Authentic assessment
The best response to AI would be to establish an authentic mode of assessment. In fact, it is in precisely this domain that projects come into their own. When a student selects for themself a question that is personally engaging and linked to a real-world challenge, the risk of outsourcing the intellectual labour to generative AI is far less.
Moreover, if, as is the case with project qualifications, we build in such safeguards as mentor checks on the project process, learner records of evolving thought processes and a synoptic presentation in which the learner defends their work and explicates the creative journey that led up to it, we have all the materials we need for an assessment model that is both AI-resilient and also future-facing, being adaptable, multi-modal and learner-responsive.
The new importance of PbT
What I have described could aptly be called ‘Project-based Thinking (PbT). This would involve a mode of learning and assessment that holds great promise as we reflect on the need for students to prepare themselves for the unknowable challenge of living and working in a world where AI is likely to suffuse everyday life in complex ways. The student who has learned to set for themself interesting, engaging, deep-seated challenges, addressing real-world issues such as climate change, well-being, social justice and technological innovation, has precisely the skill set and intellectual disposition needed to embrace AI as a tool for augmenting and supporting creative learning and expression. Indeed, we could say that one goal of education is to help develop project-based thinkers, who have the confidence, resilience and skills to take hold of the best available technological tools and apply them to creative problem-solving activities. The dramatic emergence of generative AI, far from being the harbinger of doom for project work in schools, highlights just how important it is that we go beyond a focus on examination outcomes and embrace deeper thinking and project processes as central elements in a future-facing pedagogy.
Emphasis on critical thinking over digesting facts is all part of the school’s ethos of developing ‘global citizens’.
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