Skip to content

The dangers of using ai for summative assessments in Higher Education

green leafed trees

Using a tool like https://chat.openai.com/ for summative assessments in higher education carries several potential dangers.

First, there is the issue of cheating. With a tool like this, students can easily copy and paste answers from the internet or from other sources, allowing them to submit work that is not their own. This undermines the entire purpose of a summative assessment, which is to evaluate a student’s understanding and mastery of a subject.

Another potential danger is the risk of plagiarism. Because https://chat.openai.com/ is a tool that is easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection, students may be tempted to use it to generate answers that are similar to those of other students. This can lead to accidental or intentional plagiarism, which can have serious consequences for the student and the institution.

Additionally, using https://chat.openai.com/ for summative assessments raises concerns about the validity and reliability of the results. Because the tool is not specifically designed for educational purposes, it may not accurately reflect a student’s true understanding of the material. This can lead to inaccurate grading and evaluation, which can have long-term effects on a student’s academic career.

Furthermore, using https://chat.openai.com/ for summative assessments may not adequately challenge a student’s critical thinking and problem-solving skills. By relying on a tool to generate answers, students may not be encouraged to engage with the material in a deep and meaningful way, which can hinder their overall learning and development.

In conclusion, using https://chat.openai.com/ for summative assessments in higher education carries several potential dangers, including the risk of cheating, plagiarism, and invalid results. It may also not adequately challenge a student’s critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Institutions should carefully consider the use of such tools and the potential risks involved before incorporating them into their assessment processes.

⚠️The text above was written in 10 seconds by ai.

None of the above was written by myself, simply asked https://chat.openai.com/ to write me an article on ‘The dangers of using https://chat.openai.com/ for summative assessments in Higher Education‘ . I take no credit at all for what is written above. If it comes form other sources I wouldn’t know where it was from unless I search for it online or put it through a tool like turnitin.

A little Turnitin Experiment

A couple of us got together to test how the writing play ball with a well regarded piece of plagiarism software, turnitin. We asked it to ‘Write a 1000 word essay about the advantages and disadvantages of active learning in computing courses, with harvard referencing‘. We then created a Canvas assignment with a turnitin submission as a requirement and it returned a similarity score of 11%!

As academics marking this, how do you work with this technology to know it a students own work? If the ai software is generating its own text and keeping similarity scores down, then surely a change in the way we assess work has to change. This really does change the assessment landscape. What would take a student time to create an essay or similar assessment requirement, can take them minutes, but with little subject knowledge. That’s truly scary!

Offenses’ of academic integrity is now huge within Higher Education, and whilst tools like this are excellent within education as they are a new tool to learn from, there is a concern over how we assess work going forward, alarm bells should be ringing, and very loudly.

Credit to those who could have written or contributed to the original text above. This article is to highlight the dangers of ai writing for assessment in Higher Education and in no means seeks to take credit for any of this article. Any issues please contact the blog.