challenge students to question, interpret, analyse, evaluate, and synthesise information. Such processes nudge them to think deeply and creatively. By amplifying the humanity within school assessment, educators can promote higher-order thinking skills. They can help equip students to navigate the challenges of an increasingly AI-driven world.
In a world where there is a growing recognition that distinguishing between AI-generated content and student-generated work is increasingly difficult, there’s need for assessments that truly evaluate a student’s critical thinking and creativity, rather than relying solely on their ability to produce text. This challenge highlights the importance of designing assessments that can capture the unique and authentic voice of students. Assessments that value their contributions and enhance their thinking skills.
In an AI age, take home assessments are opportunities to ensure that student voices are not lost in a sea of AI generated content.
📌 Pin 3: Design for Learning
The integration of Artificial Intelligence (#AI) is no longer a futuristic concept but a present reality. The ubiquity of Generative AI necessitates for teachers, school leaders, and education administrators a rethinking of traditional assessment methods. Studies now repeatedly indicate that distinguishing between AI-generated and student-generated texts is increasingly difficult for teachers. This reality highlights the need for rethinking secondary school assessment. In this context, I urge the adoption of innovative assessment strategies that prioritise, and truly value, deep student learning.
Rethinking assessment for the AI era is a challenge that requires a shift from product-focused to process-focused evaluation. This redefinition emphasises the learning journey over the final product, allowing educators to gain deeper insights into student development. This process-oriented approach aligns with the holistic goals of the curriculum, integrating priorities such as wellbeing, digital literacy, and personal and social capabilities.
Incorporating AI in pedagogy must be done with intentionality. Teachers, as pedagogical experts, should decide where and how AI can have the most significant positive impacts on learning. This integration should be supported by research and best practices, ensuring that AI is used effectively within subject-specific pedagogies. Educators must engage learners in decision-making around AI use, fostering a collaborative environment that values student input.
Aligning AI-ready assessments with curriculum priorities is crucial. These assessments should address the comprehensive goals of the curriculum, extending beyond narrow content objectives to include student wellbeing, safety, literacy, numeracy, and personal, social, and cultural capabilities. Embedding these elements into grading rubrics ensures that assessments align with the broad objectives of education, promoting a well-rounded development of students.
The complexities of identifying AI-generated content further stress the importance of this pin. By focusing on intentionality and alignment with curriculum priorities, educators can ensure that AI is used to enhance learning outcomes and support the overall development of students. This approach helps in creating robust assessments that are difficult to bypass using AI tools, thereby maintaining the integrity of the learning process.
Final thoughts…
The integration of AI in education presents both challenges and opportunities. By following a ‘roadmap’ and by adhering to some guiding principles, educators may be able to transform the learning experience, making it more engaging, ethical, and effective. It is our responsibility as teachers to embrace these technological challenges that are presenting as a result of AI thoughtfully. We need to ensure that students are equipped with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in an AI-driven world. Through ethical practices, amplification of humanity, and a focus on learning design, we can help our students to navigate a new age. We can help to foster a future where technology enhances education for all.
The Roadmap for AI-Ready (Take Home) Assessment requires reflection and resourcing. It offers a pathway forward and embraces a comprehensive and principled approach to assessment in the age of Generative AI.
By teaching ethics, amplifying humanity, and designing for learning, educators can ensure that AI integration in education is both effective and responsible in ways anticipated by numerous important frameworks. This approach not only prepares students for the future but also enriches their learning experiences, fostering a generation of critical thinkers, creative problem-solvers, and ethical citizens.
The Roadmap offers a way for educators to guide their students in their growth towards becoming informed, responsible, and engaged members of an AI-infused society.
Acknowledgement of Assistance
This article was inspired by discussions with colleagues and after considerable reading and reflection.
I owe a debt of gratitude to innumerable educators who are engaged in online discourse about the nature of assessment in an AI age. I particularly note the influence of the diverse insights of Ethan Mollick, Dr Will Van Reyk, Leon Furze, Stefan Bauschard, Jason M. Lodge, Dr. Sabba Quidwai, Amanda Bickerstaff and Matthew Esterman 🧔🏻.
This article draws upon ideas I’ve previously published via the Queensland History Teachers’ Association (QHTA), History Teachers’ Association of Victoria and History Teachers’ Association of NSW. I’d particularly like to recognise the tireless work of all in those organisations including Jonathon Dallimore and Guy Nolch.
This article was written with the assistance of OpenAI‘s ChatGPT4o. It helped me to clarify my thinking and to break the ‘tyranny of the blank page’. It helped me to make my writing more succinct. The image associated with this article was generated by ChatGPT4o.
Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the ongoing vision, support of the leadership at All Hallows’ School and to acknowledge and thank my supervisors at the University of Southern Queensland – Petrea Redmond and Alison Bedford. (Their patience is epic… and they must be wondering when I will actually finish the writing that I owe them. To you both I say: “Soon”.)
List of References
Wall, V. (July 7 2024) Downloadable PDF of the Roadmap for AI-Ready Assessment, An Idea Worth Sharing, Substack: https://anideaworthsharing.substack.com/
Wall, V. ‘Here, Ready or Not!’: Teaching History in an AI World, Agora (History Teachers’ Association of Victoria; Vol. 59; Number 2; (2024) pp. 13-16.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn on August 17, 2024. That article can be found HERE.
Disrupted History 