Essential Insights is a member-focused event series designed to deliver pragmatic, hands-on insights and advice across a range of spotlighted topics that preoccupy us all. These lunchtime webinars include a 20-minute presentation and 30-minutes for open discussion and questions. Please feel free to bring your lunch!
Restructuring the essay in a time of AI
12pm-1pm (AEDT)
Tuesday 3 March
Online
Generative AI has obviously destabilised assessment. Perhaps nowhere else is this more visible than in the context of the essay. This Essential Insights session focuses on the essay in a time of AI and argues that AI and assessment constitute a wicked problem. This means that there are no ‘correct solutions, only better or worse options, and it also means that technical fixes intended to restore the essay through means such as AI detection, policy, or surface redesign are likely to be ineffective and even counterproductive. Using the essay as a focal case, the discussion shows how GenAI exposes deeper questions about what essays are meant to assess and why we should resist abandoning them. The session concludes by moving beyond diagnosis to outline concrete structural changes to essay tasks that might preserve both their educational value and assessment validity in the age of AI.
Dr Thomas Corbin, Research Fellow at Deakin University’s Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) will lead this session as a guest speaker.
This session is facilitated by DASSH’s Teaching and Learning Network led by conveners Dr Steven Murdoch, Professor Amanda Mooney and Dr Bill Fish.
Guest speaker
Dr Thomas Corbin
Research Fellow, Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE)
Deakin University
Facilitators
