Assessment Tools and Strategies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Assessment Tools and Strategies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Published on June 25, 2023 on Harvard Graduate School of Education - MEPLI Website 

Although artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for quite a long time, educators recently started to express concern that their students would use AI tools to generate their research and other school assignments. This has led some institutions to adopt strict measures against those who rely on AI for their academic work. Plagiarism has always worried educators; however, tools that facilitate plagiarism will only get smarter and more difficult to detect despite the continuous improvement of detection  tools. This calls for educators to think of new ways to assess their students’ understanding using assessment tasks that result in outcomes that are solely the students’,  instead of outcomes  generated by digital tools and programs. 

Assessing students’ understanding is an integral component of teaching, as it helps educators know how close (or far) learners are from the intended learning outcomes. This informs teachers about their students’ learning needs, such as what should be retaught or where they need more practice; and who is doing well, and who needs more attention. In addition, assessment serves as feedback to teachers, informing them to modify their teaching methods or pace of instruction. Nevertheless, these benefits are not obtained if the output  presented by the learners is not their own creation but wholly or partially the generation of some tool or software. 

Authentic assessment methods are countless, and colleges of education address authentic assessment in almost every assessment course. However, educators still heavily rely on traditional forms of assessing their students’ work through pen and paper tests. Students must sit for examinations consisting of multiple choice, essay type, and short answer questions, and they are given tasks such as report and essay writing and research work. Students’ output in response to these tests and assignments can be generated by AI, thus undermining their validity, as they do not test what they should be testing–students’ learning. 

Nowadays, with  students’ ease of access to artificial intelligence tools, there is a greater risk of plagiarism and students submitting assignments that are generated by such tools. As a result, educators must adapt assessment practices that can inform them about their students’ learning and help them make the necessary decisions related to their teaching practices. This makes it imperative for educators to become more skillful in how they assess student learning. Here are some suggestions that can help in this respect: 

• Create tasks that can be assessed by observation of student performance. Learners need to demonstrate their knowledge through performance that can be observed by their peers or teachers. Clear criteria need to be established for observation. A variation to this is that students record their performance and submit their recordings to be viewed and assessed by their peer observers or their teachers. 

• Engage students in tasks that require students to collaborate and interact with one another. Afterwards, they have to report on their experience and follow this reporting with open discussion. 

• Assign students a task and have them report on it orally to their classmates or to another audience. They can be required to present evidence of their work in the form of photos or videos. Such tasks require teaching students presentation skills and skills of actively and deeply listening to an audience and responding to them. 

• Require students to conduct empirical research where they have to collect their own data from interviews, experiments, focus groups, and questionnaires. Here students are required to report their findings and be ready to explain them to an audience or a panel and be ready to respond to their questions. 

• Engage students in debates, panel discussions and seminars that require them to prepare their arguments and support them. They will also have to anticipate counter arguments and be prepared to respond to them. Learning how to listen and respond to audience questions is necessary in such types of activities. 

• Have students prepare podcasts and videos in which they explain various topics related to their course material. Uploading such material to the school platform can provide an authentic audience for the students’ products. 

• Ask students to annotate a piece that is generated by an AI tool while comparing it to their own piece to explain the difference between both pieces. Students may pair up with partners to discuss and annotate their drafts and then submit them along with their final version to be assessed. They might also write a reflection on the whole writing process in which they discuss the differences between the AI writing and their own. They can also explain what they learned about their own writing skills during the process. 

Artificial intelligence is here to stay. It will keep getting smarter and will continue to have a deeper understanding of our needs, which will lead to students relying on it more. Thus, educators need to work continuously on improving their AI literacy and to accept it as part of the teaching culture. Some tips for educators would be: 

• Make expectations clear to students about how they can and cannot use AI to accomplish their tasks. This should be done early on when the task is assigned, before students start working. 
• Work on establishing the culture of assessment for learning rather than assessment for testing and judging. In doing so, the focus of the teacher will be on having students getting closer to the intended learning outcomes instead of focusing on the grades students get. Students will be given multiple opportunities, if needed, to improve their work and become more knowledgeable and skillful. 

• Engage students in discussions about what AI can and cannot do and about the ethical aspects related to the use of such tools.

• Encourage students to befriend AI as their study buddy  to help expand their knowledge. Model to students how they can resort to AI tools to help them with prompts for their work and to build on what they already know through engaging in discussions about their assignments instead of requesting their whole assignment to be generated. 

• Augment student learning with AI instead of suppressing its use in schools.

Education in Lebanon: Severe Problems that Require a Leadership Initiative

https://www.lifeedu.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Lifereport_2021.pdf#page=31 

The various deeply enrooted political, social and economic problems in Lebanon have been impacting the educational system for decades. Numerous projects which are generously funded by international agencies are taking place in Lebanese schools. However, their impact on student learning outcomes is nothing but visible or observable; students “lag behind their peers in human capital development” (Lahire, El-Ghali, & Sedmik, 2021, p. 4), and two thirds of Lebanese students do not achieve basic literacy (Lahire, El-Ghali, & Sedmik, 2021). The recent school closure due to the coronavirus outbreak, lasting for almost a year and a half, and the culmination of the already-existing problems, exasperated those problems. 

Current Problems in Education 

Curriculum-related problems: The Lebanese educational system in Lebanon is facing a plethora of problems. First and foremost is the dated curriculum that was first planned for in 1994, had its principles and guidelines established in 1995, and was put into effect in 1998. Twenty-seven years after its inception, the curriculum has not witnessed any modifications or amendments except for the deletion of a chapter or more in selected subjects and grades due to the lengthy requirements or recently due to the reduction of the number of teaching days caused by the COVID 19 school closure. The outdated curriculum comes with other problems that surface in critical times as the case was when the schools had to close down in February 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID 19. During this time, it was essential that teachers and students have access to the digital version of the national textbooks. This, unfortunately, is still not available, and the Ministry of Education was unable to supply it during the pandemic. Many teachers initiated scanning the textbooks and distributing them to teachers and students across the country. Up to the date of writing this report, the books have not been formally published electronically.

 Another curriculum-based issue is that the curriculum is not compatible with the textbooks; the curriculum states objectives that are not to be found in the textbooks. Add to that, is the lack of flow of teaching objectives among the different grades. Then is the added issue that the official examination requirements are not always included in the textbooks that the students use to study. This puts a burden on the teachers to fetch their own teaching material, which in turn creates the problem of not having consistency of teaching material among all teachers and students in the country. 

Leadership-related problems: The majority of the school principals in the public sector are appointed based on their political affiliation, while their qualifications play a little role in this appointment. Studies show that most principals had neither undergone an interview nor an examination before their appointment. What is commonly experienced is a combat among candidates right before the appointment of the principal, and politics usually plays the major role in defining the winner of this combat (Basha, 2018). Add to that, the majority of the school principals have bachelor’s degrees in a scientific, humanities or social studies field, and hardly any of them have a degree or any certification in education or a teaching-related field. Moreover, school leaders adopt an authoritarian style giving little attention to the instructional dimension of their role (Akkary, 2013).

 Student numbers: Schools have been overwhelmed by the large number of Syrian refugees with more than 356,000 Syrian children enrolled in the Lebanese educational system in 2019 (Lahire, El-Ghali, & Sedmik, 2021). To accommodate for the large number of new students entering the system, schools had to resort to double shifts, and many teachers and principals took on an additional afternoon shift in pursuit of improving their financial income in times when the value of the national currency has declined by more than 400% of its original value. 

Infrastructure-related problems: When schools resorted to online teaching, many problems surfaced. It became clear that the majority of the Lebanese students lacked the necessary devices and internet connection that would enable them to follow up on their education and learn the necessary skills. Not only did students lack devices and internet but so did their teachers. This was extremely severe in public schools and its impact is more observed in k – 6 grades. Students in these grades lack the basic literacy, mathand social skills. As a result, the Center for Educational Research and Development (CRDP), whose main aim is to improve the quality of education in the country, developed a four-week recovery program (CRDP, 2021) to compensate for students the skills they missed during almost two years of deficient online learning (Lahire, El-Ghali, & Sedmik, 2021). 

Recent problems: As of the summer of 2021, additional problems emerged that will definitely have a long term effect on student learning. The past three years have been fraught with country-wide protests, road blockages, a pandemic, and the explosion of the port, all of which have exacerbated the economic collapse recently described by the World Bank as one of the worst in the world since the 1800s (The World Bank, 2021). Shortages of basics necessary for schools to run smoothly and efficeintly have been expereinced most conspicously starting in the spring of 2021. The country has experiecned shortage and a sudden increase in the price of fuel which lead to Internet diconnection and outage of electricty. In addition, the scarcity and prices of the fuel supply have limited road travel and made its cost beyond the capacity of the parents and teachers to commute to schools. The fall semester of 2021 commenced with country-wide teacher strikes in the public sector as teachers were asking for a fair financial compensation for the prices they pay for internet and fuel and also to compensate for the devaluing of their salaries. While the government is unable to fulfil the teachers’ requests, the latter went on a strike that lasted for almost two months. Although the teachers decided to go back to their classes after the minister of education has made several promises to compensate the teachers, it is everyone’s expectation that promises won’t be fulfilled and strikes will be resorted to. Moreover, the lack of fuel in schools will make it impossible to continue especially in the harsh winter months as fuel is a requirement for heating and lighting. The second part of the delimma is that if teachers and parents decide that it is less costly for them to revert to online teaching/learning, electric outages and poor internet connections will make online education inefficient and close to impossible. Impact of the problems on the schools While the move to online teaching during the coronavirus school closure has equipped many educators and students with skills they would not have acquired any other time, teachers still lack the pedagogy that should accompany online teaching; they are not only struggling with reaching out to their students but also they lack basic skills in assessment and student engagement (Farhat, 2021). Poor infrastructure makes education not accessible by the majority of the students; only a small group of Lebanese students will be able to attend classes regularly and acquire the necessary skills and knowledge appropriate to their grades. Young students have not acquired basic literacy and scientific skills. The emotional well-being of teachers and students need careful attention. Programs have been devised by CERD to deal with these issues, but such programs will not attain their optimal results due to student absenteeism. 

 Solutions

While educators and parents have no faith in any national solution that would positively impact the system, many private schools have devised their own survival plans. Those schools have purchased their own platforms, trained their teachers, and were able to connect with the parents. Many teachers took the initiative to learn and progress on their own. They enrolled in teaching diploma programs especially now that these programs have become available online. They also take any opportunity to learn from their colleagues or enroll in training programs. This remains a small percentage of the teachers, while the vast majority are reliant on their administrations to provide such professional development opportunities for them. Potential role of LIFE The Lebanese recession has unprecedented consequences on education and educators. However, the civil socieites have shown solidarity and creativity in devising and implementing plans to improve the various sectors in the country and have proven successful in areas where the government failed its people. The majority of these initiatives and plans have been targetting students, teachers and improving the physical school contexts. Little initiatives have targeted school leaders who are in an urgent need to assist them in facing the various challenges and improving conditions in their institutions. It is mandatory that leaders become agents of change and improvement. When they become more knowledgeable of the requirements of their roles, teaching pedagogies, and leading and managing institutions, they are more likely to devise plans that help them mitigate the impact of the current problems on the stakeholders. LIFE initiative can take on the role of capacity development of leaders who will become in better positions to improve the processes at their schools. This initiative can get leaders together to share practices and engage in discussions that benefit all. If leaders can form professional learning communities, then the barriers that set them apart might be diminished, and they can build on the experiences of each other. Leaders of education need to be part of a community that connects them and brings them out of their isolation especially in times of calamaties. 

References 

(2021, November 19). Retrieved from CRDP: https://www.crdp. org/project-details/33006 Akkary, R. (2013). 

The Role and Role Context of the Lebanese School Principal. Educational Management Adminstration & Leadership, 42, 718-742. Basha, S. (2018). Leadership Role of Public School Principals. Educational Studies and Research Center. 

Farhat, A. F. (2021). University Instructors’ Perceptions toward Online Teaching at the Onset of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Lebanon: A Descriptive Study. Middle Eastern Journal of Research in Education and Social Sciences, 2(2), 37-57. doi: https://doi. org/10.47631/mejress.v2i2.243 

Lahire, N., El-Ghali, H. A., & Sedmik, E. (2021). Foundations for Building Forward Better: An Education Reform Path for Lebanon. Washington DC: World Bank Group. Retrieved from https:// documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/627001624033308257/ pdf/Foundations-for-Building-Forward-Better-An-EducationReform-Path-for-Lebanon.pdf (2021). 

Lebanon Sinking into One of the Most Severe Global Crises Episodes, amidst Deliberate Inaction. World Bank. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://www.worldbank.org/ en/news/press-release/2021/05/01/lebanon-sinking-into-one-ofthe-most-severe-global-crises-episodes