Welcome to the second in a short series to prepare you for Spring 2025 subjects. As noted in the previous blog in this series, students must have the opportunity to engage with GenAI within clear parameters, with clear guidelines about where and when they can use GenAI in each subject.
If GenAI needs to be banned in a specific assessment to support student learning, a secure assessment strategy should be used. In the Canvas course Assessment in the Age of GenAI, we included this decision tree that you might find useful to identify those assessments that you might make secure.
What makes an assessment secure?
A secure assessment is one that gives you confidence that a student is demonstrating their own understanding, skills, and knowledge. In general, assessments that involve real-time interaction are more secure than other assessment types such as written submissions because they provide opportunities to probe students’ knowledge, skills and understanding.
These strategies need to be designed with both staff and student workloads, as well as student accessibility, in mind. It is not necessary nor desirable to convert all assessments into more secure assessment types, but consider where you might usefully introduce a secure assessment, and how you might support students in developing their skills in undertaking these assessment types.
Interactive oral assessments and viva voce
Interactive Oral Assessments (IOA) are authentic scenario-based conversations where the assessor and learners(s) adopt distinct roles and interact with each other to deal with issues that develop during the conversation. As each learner engages with the scenario, a unique interactive assessment emerges as the conversation evolves. Interactive Oral assessments a user’s guide, Charles Sturt University
Interactive Oral assessments are conducted one-on-one with the student and teacher, and can cover earlier assessments that may not have been secured. They mirror the type of conversations likely in the workplace and as such are relatively authentic.
Viva Voce are familiar assessments at the PhD level and require the student to defend their work. This option might be used to focus on a body of work such as a number of interlinked assessments focusing on a Course Intended Learning Outcome (CILO).
Simulations with real-time interactive components
The OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) is used in nursing and medical education but could be adapted to other disciplines. A number of stations are set up where students answer questions or perform protocols whilst being observed.
Simulations mimic real-world scenarios and require students to respond to prompts or opportunities in real time. Practical demonstrations with real-time interaction or invigilation would similarly offer confirmation of student skills and knowledge in a secure – that is not mediated by GenAI – environment.
Presentations with real-time interactive components
Presentations can be secure if there is a real-time interaction where the presented might answer questions from the floor. While the presentation may have been made with the assistance of GenAI, the questions are not pre-prepared but are answered by the presenter, so establish their command of the content.
Invigilated tests are also a secure option.
Where can I find more information?
You can find a wealth of information and support about GenAI in learning and teaching on the Learning and Teaching with GenAI SharePoint site. There is a GenAI Special Interest Group (SIG) where staff can drop-in weekly to talk about GenAI. The next event is:
Coming soon in our Spring Cleaning series: How to get support and services from the Education Portfolio and a checklist for setting up your Canvas site for Spring 2025