1st Edition
Designing University Assessment for a World with Artificial Intelligence
Introduction: Designing university assessment for a world with artificial intelligence
Thomas Corbin
SECTION I. Conceptual and theoretical foundations
1. What is needed for assessment now, and how might GenAI influence this?
David Boud
2. Designing assessment for GenAI contexts: Collective learning, integrity and capability
Tim Fawns
3. Measuring what matters in AI-integrated higher education
Jason M. Lodge, Margaret Bearman, Thomas Corbin, and Phillip Dawson
4. What does it mean for students to do their own work? The issue of originality in the age of AI
Jiahui Jess Luo
5. Designing assessment for recognitive feedback
Joanna Tai, Thomas Corbin, and Gene Flenady
6. Assessment in the age of generative AI: The importance of knowledge and knowing responsibly
Jan McArthur
SECTION II. Empirical insights
7. Wicked solutions: The challenge of advising on assessment design after AI
Thomas Corbin, Margaret Bearman, David Boud, and Phillip Dawson
8. Program-wide approaches to changing assessment in response to GenAI
Kelli Nicola-Richmond and Phillip Dawson
9. Learning designers and assessment practice in the age of AI: Navigating the third space
Nhung Nguyen, Michael Henderson, and Keith Heggart
10. Agency now or later? Equity students’ stories of learning with generative artificial intelligence
Nicole Crawford, Margaret Bearman, Joanna Tai, and Jack Walton
11. Originality as texture
Jack Walton and Margaret Bearman
SECTION III. Possible futures
12. Developing student voice through oral assessment: Conceptualising sustainable assessment in the age of AI
Kelly E. Matthews
13. Humanising assessment in an age of AI
Juuso Henrik Nieminen and Margaret Bearman
14. Open tools for the authentic assessment of GenAI-assisted practices
Zachari Swiecki
15. The work of assessment in the age of artificial intelligence: Reflections on aura and friction in university assessment
Nicole Pepperell
16. Cultivating an ethos of attribution as an assessment practice in a postplagiarism era
Sarah Elaine Eaton
17. Return to purpose: The future of assessment and credentials in an age of generative artificial intelligence
Cormac McGrath and Teresa Cerratto Pargman
18. Artificial intelligence and the spirit of assessment scholarship
Margaret Bearman
Biography
Thomas Corbin is a Lecturer at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia. His research focus is on education and assessment design at the intersection of generative artificial intelligence and work.
Juuso Henrik Nieminen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia. His research explores how educational assessment takes shape and shapes people in a social world.
Joanna Tai is Associate Professor at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia. Her research interests span student experiences of learning and assessment, inclusive assessment, feedback literacies, evaluative judgement, peer-assisted learning, and research synthesis.
Jack Walton is a Lecturer at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia. His main research interests include the assessment of complex and creative work, and the relationship between assessment and generative artificial intelligence.
Margaret Bearman is a Research Professor at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, Deakin University, Australia. Her current interests span higher and professional education, including learning, teaching and working in a world with artificial intelligence.
“As a University teacher, and a scholar deeply interested in how students learn and how we assess that process, this edited volume speaks deeply to me. This collection comes at a critical moment of change, confusion, and innovation in the context of emerging GenAI and radical alterations to the dynamics of student learning. The chapters in this volume offer critical analyses of, and substantive insights into, both the core challenges that GenAI brings and the possibilities for assessment and pedagogy in the contemporary higher education landscape. By bringing together conceptual foundations, empirical research, and future possibilities this book offers substantive assistance as instructors reimagine analytics and practice around assessment and pedagogy. The ideas, details, practices in this text provide a helpful roadmap for navigating towards pedagogically sound assessment in an AI-influenced and AI-integrated present and future.”
Agustín Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University
“In a field often caught up in technological panic, this exceptional volume offers a crucial and timely corrective. It calls educators back to assessment principles grounded in established theory while showing how to design pedagogy that doesn't just respond to AI but actively leverages it to enhance learning. This is an indispensable resource for anyone committed to the future of meaningful assessment in higher education.”
Professor Yan Zi, Head, Department of Curriculum and Instruction; Executive Co-Director, Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, The Education University of Hong Kong
“This important collection could not be more timely, arriving as universities around the world grapple with how to design meaningful assessment in the age of generative AI. Bringing together chapters from some of the world’s leading experts on assessment and feedback in higher education, the book offers both authority and depth. The book does not shy away from the complexity of what is clearly a ‘wicked problem’: designing meaningful, credible assessment in a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Yet neither does it lapse into pessimism about the future. Instead, the volume combines strong theoretical and conceptual grounding with practical ways forward, giving readers a sense of cautious optimism rooted in the insight, experience, and collective expertise of its contributors.”
Professor Naomi Winstone, University of Surrey
"How to assess appropriately, validly and meaningfully in universities in the age of artificial intelligence is core concern of academics, quality assurers and university leaders as we confront almost universal concerns about issues such as originality of authorship, reliability and pragmatism. It would be easy for HE practitioners to simply throw in the towel and resort to unseen exams and labour-intensive one-to-one assessments, discarding some of the most valuable work on working towards authentic assessment we have witnessed in recent years, but this is not what the authors of these thoughtful and evidence-based chapters are suggesting
This new volume, edited by some of the most highly regarded leaders in thinking internationally, from the Deakin University based Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) is an invaluable and timely guide to navigating these stormy waters, and helping to ensure that student learning remains central to approaches implemented.
The book offers both sustainable and practical guidance for programme and course leaders as well as empirical insights into possible ways forward.
University colleagues at all levels will do well to consult this book over future years to avoid the mindless panic that is all to obvious in contemporary commentary on the issue."
Sally Brown, Emeritus Professor, Leeds Beckett University
"This collection of essays is just what I was looking for. Serious, experienced educational experts helping me think through not only the how but the why of assessment transformation in an era of GenAI. The articles situate the GenAI story in its broader context allowing us to put the focus of our work where it needs to be—on what we want higher ed to be not on what the GenAI hype cycle is selling us."
Dave Cormier, Director of Curriculum Development and Delivery, Open Learning, Thompson Rivers university and author of Learning in a time of Abundance: the community is the curriculum, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
"This volume gathers an enviable concentration of assessment expertise—the kind of scholarship CRADLE attracts like a magnet—and shows with conviction that enduring assessment principles remain indispensable in the age of generative AI. Moving from foundations to evidence and future directions, it cuts through the noise of superficial AI commentary with analysis that is both rigorous and refreshingly pragmatic. Insightful for policy and practice, and written with a light scholarly touch, it stands out as a genuinely authoritative guide to designing assessment in an AI‑inflected future."
Professor Kay Sambell, BA (Hons), MA, D.Phil, PFHEA, NTF, University of Cumbria






