What role could AI play in reimagining assessment?

The advent of artificial intelligence has several implications and applications for student assessment, says Temple Lovelace, executive director of the Assessment for Good program at the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund. Assessment for Good focuses on formative assessments for students ages 8 to 13.
Among the use cases for AI in assessments are the generation of test questions, greater ability to measure durable skills like critical thinking and more rapid scoring, Lovelace said. There can also be greater coherence across assessment systems that capture a more complete, integrated “portrait” of learners over time to help inform teachers and school leaders as they design their next lessons, she said.
When it comes to creating inventive question items, AI can take assessments beyond Scantron-style, fill-in-the-bubble test-taking, Lovelace said. “We have used it in the last 2 ½ to three years in getting inventive item formats,” she said. “The learner talks, and you assess what they’re thinking in a Socratic conversation back and forth. And speeding up the scoring of assessments, especially in the summative space, disrupts the usual time-frame where students receive results weeks or months afterward, she said.
“What AI has done is, it’s been able to score, one, more quickly and, two, with more rich information,” Lovelace said. “We’re able to get you inferences — and more unique inferences — back to learners or educators in the moment. The idea of leveraging AI in scoring has been great for us, whether that is an LLM [large language model] coming through and providing initial insights, or whether that is new models for scoring so we can provide more effective information back to learners.” Assessment for Good — which last year released a “Future of Assessment” forecast that included a vision for how AI could be used — has tapped into AI in ways that go beyond a raw reading or math score to measure the “connective tissue” of how learners are using critical thinking and collaboration, she said. Instead of sitting in front of a computer and clicking an answer, students interact in “conversations” with chatbots, upload examples of their work, and then the assessment system will note examples and evidence of critical thinking or cognitive flexibility, she said. Finally, AI can pull together results from different subject-related systems and provide greater coherence in building the “portrait” of a given learner, Lovelace said. (Yahoo)