Contents
Johanna Payton (Director of Learning and Teaching, Journalism) School of Communication and Creativity, City, University of London
[Workshop]
This workshop is on the theme of assessment approaches and reflects my own practice in the context of creative assessment, and may provide encouragement, inspiration and reassurance for colleagues who are concerned about the use of AI in assessment, particularly the use of traditional essays.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, educational institutions have been acutely focused on assessment: if ChatGPT writes essays, and AI detector tools are unreliable (Lee & Palmer, 2023), how can we stop students ‘cheating’ and ‘undermining the purpose’ of Higher Education (Cotton, Cotton & Shipway, 2023)? Rather than becoming an educational firewall, lecturers can develop a more holistic and creative response to the challenge: if an assessment can be designed that simply cannot be completed by AI, students and lecturers can engage in assessment for learning that is transparent, authentic and – potentially – transformative.
A human-centred, ‘AI-proof’ approach to assessment requires embodied learning and teaching: the students must be in the room to participate and succeed. But, unlike exams, these embodied, in-person tasks can involve innovative and creative presentations (beyond PowerPoint), role play, interaction with peers, and meaningful personal reflection. This type of ‘human assessment’ tests their interpersonal, social, and creative skills. They are encouraged to interrogate and embed their individual learning experiences, demonstrating their critical thinking and evidence-based approaches, just as essays encourage them to do. As well as tackling the challenge of AI, this creative – and multidisciplinary – approach may counter issues of engagement and attendance, which plummeted post-Covid (Williams, 2022). Underpinned by Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning, Curzon-Hobson’s (2002) ‘pedagogy of trust’, and Barnett’s (2009) ‘becoming’ in HE, creative, ‘human-focused’ assessment provides opportunities for community building and collaboration on campus, as well as having the potential to enhance student confidence and employability.
To illustrate the impact of human-focused assessment, I will present examples of such tasks already in use in City’s Journalism Department, inviting suggestions on how they could be improved and similar strategies colleagues are developing, before facilitating two creative exercises: in the first, workshop attendees will respond to a human-focused assessment brief centred around learning and teaching (to encourage interdisciplinary participation); in the second, they will brainstorm ideas for a new human-focused assessment in their own subject/module: whatever their discipline, participants will be encouraged to support each other’s thinking, and to come away from the session with ideas they can implement.
In this session attendees will:
• Consider the benefits of designing assessment that may be supported by, but not completed by, artificial intelligence, in their own subject area;
• Be inspired by practical and creative assessment for learning approaches that may ease concerns about student overuse and overreliance on AI;
• Experience responding to a human-focused assessment brief, on the theme of teaching and learning in any discipline, alongside colleagues;
• Participants from all subjects/schools can benefit from this session as they will have some time and space to explore how they might apply these approaches to their own subjects and modules, with support and encouragement from colleagues: attendees should leave the session with practical ideas to implement in the future.
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Barnett, R. (2009) Knowing and becoming in the higher education curriculum. Studies in Higher Education. 34 (4), pp. 429-440.
Cotton, D.R. E., Cotton, P.A. and Reuben Shipway, J. (2023) ‘Chatting and cheating: ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT’, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, Available at: DOI: 10.1080/14703297.2023.2190148 (Accessed: 5 April, 2024)
Curzon-Hobson, A. (2002) A pedagogy of trust in higher learning. Teaching in Higher Education, 7 (3), pp. 266-276.
Kolb, D. (1984) Experiential Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Lee, D. and Palmer, E. (2023) How hard can it be? Testing the dependability of AI detection tools. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-hard-can-it-be-testing-dependability-ai-detection-tools (Accessed: 5 April, 2024)
Williams, T. (2022). Class attendance plummets post-Covid. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/class-attendance-plummets-post-covid (Accessed: 5 April, 2024)
