Option 2: Assess under invigilation

Exams are generally not considered to be an authentic method that genuinely assesses students’ understanding, however there are situations where invigilated exams can be valuable, especially in cases where the use of AI has to be completely excluded. To determine whether it is the best option consider the following questions: 

• Are your assessment questions easily answered by AI? 
• Does the assessment test lower order skills such as remembering and understanding? 
• Is an element of recall important for the subject? 
• Is this ability to understand the subject at a lower level linked to professional body requirements? 

Further questions to consider revolve around other amendments that could be made such as: 

• A change of assessment type – Could the same skills be demonstrated through another assessment format? Read more here. 
• A change to the brief – Could the brief be amended to include features that AI doesn’t cope well with? Read more here. 
• A change to questions – Could questions be changed to be less easily answered by AI? Read more here. 

If the assessment can be easily produced by AI to an acceptable standard and the questions/ tasks in its current state cannot be amended/ it is undesirable that they are amended then invigilated exams can be an option. If this is what you are leaning towards considering the following: 

• Do you have the resources required to conduct in person exams? - In some cases the only option is to conduct the exams in spaces with no access to the Internet whatsoever 
• Will those be handwritten or electronic? 
• Wil you have the necessary infrastructure around electronic invigilated assessments - If the intention is to conduct exams electronically then consider software choices, whether the equipment will be provided by the department or students will be working on their own devices, monitoring options and inclusivity options around extra considerations for students with additional needs. The videos below contain further guidance on inclusivity considerations around exams. 

Other things to consider to lower the impact of AI on your assessment are: 

• Redistributing the weighting of this assessment by making it lower stake. You can read more about this here. 
• Redesigning the rubric to allocate lower weighting to those questions that can be easily answered by AI. You can read more about this here.