Grading for the Artificially Intelligent Age
We can still remember a time when grades served a distinct, simply-defined purpose. We are not so far removed now. Grades are still supposed to measure what students have learned, how well they can follow instructions, or performance on standardized assessments. The letters or numbers represent knowledge and capabilities within a given subject. But with the rise of AI augmenting education, it is much easier for a student to automate their performance, supplying information that they do not themselves have to learn or know, in order to pass. Acing a quiz with the help of ChatGPT means that A does not reflect anything about someone’s understanding or ability, merely access to the internet and the copy-paste function.
This wrench thrown into the system of assessing learning may make real creativity and things like writing by hand or closed-book, no-internet essay exams more valuable evaluations of student growth, but can also be difficult to implement consistently, less objective to grade, and frankly less realistic in relation to the real world. The fact is that after the tests, people will–for now–still have access to the AI to help them, when they’re not being graded on it. The system of grading emerged at a time in human history when education was designed to create uniformity, for the industrialization of society, producing workers who could follow rules and predictably replicate results. But now, our society has been transformed significantly; using the tools available to us isn’t functionally cheating the system when in reality the system has changed. However, these changes to the system both help and hurt us as we seek to educate ourselves.
We started doing many things for good reasons, and some of them have become distinctly obsolete. It’s also true that a pocket supercomputer may not be available in every situation. While no one should have to anticipate getting stranded in the wilderness at some point, knowing how to think for yourself is extremely valuable in unforeseen, uncommon situations. Nobody has the time to ask OpenAI what to do if there’s a real emergency–and yet, many people might instinctually reach for it anyway, because that’s what they’ve taught themselves by refusing to engage with actually learning anything. Yes, humanity moves forward ceaselessly, inventing new ways to live. But what do we lose along the way?
If we have all of the means to recall information at our fingertips with a click, why bother keeping it in the brain? The real answer here is that it supports us staying alive, alert, reducing cognitive degeneration over time as we age–learning helps us live. We have retained the practice of things that may seem archaic now because they keep us from decaying, mentally and physically.
But if letter and number grading no longer adequately or accurately assess if and what we’ve learned, what does? If the way we perform changes, logically, the way we evaluate performance must change. If AI can trick our current systems, we have to either counteract or circumvent it, or incorporate it.
One of the more human ways to demonstrate learning is by drafting–showing work, developing a first edit, correcting prior mistakes, improving and showing growth. Things that rely on real-world skills, like displaying critical thinking and peer collaboration, are also better assessments of student progress than choosing the correct multiple choice answer on a test. We can try taking the new AI bots away from students to see them flounder, but what does that really achieve? They should instead at least be able to appropriately utilize such a tool–understanding what it does, and even noticing and correcting its errors. Just like a calculator or tracing paper, students can learn to perform with and without it.
We’ve got to stay ahead of the game–and to keep up, that means changing things in big ways. We still want kids to learn, so we need to know what they know. Acknowledging how the world is changing around us, and adjusting to it, is the best way to set students up for success.