A process for implementing decisions about examination
On this page is a summary of the process for implementing your decisions about GenAI use.
1. Review the learning outcomes
It is important for you to review the learning objectives in the course plans, the instructions for assignments and examinations given to the students and the security of the assessing situation. You need to be clear about whether, and if so how, students are allowed to use GenAI tools in assessment situations. Check Examination basics review.
2. Identify key skills which students must demonstrate
Sometimes key skills are implicit in course design, and you may need to think a little about what is absolutely essential. If it is important for your students to develop writing skills and that they are tested on their own skills, then you may need to ban the use of GenAI tools in formative and summative assessment. You should then make the requirement to develop personal skills more explicit. You can support this formatively, with writing practice in class without use of GenAI tools. Summatively, you can either examine their writing skills in a constrained situation such as an examination with exam guards (invigilators or proctors) and no access to the Internet, or you can allow some limited use of the tools and ask them to explain how they use GenAI to support their writing skills. Ifstudents must demonstrate clinical skills, then you probably already examine these in constrained conditions, but you can think about whether GenAI tools can be used to help them develop the skills (eg acting as a conversational partner in a consultation). Check back to Essential skills
3. Consider the implications of a ban (No AI)
If you want to ban the use of GenAI tools, then examination assessment will need to be controlled in some way, for instance by direct supervision of the students while they complete a written, oral, practical, or clinical examination. There is no other way to ensure they are not used. This may already be the examination you use, in which case, there is no need to make changes to the assessment activity. You may want to think about whether students can use GenAI tools to support their learning, however.
Take-home exams, or hemprov, became commonly used during the Coronavirus pandemic. These examinations have some controls, usually meaning the examination questions are available only for a short time, but students who use GenAI tools will probably be able to do the work more quickly than those who don’t. There are some suggestions on this page on my blog Links to an external site. about adapting these to make cheating less likely, but I don’t think you can ban GAI tools in relation to take-home exams.
4. Explain what you want students to demonstrate if GenAI tools are allowed (AI planning, collaboration, etc)
We have already discussed that in many situations a controlled assessment would not align to the intended learning outcomes, and so you are going to accept or encourage GenAI use in one of the ways discussed on the previous page. Maybe it is important that your students learn to use GenAI tools because they will be used in the future in your subject area. Or you want students to undertake work over a period of time, so that they can, for instance, identify and analyse a range of sources, collect data, discuss with peers, construct an argument and reflect on the process.
Portfolios and journals: assessing process as well as product
The production of artwork is one example of sustained work, and fine art teachers would normally expect a journal to be submitted alongside the finished product, showing how the students have developed their thinking during the semester. The journal is usually intended to be skimmed through rather than graded in detail. The use of a journal or portfolio is something that could also be adopted for other types of examination too, perhaps shortening the finished product so that your workload is not increased.
Of course, a journal could potentially be completed by a GAI tool as well. To give you some oversight of process, you could ask the students to use a shared filing system such as Microsoft Office (other systems are available, but this one has been purchased and licensed by the University, so we can assume it is compliant with data protection and storage regulations). If a student shares a file with you, then you can check the ‘version history’ to see how the file was developed, and whether large amounts of text were pasted in, for instance. This would be too much work to be a routine activity, but if you set up the system like that, asking students to do it that way, then you have the option to check the history if you have concerns.
Oral examinations
You might want to supplement a piece of written work carried out over a period of time with an oral examination. For more detail about designing and managing these, see this web page Links to an external site.. It is possible to have short and effective oral examinations so that workload is not too high, and you may want to discuss with your Director of Studies whether you can invite a random sample of students to an oral examination, rather than examining everyone in this way.
Summary: You already know how to design examinations which meet intended learning outcomes. The existence of GAI tools means that you probably need to revisit your learning outcomes and examinations, and then teaching materials, to ensure that you are happy with what you are asking students to do.