Re-Imagining Authentic Assessment in the Age of Open AI

As generative AI sends shockwaves through the academic community, it can feel like there are more questions than answers. How is it affecting the education space? What policies should we have? What is the impact on educational assessment?

We know that AI’s not going away; it is going to continue to get better and stronger. This can be a scary prospect, but also a really exciting one. Try to approach these questions around AI with curiosity, mindfulness, even intrigue as you figure it out along with your students. We believe that there are many opportunities to incorporate AI into your course to not only avoid cheating, but to actually deepen students’ learning. One of the ways to do this is by creating authentic assessment that is stronger and more meaningful, and that challenges students to think critically.

What is Authentic Assessment?

At Macmillan, we define authentic assessment as “skill-based assessment that is relevant to the learner.” An authentic assessment will challenge, evoke reflection, encourage collaboration and transfer to real-world contexts. Some examples include project-based learning and assignments that require critical thinking more than memorization. Authentic assessment has been shown to improve students' self-efficacy, learning, and career readiness.

What does Authentic Assessment look like in the age of AI?

While there is some fear right now that generative AI will stifle students’ learning by doing their work for them, AI actually has even more potential to enrich student learning when used in the right way. Read on for a few ways that educators can use AI to support meaningful, authentic assessment.

Don’t AI-proof your assessment; AI-enable it

Authentic assessment is sometimes framed as a way to “AI-proof” your assessment. In reality, educators will not be able to stop students from using AI, and in many cases, generative AI-detecting software won’t be helpful. Look instead for a way to incorporate AI into your assessment. Help students understand the purpose of the assignment, give them a clear path for how to use AI to complete it, and you’ll take away the temptation for students to misuse AI.

Use generative AI to bring more critical thinking into assignments

Design an assessment that has students investigating AI’s limitations. For example, ChatGPT is weak on sourcing. Have students generate a response, ask ChatGPT for its sources, then check each source and see if the information is actually found there. Alternately, have students ask ChatGPT a question you know will be colored by bias, then have them identify the biases they see in the AI responses. Teach them to ask, “Do I agree with this? Do I not? How do I know if this is accurate?” You can bring in more critical thinking than you would through traditional quizzing.

Generate higher-level Bloom-style assessments with AI

Generative AI like ChatGPT opens the door to create higher level assessments in the digital space. Using AI as a support, you can design something that’s higher order, includes more critical thinking, and is more interesting than what you were assessing before. Think through the values, knowledge, and skills you want to instill in your students. Generative AI gives educators the chance to rethink how we assess students to get them where we want them to be. We can focus less on points, timed tests, and other conventions that test retention but can’t actually evaluate skills. You can work with generative AI to develop ideas based on your course goals and create better, more meaningful assessment.

Teach students to use generative AI like any other source

As you give students assignments, guide them to treat generative AI like any other source. If they use it in their project or paper, they should cite it. Just like with a published source, they can’t copy output word for word. They should be evaluating the content for accuracy and legitimacy. These guardrails give students context for how ChatGPT should fit into their academic assignments and encourages critical thinking and transparency.

Give assessments that go beyond what AI can answer

You can minimize reliance on generative by creating assignments that go beyond what AI can answer. For example, make the prompt very specific to the class; align it with your syllabus. Students can still use bots like ChatGPT, but they won’t be able to rely on ChatGPT to generate the entire assignment. You can also create assignments that require students cite current sources. Generative AI does not know content from papers that have been published in the past few years. This requirement makes for more robust assignments and speaks to an educational principle while minimizing reliance on AI.

The future of AI in educational assessment

At Macmillan Learning, we are excited about the renewed interest in authentic assessment and have been focusing on how to incorporate it more fully into our products. Just like educators, institutions, and other organizations in the education space, we are testing how to use AI responsibly in courses. We have seen generative AI playing a role in changing students’ behaviors and helping them learn. We also see the opportunity for improved equity, as any student who may be nervous to ask their teacher a question in class can get feedback from generative AI. As we walk through the challenges that AI brings to academia, we see a future where AI can support students’ growth and career readiness through personalized, thoughtful, AI-enabled authentic assessment.

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