Professor Phillip Dawson
Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE), Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
Assessment Design for a time of artifical intelligence
Artificial intelligence can now generate outputs that meet the requirements of high-stakes assessments across many disciplines. This has sparked concerns about students using AI inappropriately to complete tasks, misrepresenting their abilities. It also raises deeper questions about the sustainability and authenticity of current assessment practices.
This presentation examines how assessment must evolve in response to AI. It draws on the presenter’s work as one of the leaders of Assessment Reform for a Time of Artificial Intelligence, a major Australian project funded by the national higher education regulator. As AI becomes an ever-present part of professional and academic life, how do we design assessments that both uphold integrity and prepare students for this new reality?
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Professor Phillip (Phill) Dawson is Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University. His work focuses on improving assessment while addressing integrity challenges and emerging technologies.
His book Defending Assessment Security in a Digital World (Routledge, 2021), examines academic integrity in a digital age. In 2024, he co-edited the Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education special issue Challenging Cheating and published the provocative article Validity Matters More Than Cheating. His broader research spans assessment design and feedback.
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Professor Camille Kandiko Howson
Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship (CHERS), Imperial College London, UK
Accounting for success in higher education
Universities are lauded as world-class, ranked in newspapers, given a gold badge. But what counts as success in higher education? Such metrics fail to capture the quality of the experience that students have, what they have gained from their time and efforts in higher education and how prepared graduates are for the future. We know it is more than a degree, but how do we go about capturing it? And how do we account for different benefits different groups of students may have?
We know there is no single silver bullet metric to measure the outcomes of higher education and that learning goes beyond their social science knowledge, also including wider skills and affective measures, and that robustly measuring gains requires multiple indicators. This talk draws on two decades of research aiming to shift the conversation on quality and effectiveness in higher education. It explores how measures of what students gain from their time in higher education can challenge the status quo, including the relationship of assessment and feedback; staff perceptions of teaching and research; and opportunities for capturing the diversity of experiences that diverse students have.
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Camille Kandiko Howson is Professor of Higher Education in the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship (CHERS) at Imperial College London, UK. Prior to joining Imperial, she was Senior Lecturer and Academic Head of Student Engagement at King’s College London. She received a BA in English and Classics from Cornell University, a Master’s in Higher Education Administration from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from Indiana University, where she worked on the National Survey of Student Engagement. She is a Council Member of the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) and Chair of the Research and Development Committee, which she has served on since 2012. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.