Presentation Rethinking assessments - the need for alternative assessments more

This presentation outlines the various difficulties educators may face when designing assessments in the age of GenAI (i.e work can be created by GenAI) and how educators may react by placing restrictions (resorting to pen and paper exams) or penalties (punishing students who use GenAI) in response to these difficulties. This presentation will argue that these approaches may act as temporary band-aids but ultimately might not be addressing the problems at hand or be beneficial for student learning. The presentation will share experiences from redesigning assessments for an English ‘writing for communication’ course at a Hong Kong university. Given that writing tasks are most susceptible to GenAI, an alternative approach was needed to try to measure student learning from the course. This meant that changes had to be made both to the content and assessments to still make writing feel “relevant” to students in a GenAI world. The presentation will share what these changes were and what the actual assessments were. By sharing this experience, other educators may start to think about their own approaches to assessment and whether traditional forms are still applicable. The presentation will end with broader pedagogical and practical suggestions that educators may find helpful.