A New Examination Era? AI and the Transformation of Educational Assessment

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Experts agree that the advent of AI will impact all areas of human life. This impact may have hugely positive consequences as it becomes possible to use the power of computing to undertake tasks which would be inconceivable for humans. Equally, there is currently widespread concern that the advent of AI, in its various forms, may open a Pandora’s Box of unanticipated consequences for which society is arguably unprepared. These concerns are central to the future of education and particularly, educational assessment, where the use of AI for writing assignments, for automated essay evaluation, for cheating detection and for generating test prompts are all already widespread. But they are arguably only the tip of the iceberg of the changes that will come.

In this talk, I will address the question of whether the advent of AI will be good for educational assessment. I will explore what I see as both the promise and the peril of AI.  I will argue that the advent of AI is likely to be as transformative for educational assessment today as the advent of mass formal schooling and public examinations was in the nineteenth century.  In particular, I will suggest that while AI will provide positive new opportunities for personalised learning and more nuanced assessments of competence, it will also present unprecedented challenges related to authenticity, surveillance and inequality.