Considerations for Examination
Methods where students individually or in groups produce text as expressions of knowledge are highly susceptible to conscious or unconscious deception or cheating. This applies primarily to all forms of asynchronous production, meaning when students independently, in time and space, produce text as expressions of knowledge. This can include, for example, take-home exams, lab reports, projects, and theses.
Shift Focus from Product to Process
The course syllabus specifies the examination format for the course. However, as a teacher, you are free to incorporate elements in the teaching where the student's learning process takes center stage. Examples of such elements include reading and writing logs, practice sessions, optional quizzes, tutorial sessions, and quizzes. A guiding principle is that students should document and continually process the course content in a way that does not create an unreasonable workload for you as a teacher.
Let your questions be connected to the instruction provided in the course. Note that lectures are not mandatory unless they are part of the examination.
Read more
Diversify
Review your course plans with regard to examination. It is advisable to conduct more than one assessment during courses, ideally with assessments building on each other and taking various forms. This makes it difficult for students to cheat on the first assessment and succeed in subsequent ones.
The more specific you are, the harder it becomes for a Generative AI to produce a credible text. As a teacher, you can also offer mentoring sessions with students to support their writing. This way, you can track the students' learning process and progression. Well-constructed multiple-choice questions are an effective way to assess students' learning/understanding, even for abstract and more advanced expected learning outcomes (ELOs).
Read more
Consider Your Instructions
Communicate clearly with the student group. Be particularly careful with instructions for exams and assessment formats that students are expected to submit, such as take-home exams or their equivalents. Anything that you, as the teacher, do not specify as permitted for use during the examination should be considered prohibited.
Always provide written information about the examination guidelines. Focus on the resources that students are allowed to use. Avoid listing what is not allowed, as it's easy for that list to become incomplete.
Read more
Utilize Formalities
Utilize formalities to specify and regulate how students' work should be presented at the submission. Even shorter texts should include source citations placed directly where they are relevant in the text. This makes it more challenging for students to use AI to generate a text that adheres to your instructions. Ask students to justify their choice of sources.
Regarding written assignments that involve source citations, you can control which sources may be used or ask students to justify their choices of alternative sources.
Read more
Re-consider Your Questions
Formulating questions that are relevant, interesting, unambiguous, and well-written is essential to assess students' knowledge in a meaningful and reliable way. As a teacher, you need to consider that questions should be crafted in a manner that does not allow for easy answers through AI tools.
Ask questions where the answers are tied to local specific contexts, tasks, or perspectives covered during the course, which all students can relate to. You can also frame questions that require students to draw on their own experiences from earlier parts of the course or educational program.
Read more
Review the Course's Expected Learning Outcomes (ELOs)
If you have the opportunity to update the course syllabus, it's important to review the Expected Learning Outcomes (ELOs) from an examination perspective. Do the ELO provide guidance and flexibility for you to assess the breadth and depth of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that the course's purpose points to?
Advice and Thoughts on Specific Formats of Examination
Different examination methods/formats are sensitive to deceptive behavior or cheating to varying degrees. In general, we categorize examinations into four categories/methods (Stiggins): short/closed written answers, essays/extended texts created by the student, oral exams, and practical exams.
Of these, the most vulnerable to AI are exams that require longer explanatory answers that the student must formulate themselves. Examples of examination formats within this category may include essays/independent work, take-home exams, descriptive and reasoned lab reports, and so on. Below are some pieces of advice related to each of these examination formats.
Take-Home Exams
Take-home exams are one of the formats particularly vulnerable to the influence of generative AI, and examining a fully written product at the end of the course can be problematic. Some ways to address this are, first, to ensure that take-home exams do not (solely) request general knowledge of understanding or analysis but also call for personal statements and reflections. This form can also be supplemented with, for instance, oral examinations/peer opposition or peer feedback that requires more personal assessments of the various intellectual/qualitative elements in the content.
Read more
Lab Report
This section will be completed shortly.
Thesis
This section will be completed shortly.
Oral Examination
This section will be completed shortly.
Changing the Examination Format
Changing the examination format can be an alternative, but keep in mind that it requires a more extended process because the course syllabus is a governing document.