Course and Assessment Design and AI

How does thoughtful course and assessment design help students avoid the temptation to misuse AI?

The proliferation of generative artificial intelligence tools has increased faculty concerns about student cheating. These concerns are not entirely unfounded: faculty are reporting more instances of academic dishonesty, and students acknowledge that they are using generative AI in ways that do not serve their learning well.

One common approach to this problem is to attempt to “AI-proof” assignments, make use of all the tools at your disposal to ferret out cheating, and punish students who misuse AI. This approach is tempting not only because it gives instructors the satisfaction of taking concrete, observable action, but also because it lets them feel confident that they are upholding the rigorous standards of their disciplines. However, when you take this approach, you are giving into the misconception that cheating is inevitable and that all you can do is try to stay one step ahead of your students. This reactive approach puts the problem of cheating on students alone and ultimately disempowers you as a teacher.

What the research on cheating tells us, however, is that cheating isn’t an individual student problem, but is instead an environmental one. In fact, students’ decisions to cheat are primarily driven by the conditions in which they are learning and in which their learning is assessed. Cheating is most likely to occur when students do not see the value of assessments, when they do not feel prepared to succeed on assessments, and when there are very few, high-stakes assessments in a course.

It may seem strange to characterize research on student cheating as good news, but it is! As an instructor, you have a great deal of control over the environment you create in our courses, which means that you can influence students’ behavior—and reduce the temptation to let AI do their work for them. When you design a course that focuses on students’ learning, uses assessments as a way to drive that learning, and communicates the intentional and thoughtful decisions you have made, you can help students see the value of the work you are asking them to do. This makes it easier for them to commit to doing that work for themselves.

This guide will describe how you can make the most of course design—and your communication of that design—to help students commit to doing the work of their learning.

Design your course to focus on students’ learning

When students don’t understand the meaning or value a course holds for them, they are much more likely to rely on AI to help them just get the work done so they can earn a grade and get out. This happens when courses just focus on delivering content to students and having them regurgitate that content back to the instructor on tests of basic understanding. Students in these courses tend to see their engagement as purely transactional, and they are unlikely to see the value of doing the work of these kinds of courses themselves.

On the other hand, when we design courses that are focused on students’ learning, they have a different relationship with their work. When the goals of a course are explicitly about how students will be changed in profound ways by what they learn to do in that course, they can see the meaning of what we are asking them to do—and will engage in that work themselves. Students who find themselves challenged by assessments in a course that is focused on their growth and development will seek to use resources in service of their learning, not to short-circuit that learning.

The most effective way to design a course that focuses on student learning is to use the backward course design process. When we design a course using this approach, we begin by asking ourselves what we want students to be able to do when they leave the course and from there determine the best steps we can take to help them reach that aspiration. We invite you to visit CATLOE’s resource on the best way to design a course for student learning for a full overview of the backward course design process.

Communicating your course design

Not only should you design our courses with students’ learning in mind, but you should also communicate the meaning of your courses in your syllabi, in individual assignments, and on a daily basis in your classes. You are passionate about our discipline, which means it is self-evident to you why the work students will do in your course matters; it’s important to make that value explicit for students. Taking time to reflect and plan for how you will communicate the importance of students’ learning in your course is a crucial step toward helping them commit to doing the work you ask of them. We invite you to visit CATLOE’s resource on writing a syllabus that motivates students for examples of how you can communicate value in your foundational course documents.

Requiring students to reflect on and use your course design

Communicating our course design is crucial, but it isn’t enough! To make sure that students take time to make sense of how our course has been designed to serve their learning, you need to provide structure that will guide them through reflection. And, most importantly, you need to require them to engage in that reflection.

One of the most effective ways to do this is by giving students an assignment at the beginning of the semester where they dig into the syllabus and consider the relevance of the course for them. This assignment should require students to respond to prompts like the ones below:

Based on your reading of the syllabus, what important knowledge will you gain in this course? What important skills will you gain in this course?
How will what you learn in this course help you attain some of your important goals (personal, educational, career, other)?
What specific steps will you take to be successful in this course? (You can prompt them with suggestions like attend class regularly, complete readings before class meetings, participate in class, do all the homework assignments, ask for help when they’re struggling, etc.)
After reading through the assignments and other requirements for the course, which one are you most excited about and why? Which one (or two) do you have the most concerns about and why? What strategies will help you address those concerns (Prompt students with suggestions like coming to office hours, reviewing assignments with you, turning in drafts or exercises ahead of time for feedback, etc.)
Which of your strengths as a learner will you draw upon to be successful? Explain those strengths and how you will use them.
What challenges do you anticipate with learning in this course? Explain those challenges and how you will respond to them.

When students engage with your course design in this way, they can see that the work of the course has meaning for them and that they can take control of their own learning. The result is that they will feel less tempted to offload that work to AI.

Use assessments as learning opportunities

In traditional courses, the purpose of completing assessments and assignments is for students to earn grades. In these courses, students don’t believe they are missing anything by having AI do their work for them as long as they get the grade they want. However, in a course that is designed to focus on meaningful student learning, assessment means something very different. Rather than having students submit work just so they can demonstrate that they’ve retained information and earn a grade, a learning-focused course helps students see assessments as opportunities for them to practice meaningful skills and thinking and to get information that will help them recognize and reflect on their own development. Framing assessments in this way helps students understand why they should commit to investing their own time and energy into doing the work and how relying on AI will actually distract from the important learning they should do in the course.

A crucial way to help students see the value of assessments—and the value of doing their own work on those assessments—is to develop an assessment plan as part of your course design. This means looking at your course as a whole and determining what kind of work you will require of students to support their learning and to help them track their progress and development. Developing an assessment plan requires you to consider what assignments will work together, iteratively, to help students attempt and practice the learning that your course goals have targeted.

An assessment plan helps students understand how the work of a course has been designed to support learning that matters to them. A well-designed assessment plan provides coherence and connection between the different assignments and assessments in a course, and it also ensures that students can see how assessments have been designed to support their development.

Using an assessment plan to provide coherence

When a course is studded with assessments that were not designed to work together or that require very different kinds of work, students often struggle and see assessments as hoops to jump through rather than meaningful learning experiences. This can make students feel confused, reducing their motivation and increasing their temptation to rely on AI to do their work for them. On the other hand, when assessments allow students to attempt and reattempt similar or related skills, they are more motivated to put their own effort and energy into these assignments because they realize they can build skills across the course—and see their progress toward the course learning goals!

Designing an assessment plan requires you to consider very carefully the kinds of thinking students will need to engage in repeatedly throughout the course both to ensure that and to determine whether they are making progress toward the learning you have targeted. This means that all the assessments in your plan should ask students to do the same kinds of cognitive work at increasing levels of complexity. For example, if the goals of your course are all aimed at having students use disciplinary concepts to solve real-world problems in your field, the assessments in your course should ask students to solve increasingly complex problems as they move through the course.

This kind of planning requires you to think of your assessments in connection with one another and to see how the work students are doing builds over time. For this reason, it is useful to begin your plan by creating the final assessment or assignment for the course and working backward through the earlier assessments. Throughout the planning process, make sure to continually refer back to your course goals to make sure all the assessments you are planning align with those goals.

After you have designed your assessment plan, make sure you are communicating it to your students so they can see how the assessments work together and how they will be developing their skills and abilities throughout the course.

Example of communicating the coherence of an assessment plan in a syllabus

“I’ve planned work for you this semester that builds toward the three case study papers that are the big assignments for our course. Each week, I will present you with a short scenario and guide you to practice analyzing it in the same way that you will be required to analyze the three case studies. Some weeks, you will analyze the scenarios on discussion board with your classmates. Other weeks, you will practice analyzing problems and proposing solutions by first generating some ideas individually in a Brightspace Journal and then sharing your ideas in smaller groups during our class meetings. I will ask you to draft a short written analytic response to two of those scenarios after we’ve worked on them. This will allow me to see how your skills are developing and to give you ways to improve your thinking. Those analytic responses and my feedback will prepare you for the longer case study papers. I also want you to note that the three case study papers are weighted differently: the first is worth less than the second and the second is worth less than the third. This means that I expect your skills to build over the course of the semester. Applying economic principles to real scenarios and cases is hard work, but with practice you will develop your skills. You will be ready when the final case study comes!”

Using an assessment plan to give students multiple opportunities to grow and develop

When students believe that a single assessment or assignment will determine their success or failure in a course, they may decide it is safer to cheat with AI than to risk a low grade. This temptation is compounded when they do not believe that they are sufficiently prepared to do the work of an assessment on their own. As you design your assessment plan, make sure that students have many opportunities to practice the important skills they are learning and that no single assessment is “make or break” for them.

Instead of one or two papers or tests being large determinants of students’ grades, you should consider two alternatives. First, consider smaller, more frequent assessments that carry less weight for students’ final average. This works best if the work is iterative and helps students practice similar analytic or thinking skills again and again. Second, and perhaps even more effectively, consider small assignments that build toward a larger one: students turn in pieces of an assignment throughout the semester and revise those pieces using instructor and / or peer feedback to create a final, stronger version.

As you communicate assignments to students, remind them of all the preparatory work they have done and that they have been spending their time developing the skills they need to succeed on the assignment. Students won’t always see the connection between their preparation and the assignment, so be explicit about the steps they have already taken. This will help students feel less stressed on each individual assignment, feel supported by the instructor, and see assessment as a way for them to track their own progress rather than a performance that might sink their grade. All these beliefs will reduce students’ perceived need to rely on AI to do their work for them.

Example of frequent, low-stakes assignments that build to a larger assignment

The instructor requires students to submit small pieces of a large project each week (i.e., decisions about topic of paper, three possible resources for a paper, a plan for conducting research, a draft of first paragraph, a progress report on analysis and writing, a draft of interpretation or key ideas about the research, etc.). These one- or two-page assignments require students to share their work to date but also their thinking about that work: students are asked to write the thinking or action steps they took to complete this piece of the work as well as a difficulty they encountered and what they learned that will guide them in their next assignment.

Example of communicating how low-stakes work has prepared students for a larger assignment

“The final draft of your Ethnography of Everyday Life paper is due in two weeks. As you know, I designed this project for you this semester because ethnographic research is only as valuable as it is applicable to the everyday problems and situations we find ourselves in. You’ve been turning in pieces of the project throughout the semester, so in many ways the final draft will be a last assemblage of these pieces with reflection on the changes you’ve made based on my feedback. I have appreciated mentoring you through these steps and observing your development as ethnographers. I am looking forward to reading the final draft and will be creating personalized feedback about your learning so that you can continue to develop your skills as an anthropology major and / or in regard to your analysis of everyday life as you move forward to use these new skills to make sense of our ever more complex social and political worlds.”

Resources

Digital Education Council. (2024). Global AI student survey 2024.

Lang, J. M. (2013). Cheating lessons: Learning from academic dishonesty. Harvard University Press.

McCabe, D. L., Butterfield, K. D., & Treviño, L. K. (2017). Cheating in college: Why students do it and what educators can do about it. Johns Hopkins University Press.

McCabe, D. L., (2005). Cheating among college and university students: A North American Perspective. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 1(1).