Don’t Fear the Robot:
Future-authentic assessment and generative artificial intelligence
Presentation
Event details
Generative artificial intelligence is now capable of producing outputs that appear to satisfy some learning outcomes. A recent study claims to have been able to mostly pass the US Medical Licensing Exam using ChatGPT. Educators experimenting with these tools are finding that their assessments are vulnerable to ‘AIgerism’, or AI-assisted plagiarism. However, a cheating perspective is not the only way to consider the role of generative artificial intelligence in assessment.
This presentation will consider generative artificial intelligence in the context of future-authentic assessment, a way of assessing that considers both current and future realities of a discipline. With tools like ChatGPT now a part of life, work and civic engagement, should capability with these tools be considered a learning outcome in and of itself?
Can the challenge for educators change from “how do I ban or detect AIgerism, or design tasks that AI can’t do”, towards how to represent a world where these tools are normal? What might we learn from previous technology panics and a history of transitioning from worry about new technologies such as writing, calculators and the Internet, to embracing them and even incorporating them into learning outcomes?
Professor Phillip Dawson
Professor Phillip (Phill) Dawson is the Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University. Phill has degrees in education, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and he leads CRADLE’s work on cheating, academic integrity and assessment security. This work spans hacking and cheating in online exams, training academics to detect contract cheating, student use of study drugs, the effectiveness of legislation at stopping cheating, and the evaluation of new assessment security technologies. His two latest books are Defending Assessment Security in a Digital World: Preventing E-Cheating and Supporting Academic Integrity in Higher Education (Routledge, 2021) and the co-edited volume Re-imagining University Assessment in a Digital World (Springer, 2020). Phill’s work on cheating is part of his broader research into assessment, which includes work on assessment design and feedback. In his spare time Phill performs improv comedy and produces the academia-themed comedy show The Peer Revue.
Dr. Sarah Eaton (Moderator)
Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD, is an associate professor at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada. She has received research awards of excellence for her scholarship on academic integrity from the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (CSSHE) (2020) and the European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI) (2022). Dr. Eaton has written and presented extensively on academic integrity and ethics in higher education and is regularly invited as a media guest to talk about academic misconduct. Dr. Eaton is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Educational Integrity. Her books include Plagiarism in Higher Education: Tackling Tough Topics in Academic Integrity, Academic Integrity in Canada: An Enduring and Essential Challenge (Eaton & Christensen Hughes, eds.), Contract Cheating in Higher Education: Global Perspectives on Theory, Practice, and Policy (Eaton, Curtis, Stoesz, Clare, Rundle, & Seeland, eds.), Ethics and Integrity in Teacher Education (Eaton & Khan, eds.), and Fake Degrees and Fraudulent Credentials in Higher Education (Eaton, Carmichael, & Pethrick, eds.). She is also the editor-in-chief of the Handbook of Academic Integrity (2nd ed., Springer), which is currently under development.
Sponsors:
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
University of Calgary Teaching and Learning Grant
University of Calgary International Partnership Workshop Grant
Werklund School of Education
