AI and HE Assessment - (Part 3) Continuous Assessment

Continuous Assessment

Following the previous two posts, the advent of Chatbots and their impact on traditional high-stake written submissions in higher education assessment left HEIs with no choice but to refresh and revisit assessments across university curricula. The sector has been reluctant and even lethargic to modernise the evaluation system appropriately in response to the wants and needs of the 21st century. ChatGPT in November 2022 delivered a wake-up shock to the plodding evaluation system in higher education to think about more exciting and meaningful methods of assessments. 

Assessment Distribution

In the previous post, I highlighted the importance of putting more emphasis on Formative assessments in the design and administration of assessment in higher education. In this post, I draw your attention to the distribution of assessment tasks as a combination of low, medium and high-stake assessment points. 

Distributed Assessment greatly elevates the quality of students' learning and reduces their anxiety and stress. It promotes students' evaluative judgement skills, bringing more elements of authenticity in the design and implementation of assessment as a part of the student learning journey. 

To be continued.

Are we ready?

 Are we ready? Artificial intelligence from scientific and research labs has stepped into everyday life since the early 1970s. Seymour Pappert's AI and Media lab at MIT was an excellent example of early research on AI. Artificial Intelligence has rapid and imperceptible growth in industry and business, and we have been using AI innovations in various applications of digital devices. Ironically, sometimes we are unaware that we use an AI product.  Until November this year, the sudden presence of ChatGPT and Chatbots in education was a shock for HE's traditional long-run approaches to assessment.  The sector has no option to revisit and refresh assessment and evaluation methods.  HE sector, businesses, developers and expert communities will also need to consider if we allow the machine to be unlimited to continue learning. It is not so far from the line we are progressing on that the machine will take control. 

Are we ready for this? 

Do we really want this to happen?

                                                                                   Image source: The Age of AI has begun | Bill Gates (gatesnotes.com)

Creating a classroom debate

A short guide for effective classroom debate

Image source: How to Facilitate a Classroom Debate - The Edvocate (theedadvocate.org)

AI & HE Assessment - (Part 2) Process or the Product?

The future of Assessment in Higher Education 

I mentioned in my previous post that after two waves of COVID-19 and Openai ChatGPT, the higher education sector is experiencing a transition to a new era. The era of embracing new teaching methods, learning and modern and innovative assessments. Higher education institutes should avoid using traditional standalone high-stakes assessments with a big percentage of the final grade and rely highly on written submissions. Now we know that mathematically, it is impossible to detect ChatGPT-assisted documents. There are even other bots like Bloomberg with 50 billion parameters! Compare it with just 175 million parameters of ChatGPT! This technology is fast growing, and the industry and businesses have used and dealt with it since the 1970s. The higher education sector was feeling secure and reluctant to AI progress in real-world workplaces until the break threat that the chatbots created for the credibility of the HE evaluation methods in November 2022. 

The Process or the Product

The sector should shift the main evaluation emphasis to the process rather than the product. That simply means moving away from traditional summative types of assessment. Emphasis on the process reveals the unique and vital role of the formative methods in HE assessment methods. Focusing on the process means evaluating students' performance on how they engage with the concepts, building a mental image of the concept and learning, and applying the concept in problem-solving. For those who are not familiar with the  In educational research terminology, assessment is divided into three major categories:

 

• Diagnostic - to evaluate student's prior knowledge and skills 
• Formative - to assess student's learning while it is happening
• Summative - to determine if students have achieved the intended learning outcomes

Diagnostic assessment 

Usually designed and applied by educators in an informal setting prior to instruction by quizzes or MCQ surveys. 

Formative assessments

 This type of assessment is designed by educators to monitor students' learning during the instruction and to check if the learning is happening and areas/learning outcomes that students are struggling with. During formative assessments, students could evaluate their learning and also evaluate their peers learning through some self and peer-assessment activities. Formative assessment will also provide the opportunity to adjust the teaching strategies to educators according to information they gather from students' performance. 

Feedback and feedforward are central characteristics of this type of assessment. Educators' roles during formative activities change to facilitators who observe students' performance and provide them with appropriate and instantaneous feedback while engaging in the activity (task). From this perspective, formative activities are more like performance tests. Based on the nature of the intended learning objectives, educators could use various assessment types for formative purposes. Some popular forms of formative activities are in-class short quizzes, MCQs, rich questioning, entry and exit slips, role-playing, simulation tasks, debates, group activities, etc. The nature of these formative assessments reveals the extent that educators could inject soft skills into the design of learning and assessment to provide space and opportunities for students to develop and enhance the skills and competencies needed to engage with problem-solving situations in real-world workplaces. 

Summative assessments

This type of assessment is designed and used by educators to assess students' achievement of intended learning outcomes at the end of the unit/module/course/programme against some standard benchmark. They are usually high-stakes and take place in formal assessment settings. Traditional unseen written final exams are very common and popular forms of summative assessments. 

The next post will continue this topic on continuous assessment:

The 5th Industrial revolution - The raise of Machines - Artificial Intelligence and Higher Education

Two waves and the fifth industrial revolution

                                                              Image adopted from: What is AI? What does artificial intelligence do? - BBC Newsround

First Wave - COVID-19

COVID-19 in 2020 has brought a golden opportunity for the HE sector to embrace new and innovative teaching and learning methods and, to some extent, adopt modern technologies onboard in the teaching and learning and design of curriculum. The sector was fast in adopting the changes. Traditional lecturing joined history in less than a couple of years, and educators used a more student-centred approach to teaching and learning. However, despite quickly adapting to modern teaching and learning methods, the sector has yet to do much with assessments except replace exams with online submissions and have some tests and quizzes synchronously or asynchronously. 

Second wave - AI & ChatGPT

In November 2023, Openai.com launched ChatGPT, a generative language model which can write human-like high-quality documents. That brought a real shock into assessment across HEIs. COVID-19 in 2020 left the sector with no choice but to shift from traditional and passive teaching methods to more interactive and hybrid models. Now, just three years after the COVID-19 pandemic, AI and Chatbots are forcing the sector to update and refresh assessment methods across University programmes. Average students could complete a 2000-word essay in about 30 minutes if (s)he asked clever and well-designed prompts (questions for chatbots). 

The Authenticity era

The sector has to avoid traditional assessments, which rely heavily on written submissions and essays. AI-proof assessment tasks rely on something other than writing. They are not standalone and atomized assessment points and are not testing the product. And that took us towards the future of teaching, learning and assessment in higher education. The AUTHENTICITY era in higher education.