How to Assess Student Performance in the Age of AI? Utilising the Peer Review and Group Member Evaluation Tools in Feedback Fruits for Performance Review

The rapid emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and the widespread availability of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT has caused widespread concern amongst academics with respect to the impact on student assessment. Traditional forms of measuring student achievement, such as through individual essays and written group projects have become all too easy to complete for students with access to the newly available tools. In many cases, ChatGPT has become adept at delivering answers to traditional essay type questions at a standard that matches or even exceeds the answers of a typical college level student.

In response, some colleges and universities have taken to banning the use of AI or have employed technologies to indicate when students make use of generative tools. Other academics, recognising the reality of AI’s availability, have striven to develop assessment methods which allow AI’s usage only to struggle to find alternative tools to assess relative student achievement. This paper puts forward the idea that tasking students with critiquing the work of others in the form of peer review and assessing the performance of their peers through group member evaluation provides an ideal means of assessing important evaluative and comparative competencies. With the assistance of the integrated instruments available within Feedback Fruits, academics can swiftly and easily prepare a range of assessment methods which requires students to work on tasks which AI tools cannot currently complete on their behalf.

The paper begins with a discussion of the difficulties of using long-established assessment methods in the AI era. It then discusses the types of competencies which AI can to an extent replace and those which it cannot; peer review and group member evaluation are put forward as an ideal form of alternative assessment methods. The paper concludes with some examples of how Feedback Fruits has been used to develop and automate such assessments.