This blog isn’t about AI
This blog isn’t about AI, it’s about assessment; but AI’s where the story begins..
I’m finally a convert – for some things, at least. Gemini and ChatGPT have helped me solve some tricky computer issues recently, though I have to say, with appalling levels of efficiency.
The format’s always the same: a cheery ‘I got ya! Here’s all you need to do…!’ Its wonderfully-programmed confidence sucks you in, and down the rabbit hole you go. But the thing is with computer-related challenges, you know pretty quickly whether or not AI’s got it right. And when you call it out with: ‘No, those options aren’t in the list’, or ‘No, that doesn’t give the result you describe’, its backtrack is equally swift and confident. ‘You’re right to point that out’, or ‘This really helps us narrow things down’, or ‘That changes the interpretation quite a bit’. But what if the challenge you’ve set it isn’t as binary as right or wrong? And what if, as with some of my tech issues, it misses the point entirely?
AI-assisted assessment worries me greatly. Here’s how ChattyG describes it:
“AI-assisted assessment of student work uses artificial intelligence tools to help evaluate, analyse, and provide feedback on… [XYZ]. The goal is usually to save teacher time, improve consistency, and provide faster feedback to students.”
There’s a couple of significantly red flags here. The easy one first: ‘consistency’. A fair working synonym for ‘consistency’ is ‘uniform’. I’ve worked in FE for nearly 40 years, and can’t ever remember coming across a group, whether students or teachers, that required a uniform approach. We don’t want our work to be ‘uniform’, we want the next step for an individual to be ‘appropriate’ to their needs. And if, instead, we attached the meaning of consistency to the judgement of quality, then we’re probably talking more about the inappropriate use of summative assessment during the developmental stages of learning.
Important as this is, it’s a side show when compared to the main red flag.
Here’s the key question: what type of assessment is ChattyG describing? I feel the clue is in the phrase ‘save teacher time’. While one would hope that AI-assisted assessment is truly formative (rather than summative, which is only relevant at specific times during the course) it’s firmly ‘teacher-centred’. So why is this a problem?
Let’s zoom out a little to a bigger question: do you want your students to be able to progress independently of you – to ‘fly’ off the end of your course, or do you want them to become dependent on you, and so to ‘drop’ off the end? Assessment regimes centred on teacher feedback have a strong tendency to create what none of us want: dependent learners. By way of example, just look at the reason teachers are supposed to return written feedback ASAP: it’s because when a student hands work in for assessment, they have a tendency to go into ‘wait mode’. Their enthusiasm for progress slumps as they wait to be told what to do next. So, what is it that we want? Not this, surely?
We want students to develop their ability to be self critical as early in their course as possible. They need to be able to understand what ‘quality’ means in the context of their work, make a critical judgement about their early drafts, then edit appropriately so that the final submitted work meats the expected high standard. And all without the intervention and hand-holding of the teacher. Does your feedback regime achieve this?
Learner-centred formative assessment is an art, not an AI gimme. And it’s not something that’s done at the end of the learning process; it is the learning process. On June 9th, I’m delighted to be running an online session on this subject for FEThink: Assessment & the Art of Lazy Teaching. During the session, delegates will be introduced to 50 different teaching strategies with built-in, learner-centred formative assessment; strategies at the end of which students know what to do next without being told. They never go into ‘wait mode’. You don’t have to pre-mark work. You don’t have to mark poor-quality assignments. Assessment isn’t about you and your time.
Do join us if you can. June 9th, 13:30 to 16:30. Zoom. More details here: https://lnkd.in/ebMgag7u.
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