Assessment at a crossroads - don't catch, change behaviour

Assessment within institutions is at a crossroads, squeezed between human nature and AI. In an educational system that has to cope with the massification of Higher Education, one that must scale and commoditise the delivery of learning and assessment, you are far more likely to have large numbers of learners who see the process as transactional. If you are transactional with them, they will be transactional with you.Two major approaches have emerged as solutions to the cheating problem:1. Catch2. Change behaviourWe can choose to turn this into a cat and mouse game where the goal is to ‘catch’ miscreants. This may deter some from attempting to cheat but has severe downsides, as it turns assessment into a toxic process, of deliberate evasion, accusation, often with disastrous consequences for learners, and possibly the institutions themselves. AI detection tools are the main line of defence but have been an abject failure, as research uncovers their inadequacies. Or, we can create…