While the use of GenAI by students may sometimes not support their learning, it can also be a valuable tool that helps students develop new skills and approaches in our discipline. Additionally, these tools can be leveraged to create more personalized and engaging learning experiences.

We hear from our students that they use GenAI when they are feeling stressed and anxious about their grades. 

Include In-class Elements

Bringing assessment or elements of assessments into the classroom can help reduce the risk of students using Generative AI in their submissions.

• In-person exams, such as midterms and final exams  limit AI misuse.
• In-person presentations and interviews allow for real-time assessment reducing AI use.
• Including in-person elements as part of larger assignments ensures active participation and reduces AI-driven submissions. 
• Graded group work, peer-review, Q&As, debates, and other active learning approaches foster collaboration and limit AI usage.
• Case-based and problem-based learning engage students in real-world scenarios, and minimize AI-generated responses.

Emphasize Process rather than Product 

Making the process more visible helps ensure the authenticity of student work and reduces the likelihood of AI misuse.

• Deemphasizing the weight of the final product by including multiple steps such as outlining, drafting, peer-reviewing, and accepting/rejecting feedback emphasizes the process over the outcome.
• Providing ways for students to explain how they came up with a result or answer ensures transparency and reduces reliance on AI.
• When working in teams, students co-create a team contract to promote accountability and minimize the use of AI-generated work.
• Post-submission interviews allow instructors to verify the student’s understanding and reduce AI-related concerns.

Design Multimodal Assignments

Utilizing various formats for assignments enhances engagement and reduces reliance on generative AI, as current AI tools do not effectively generate multimodal outputs.

• In addition to traditional research paper-style writing, students may demonstrate their learning through videos, podcasts, infographics, etc.
• Students annotate videos or other media and are evaluated based on their annotations, ensuring active engagement and reducing AI dependency.

Emphasize Tasks That AI Cannot Perform Well

Educators have been developing alternative assessments that ChatGPT cannot easily complete. This approach carries risks, given the rapid evolution of technology and the continuous addition of massive amounts of prompts, which improve the outputs generated. However, while making assessments completely AI-proof may be nearly impossible, we can focus on tasks in assessment expectations that foster personalized and localized connections. For example, demonstrating learning could involve linking to local contexts or current events, which may not be well represented in large language models.

Update Grading Schemes

You might consider updating your current grading schemes, rubrics, and outlined criteria to prioritize and emphasize competencies that are less mechanical and harder for AI to replicate. For instance, in a writing assignment, you could shift the focus towards skills like constructing solid arguments, incorporating and assessing evidence, and conducting critical analysis, rather than emphasizing grammar and essay structure. Additionally, asking students to submit rough planning notes with their assignments could help evaluate their process, not just the final product.

While there are times when the use of Generative AI (GenAI) by students may not support their learning, it can also be a valuable tool that helps them develop new skills and approaches within our discipline. Additionally, these tools can be leveraged to create more personalized and engaging learning experiences.

Effective Practices for Integrating GenAI In Assessment and Assignment Design

Protect Student Privacy: Generative AI (GenAI) currently poses considerable privacy risks. To mitigate these risks, GenAI assignments should ensure that students only use GenAI tools with a completed Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) and avoid inputting personal information. For a more detailed description of privacy considerations, please refer to the UBC GenAI privacy guidelines.

Communicate How and When Students Can Use GenAI: In order to preserve academic integrity and develop clear guidelines for assignment completion, help students develop an understanding of which assignments they can use GenAI for and how they can use the model. 

Scaffold the Use of GenAI to Ensure Student Learning and Equity: Students have varying levels of proficiency and confidence in using GenAI. To help students develop their skills and ensure a level playing field, it is essential to scaffold and support their use of GenAI for assignments.

Promote Ethical and Responsible AI Use in Assignments: There are considerable ethical issues with the use of Generative AI and students are not always aware of these. Support students in understanding challenges including intellectual property, accuracy and bias when using these tools.

Emphasize Human-AI Interaction: Use AI as a tool to augment, not replace, human creativity. Assign tasks where AI can help brainstorm ideas, generate drafts, or provide inspiration, but require students to refine and personalize the outputs.

Emphasize ways for students to demonstrate their learning process. This could range from showing their work when writing an equation to reflecting on developing a project and what steps they used. 

Include Reflective Components:To help students develop GenAI literacy and enhance their learning, provide opportunities for them to reflect on and evaluate GenAI outputs.

Align with the Learning Goals: It is important to keep the focus on the intended learning goals; do not get distracted by the emergence of GenAI tools. Remember what you expect your students to learn and how each assignment may guide their learning. Communicate your passion and the meaning behind each assignment. 

Ways of Integrating GenAI in Assignments and Assessments

Students Evaluate and Revise GenAI Output 

As of 2024, Generative AI (GenAI) output may frequently include inaccuracies, hallucinations, and biases. Despite these limitations, they can be effectively utilized to enhance student learning. By generating and analyzing GenAI outputs, students can identify errors, biases, and different perspectives, and then work on revising these outputs to either improve them or reflect on the errors detected. This practice not only leverages GenAI limitations but also aids in developing evaluative judgment—an essential component of critical thinking, especially important given the growing reliance on GenAI.

Brainstorming, outlining and Ideation 

Generative AI is a useful tool for ideation, outlining and brainstorming and faculty are increasingly incorporating GenAI as part of the thinking or writing process. This can involve students using GenAI to brainstorm a list of topics, create an outline for a project, generate ideas for a persuasive essay, or use it to draft aspects of their writing. 

One of the primary ways GenAI is being utilized is to assist students in brainstorming and generating ideas. GenAI can be prompted with a topic or concept, and it can generate a list of related ideas, topics, or questions to explore. This can help students overcome writer’s block and expand their thinking, reasoning beyond their initial thoughts. GenAI can also be used to create mind maps or visual representations of ideas, aiding in the organization and structuring of thoughts.

In addition to brainstorming, GenAI is being used to draft aspects of students’ writing. For example, students can use GenAI to generate topic sentences, outlines, or even complete paragraphs. This can save time and provide a starting point for students who may struggle with getting their thoughts on paper. GenAI can also be used to generate different versions of a sentence or paragraph, allowing students to compare and select the best option.

Students Incorporate GenAI as An Assistant throughout the Assignment

In some teaching contexts, faculty are encouraging students to use Generative AI throughout the assignment process without placing any restrictions on its use. While students are required to disclose when and how they have used Generative AI, they are encouraged to integrate it into their assignments. This approach is applied across different disciplines and is often used in courses that assess students’ coding skills.