Survivor: Assessment Island: Students vs AI vs Academics
It’s difficult not to have sympathy for students at all levels of education as they try and navigate the confusing landscape of assessment at a time of the emergence of generative AI (GenAI) in the form of large language models (LLMs).
The rise of GenAI in education has not only polarised academics but also left students stuck in the middle of contradictory expectations, oppositional philosophies about teaching and learning and, most alarmingly, assessment rubrics that appear to have been designed by a committee of Vogons after a long lunch. From the student’s perspective, the situation is a little like being asked to play a game of cricket, football, and three-dimensional chess simultaneously, while the umpire insists that the only real objective is to demonstrate “original thought” and the ball has been replaced with a small but extremely enthusiastic ferret.
Four caricatured positions capture the current landscape:
- Billy Booster: The techno-optimist. Believes AI is the future of learning and that resistance is futile.
- Dora Doomster: The traditionalist pessimist. Sees AI as intellectual rot and demands prohibition.
- Caroline Critic: The structural analyst. Argues that AI simply exposes the inequities and flaws baked into existing assessment regimes.
- Peter Pragmatist: The weary realist. Just wants something that works on Monday and saves a bit of marking time.
Now imagine you’re Jamal, an ordinary student. You’re savvy enough to use AI tools, but bewildered by the contradictory demands of your lecturers. One insists you must use AI, another bans it outright, a third requires you to critique it, and the last shrugs and says, “Just explain it to me in five minutes.”
It’s a bit like being told you must simultaneously wear a hat, never wear a hat, write a 2,000-word critical essay on the history of hats, and then give a spontaneous oral presentation on why you chose not to wear one in the first place. To Jamal, the whole business of assessment feels less like education and more like being trapped in a bureaucratic puzzle designed by someone who had once read Kafka but thought it could do with more paperwork and possibly a quiz at the end.
What follows is Jamal’s attempt to survive this impossible landscape, caught between four academic archetypes who disagree about everything except their absolute certainty that they’re right. Any resemblance to an education school or Faculty, living or dead, is entirely accidental.
The Debate (through Jamal’s eyes)
Moderator: Jamal, thanks for joining us. You’re in the classes of all four panellists. How are you finding assessment in the age of AI?
Jamal: Honestly? It’s like living four parallel lives. In Billy’s class, I’m a dinosaur if I don’t use AI. In Dora’s, I’m a cheater if I do. Caroline insists my assignment should deconstruct the very idea of assignments, while Peter just wants something he can mark before the weekend. And I’m supposed to pass all of them.
Round One: Is AI cheating?
Billy Booster: “No! AI is collaboration. Students like Jamal must use it to build fluency for the future.”
Jamal: So in your class, if I don’t use AI, I fail literacy? Which makes perfect sense in the same way that jumping off a cliff is a great way to learn about gravity.
Dora Doomster: “Yes, because in my class, if you do use it, you fail integrity.”
Jamal: Fantastic. One of you thinks I’m a dinosaur, the other thinks I’m a criminal. Could you maybe compare notes before I submit anything? I only have so much energy to spend on becoming extinct and incarcerated at the same time.
Caroline Critic: “Exactly, Jamal. The contradictions prove the system is broken. Essays as proof of learning are a colonial hangover.”
Jamal: Caroline, I’m not against dismantling colonial hangovers, but could we dismantle them after semester so I know what the assignment is worth? Otherwise, I’ll be writing an essay on why I shouldn’t be writing essays, which is a level of recursion even Kafka would have considered a bit much.
Peter Pragmatist: “In my class, Jamal, you’ll just draft in class, explain what you used, and talk me through it for five minutes.”
Jamal: Peter, yours is the only class where I don’t need a philosophy degree just to pass. Which, given the alternatives, feels like winning the lottery—if the lottery prize was simply not having to saw your own leg off.
Round Two: Detection Software
Dora Doomster: “Detection is vital. Without it, students will run wild.”
Jamal: It already flagged my reflection diary as 80% AI-generated. Which was odd, because it was literally me whining about how tired I am. Apparently even my exhaustion now reads like machine output—proof, perhaps, that I’ve finally become an algorithm in human trousers.
Billy Booster: “See! Proof it’s useless.”
Caroline Critic: “No—it’s proof you’ve been criminalised by a system of surveillance. You’re guilty until proven innocent.”
Jamal: Excellent. I’m either a liar, a victim of neoliberalism, or a visionary—depending on which of you marks my work. It’s like Schrödinger’s essay: simultaneously brilliant, fraudulent, and structurally oppressed until the lecturer opens the box.
Peter Pragmatist: “Ignore the software, Jamal. If you can explain your argument to me, you’re fine.”
Jamal: Thank you. At least one of my lecturers believes I’m a human being, though at this stage I’d happily settle for being treated as a reasonably well-trained hamster.
Round Three: Redesigning Assessment
Caroline Critic: “We should dismantle essays entirely. Why force linear text at all?”
Jamal: Music to my ears. I’ll happily dismantle essays right now. I’d even bring my own crowbar.
Dora Doomster: “No! Without essays there is no thinking. You’ll never learn to write if you don’t suffer.”
Jamal: Ah yes, the noble tradition of suffering-as-learning. Next week we’ll all be flogging ourselves with footnotes to prove intellectual stamina.
Billy Booster: “Wrong again. Students should use AI to co-think. Half human, half machine—that’s the future.”
Jamal: So let me get this straight: Caroline doesn’t want me to write, Dora insists I must, and Billy wants me to half-write with a robot. At this rate I’ll end up producing an essay that’s simultaneously absent, mandatory, and half-cyborg.
Peter Pragmatist: “Essay, in-class draft, quick viva. Done.”
Jamal: At this point, Peter, you’re the only one keeping me sane. Which is terrifying, because sanity in this context is relative—like calling a slightly damp cave ‘luxury accommodation’ because at least it’s not on fire.
Round Four: What’s at stake?
Billy Booster: “The reinvention of learning itself.”
Dora Doomster: “The survival of authentic thought.”
Caroline Critic: “The politics of knowledge.”
Peter Pragmatist: “My Sunday afternoon.”
Jamal: And for me? It’s about not failing four completely contradictory classes. Honestly, some days it feels less like higher education and more like a reality TV show: Survivor: Assessment Island. Except instead of coconuts and immunity idols, I’m juggling Turnitin reports, contradictory rubrics, and four mutually exclusive definitions of ‘cheating.’ The only prize for surviving is another semester of the same game, which is a bit like winning an all-expenses-paid holiday to exactly where you already are.
The Takeaway
Jamal’s plight is exaggerated, but only in the sense that being hit with a custard pie is an exaggeration of being hit with custard. Students are already caught in wildly inconsistent approaches to AI across courses and faculties. In one class, AI use is compulsory; in another, it’s grounds for academic excommunication. In a third, students must write an essay about why they shouldn’t be writing essays, while in the fourth they’re simply told to “explain it in five minutes,” presumably before the lecturer’s coffee goes cold.
The caricatures—Booster, Doomster, Critic, Pragmatist—expose the deeper problem: there is no coherent philosophy of assessment in the age of AI. Instead, the sector resembles a badly organised orchestra in which each academic is playing a different tune, at a different tempo, on a different planet, while students try to dance along without looking too ridiculous.
And Jamal’s wry observation remains the most honest of all: assessment isn’t dead—it’s just a game show. The only rule is that the rules keep changing, depending on who’s holding the microphone, and occasionally whether the microphone itself has already been replaced by ChatGPT.
The Takeaway
Jamal’s plight is exaggerated, but not by much. Students are already caught in wildly inconsistent approaches to AI across courses and faculties. Some are compelled to use it, others threatened with failure if they do, while others are expected to critique or explain it without clear guidance.
The caricatures—Booster, Doomster, Critic, Pragmatist—reveal the deeper problem: there is no coherent sector-wide philosophy of assessment in the age of AI. Until one emerges, students will continue to navigate contradictory rules, switching survival strategies course by course.
And Jamal’s wry observation remains the most honest of all: assessment isn’t dead—it’s just a game show, and the rules change depending on who’s holding the microphone.
No comments:
Post a Comment