Helping Students Maintain Academic Integrity
A useful way to promote responsible use of GenAI involves discussing the good and bad practices of using GenAI in assessment during assignment preparation. When teachers explain task requirements in class, they could engage students in a plenary discussion of appropriate and inappropriate use of GenAI in essay writing as well as the limitations of GenAI. For instance, it is appropriate to use GenAI for grammar check and draft evaluation to obtain formative feedback prior to assignment submission. However, instructing GenAI to write a few paragraphs or the entire essay would be inappropriate because this obviates students’ need to develop writing skills. They are also reminded to cross-check AI-generated information in case they find references or source materials from GenAI.
Another recommended practice involves requiring students to make explicit their use of GenAI in the assessment process. On assignment briefs, there could be a statement requiring students to acknowledge their use of GenAI on the assignment cover page and to briefly explain how they have used the AI-generated information to undertake their work. Some teachers may require students to submit their AI prompts, names of large language models (LLMs) and AI-generated response in appendices. During grading, teachers could examine the provided information in suspected cases of AI-giarism or inappropriate use of GenAI.
Using Rubrics
Students
Students rarely engage with grading rubrics. However, AI can rectify this and help students to self-assess. Students can paste assignment drafts using an AI tool together with the marking rubrics used for the course. Students can ask an AI tool to evaluate the assignment and suggest ways to improve the assignment. In addition, students can be asked to reflect on this process – do they agree with the suggestions made by the AI tool?
Instructors
Instructors can feed a sample of students’ work into the AI tool together with the rubrics for the assignments to see if there are particular areas of assignment that students are struggling with. The AI tool can identify patterns of strengths/weakness in students’ answers. The AI tool can also be used for generating feedback relating to each category in the rubric to be refined by the instructor. Please remember, if AI is used for marking/feedback, the instructor needs to inform their students that AI is used for this purpose – why and how.