AI Technology: Key to Successful Assessment

Introduction

Technology has always played a very dynamic role in education. It has been used to enhance teaching and learning experiences, enable the development of more interactive and engaging learning environments with access to abundant resources. Recently, OpenAI caused a huge wave in the educational area when ChatGPT was debuted in late November in 2022. This new technology initiated an enormous disruption in education garnering mixed reactions. Some schools already started banning ChatGPT out of concern regarding academic plagiarism in assessment activities, such as cheating in assignments and exams. “Some of the nation’s largest school districts are banning San Francisco-based OpenAI’s new ChatGPT tool on school networks and devices” (Jimenez K., 2023). Some other schools are taking actions to create counter applications to detect students using ChatGPT – Stanford University is one of them and developed DetectGPT to help teachers detect ChatGPT generated text content (Miller, 2023). A Princeton student also created a GPTZero tool to detect ChatGPT (Svrluga, 2023). In contrast, some people are embracing AI technology since “AI will be a part of young people’s future, it must also be a part of the classroom now” (Jimenez K., 2023). Some teachers are using ChatGPT creatively and embracing it in their lessons (The Associated Press, 2023). Using AI technology in education is not a new phenomenon. Since the 1970s, AIEd - Artificial Intelligence in Education, has been an active research area that focuses on the design, development and application of AI technologies to support teaching, learning, and assessment in educational contexts. AI technologies and applications will bring potential benefits for education, bridging the gaps between AI technological innovations and their educational applications (Zhang, K & Aslan, B, 2021). AIEd research has suggested that dynamic, holistic expert systems can help with pedagogical planning and fully unleash the potentials of learning management systems (LMS) for teaching and learning (Dias et al., 2015).

Every time, when a new technology emerges, it causes different reactions among educators for its values and disadvantages. History shows that banning technology has never worked. People had similar worries when the internet was first used to teach online courses and some instructors were concerned that their classroom teaching would be replaced by online format. Instead, since the availability of internet, online education has been prevalent all over the world. The development of CMS made the technology implementation a breeze and online education has become an important and integral part of traditional education globally. New technology pushes people to an upper level of thinking, and challenges people’s minds to be more creative with innovations that raise the standards and quality of people’s life. This time around, the huge disturbance caused by ChatGPT calls for the attention of educators to critically review and revolutionize the existing educational system. It is high time for school leaders and teachers to identify the gaps and potential barriers that slow down educational process, and to improve the quality of education through quickly adjusting the goal and mission of education to match the market needs. Otherwise, educational institutions will become academic ivory towers for displaying rather than a forefront battleground to educate and nurture students to be capable citizens.

This chapter discusses three aspects related to the disruption from AI technology, specifically ChatGPT, in education to find out possible solutions through: 1) improving teaching quality via reexamining assessment activities; 2) increasing the educational value via assessing student learning in alignment with societal needs; and 3) enhancing assessment quality via embracing AI technology to ultimately raise the quality of education.