Guidance on assessment

Considerations for assessment

Assessment methods in which students produce texts individually or in groups to demonstrate their knowledge are particularly vulnerable to intentional or unintentional deception or cheating. This applies especially to all forms of asynchronous writing, where students produce texts independently, in their own time and location, to demonstrate their knowledge. Examples include take-home examinations, laboratory reports, project assignments and degree projects (dissertations or theses).

Changing the assessment format may be an option, but bear in mind that this requires a longer process, as the course syllabus is a governing document.

Guidance for teachers in seven steps

1. Shift the focus from product to process

The course syllabus specifies the assessment format. However, as a teacher, you are free to add teaching activities that focus on students’ learning processes. Examples include reading and writing logs, practice sessions, optional short tests, supervision sessions and quizzes. A guiding principle is that students should document and engage with the course content on an ongoing basis without creating an unreasonable workload for you as a teacher.

Ensure that your questions relate to the teaching delivered during the course. Note that lectures are not compulsory unless they form part of the assessment.

2. Use a wider range of assessment methods

Review your course syllabuses with regard to assessment. It is advisable to include more than one assessment during a course, ideally using varied formats that build on one another. This makes it difficult to cheat on the first assessment and then pass subsequent ones.

The more specific you are, the harder it becomes for AI to produce a convincing text. As a teacher, you can also offer supervision sessions to support students in their writing. This allows you to follow their learning processes and progress. When well designed, multiple-choice questions are a useful way to assess students’ learning and understanding, including in relation to abstract and more advanced intended learning outcomes (ILOs).

3. Review your instructions

Communicate clearly with your students. Pay particular attention to instructions for assessments that students complete and submit independently, such as take-home examinations or equivalent assignments. Any resources or aids that you have not explicitly permitted for use in the assessment should be considered prohibited.

Always provide written information about the rules that apply to your assessment. Focus on the resources and aids students are allowed to use. Avoid listing what is prohibited, as such a list can easily become incomplete.

4. Make use of formal requirements

Use formal requirements to specify and regulate how students should present their work when submitting it. Even shorter texts should include references placed directly alongside the relevant content. This makes it harder for students to use AI to generate a text that correctly follows your instructions. Ask students to justify their choice of sources.

For written assignments that include references, you can specify which sources may be used or ask students to justify their choice of alternative sources.

5. Review your questions

Formulating relevant, interesting, unambiguous and well-written questions is essential for assessing students’ knowledge in a meaningful and reliable way. As a teacher, you need to consider how to formulate questions so that they cannot easily be answered using AI tools.

Ask questions that require students to relate their answers to specific local contexts, tasks or perspectives covered during the course and familiar to all students. You can also formulate questions that require students to draw on their own experiences from earlier in the course or degree programme.

6. Test your questions

A useful approach is to test your questions in a tool such as Copilot. If the tool gives you a correct but brief answer, try rephrasing your question or asking follow-up questions to obtain more comprehensive answers. You can also ask Copilot to adapt its response to different styles or registers, such as formal, informal, humorous or trendy language. Try making a response more distinctive, contextualised and personal by giving Copilot background information about content you would like it to include.

Also talk to your students about how you have tested your questions in this way.

7. Review the course’s intended learning outcomes

If you have the opportunity to revise the course syllabus, it is important to review the intended learning outcomes from an assessment perspective as well. Do they provide the guidance and scope you need to assess the breadth and depth of knowledge, skills and approaches reflected in the course’s purpose?

Reduce the risk of deception and cheating

Students’ responsibility

Make it clear that students are responsible for everything they submit for assessment and must be able to account for its content. Combine written submissions with an oral defence or an oral follow-up with the teacher. Students should be able to explain everything they have written and answer questions that test their understanding at an appropriate level.

Use process accounts

Ask students to provide an account of their process, describing and justifying their decisions from a personal perspective. This may include their choices concerning selection, breadth, depth, fair representation, relevance, significance and the intellectual principles guiding comparisons.

Use peer feedback

Assess students’ ability to give feedback on others’ work, considering both the subject matter and the work undertaken during the course.