Blog post by Drs. Jeff Witzel, Ivy Hauser, Christy Spivey, Laurel Stvan, and Kevin Carr.
Overview
Last week on February 12, 2025 the Center for Research on Teaching and Learning Excellence (CRTLE) held a Faculty Lounge panel session on alternative assessment — “Beyond the Test: Alternative Assessments in an AI World.” The panelists were Dr. Kevin Carr (Marketing), Dr. Ivy Hauser (Linguistics & TESOL), Dr. Christy Spivey (Economics), and Dr. Laurel Stvan (Linguistics & TESOL). The session focused on the following key questions: How can we use various forms of assessment to evaluate our students while also stimulating productive engagement with course content? And how can we do this, particularly when AI tools make it possible for students to complete some assessments without engaging with course content in substantive ways?
General Resources (Slide Deck and CRTLE Resource)
Here is the slide deck from the panel event: Click here (requires UTA login)
CRTLE offers an overview of many effective alternative assessment methods here:
However, rather than go over all of those methods, the panel focused on several techniques that are being used effectively by UTA faculty.
Examples from Faculty:
Dr. Ivy Hauser presented on skills-based grading, which involves identifying core skills that students will master and assessing these skills regularly through low-stakes assignments. One of the key features of this technique is that students have many opportunities to demonstrate their developing skills throughout the course (rather than the points for skills being tied to a fixed set of assignments in which they are assessed).
Dr. Laurel Stvan presented on using Wikipedia editing to help students develop their research and writing skills, while also contributing to this widely used online encyclopedia. For more information on how to integrate these assignments in your courses, please see
Audience members asked about some examples of web pages that students had worked on. Here are a few from Dr. Stvan’s classes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Haji%C4%8Dov%C3%A1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Armenta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna-Brita_Stenstr%C3%B6m
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Forward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_J.Brinton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungcheong_dialect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel (linguistics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetic_space
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fis_phenomenon
Dr. Christy Spivey then introduced a range of tools that can be used for ongoing assessment generally and in online asynchronous courses, in particular. These tools include
H5P (https://h5p.org/)
Moblab (https://moblab.com/)
Perusall (https://www.perusall.com/)
Piktochart (https://piktochart.com/)
Wikiedu (see above)
She discussed requiring students to use AI for discussion assignments, to encourage ethical use of AI and to practice prompting skills. Alternatively, if faculty do not want to have students use AI, Perusall for discussions is a good alternative.
Creating infographics can be used as an alternative to writing assignments. However, some infographic platforms now have AI generators. However, while they create generic infographics, they do not yet cite research or provide detailed or specific research findings.
Finally, Dr. Kevin Carr presented low-stakes assignments that faculty can use to help students to self-assess and develop their verbal communication skills. Using the “speech-to-text” feature within these generative AI platforms (such as ChatGPT or Copilot), students can practice their verbal communication skills and receive feedback on their verbal delivery in areas such as the use of filler words, verbal clarity, conciseness, specificity, and organization. Faculty can provide a prompt for students to use for this assignment, or they can work with students to develop their own prompt for such an exercise.
He emphasized how these tools offer students a safe space and positive interactive assessment, a form of “deliberate practice,” through which students can refine verbal communication skills and develop confidence as they prepare for high-stakes assignments or situations such as job interviews or verbal presentations.
Reflection Questions
The session concluded with an engaging discussion of these techniques with both in-person and online attendees, but we would love to hear your thoughts on/experiences with alternative assessment as well.
- What are some successful examples of assessments that encourage critical thinking and creativity that you’ve implemented or observed in different modalities?
- In what ways can AI be integrated into assessment as a tool for learning rather than just a challenge to academic integrity?
- How do we encourage students to use AI responsibly and effectively while also ensuring that they develop essential skills independently?
- What are some “AI-resistant” assessment strategies that ensure authentic student engagement and skill development?)
Email us with comments or questions! crtle@uta.edu
