7  AI-Proof Assessments

7.1 Conceive interesting and AI-proof assessment items for your courses.

In the age of AI, we face new challenges when it comes to assessing student learning. Traditional methods of assessment, such as essay writing or online quizzes, are vulnerable to AI assistance, thereby muddying the waters between what the student knows and what the AI knows. The solution to this lies not in a complete rejection of AI, but rather in a nuanced understanding and clever application of AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to create what we term as "AI-Proof Assessments."

AI-Proof Assessments are designed to challenge students in ways that purely AI-generated responses fall short. They require the application and evaluation of knowledge, critical thinking, and reflection — abilities that, while AI has made significant strides in mimicking, still distinctly belong to the human domain.

Consider, for example, an assignment that asks students to use ChatGPT to generate an initial essay on a course concept, which they then evaluate, revise, and reflect upon (see Mollick & Mollick, 2022, for example). The AI's role in this task is to generate the initial draft, but it's up to the student to apply their knowledge and critical thinking skills to assess and improve that draft. This process encourages students to engage more deeply with the course material, exercise their critical thinking skills, and reflect on their learning outcomes.

By incorporating frequent, low-stakes testing into your assessment strategy, you can further encourage continuous engagement and knowledge retention. These tests, which can be made open book, focus on the application and understanding of the course material rather than simple recall. Coupled with random sampling from a larger pool, these tests can be a robust method of assessing student understanding.

Finally, the inclusion of traditional oral viva or defence assessments provides a platform to assess students' grasp of the subject matter, critical thinking, and ability to articulate their knowledge — elements that cannot be prepared for in advance or outsourced to an AI.

This multi-faceted approach to assessments, combining traditional and AI-enabled methods, is what makes an AI-Proof Assessment. It harnesses the power of AI to provide a more enriching and engaging learning experience, while ensuring that the assessment remains a true measure of the student's understanding, application, and reflection of knowledge.

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