Workshop 3 – Assessment and Feedback
AI x Learning Outcomes
In the post Reflection 1, I introduced the structural tripod ontology-epistemology-practice of higher education (Barnett 2007) and briefly reflected on the past and present significance of the ontological pillar. In this post, I propose to continue this discussion by looking ahead, to a future that is already present, where artificial intelligence (AI) tools are widely available to students, replacing sources of knowledge (epistemology) and the need to develop certain skills (practice).
In the past couple of years, the use of AI tools has increased exponentially among my students and, still, course aims and assessment methods continue to be outcome-based. If AI can produce the outcomes, what learning would be assessed? If AI can replace skills and make knowledge available, what would one be learning in higher education?
The discussion which argues against learning outcomes and/or outcome-based assessments is not new in higher education. Paul Kleiman, in his report “We Don’t Need Those Learning Outcomes”: assessing creativity and creative assessment (2017), argued for ‘a conceptual shift’ away from learning outcomes, and an assessment criterion based on expectations. He argued for a focus on performance, which in this case, could be understood as the learning process that encompasses all different fields of a creative subjective.
Could an ontological shift towards performance, or the process of being and becoming (Barnett 2007), be the starting point of higher education reinvention on this new technological era? I don’t know, but this question is now becoming fundamentally urgent.
References:
Barnett, R. (2007) A will to learn: Being a Student in an Age of Uncertainty. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Kleiman, P. (2017) “We Don’t Need Those Learning Outcomes”: assessing creativity and creative assessment. [online] Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325059666_We_Don’t_Need_Those_Learning_Outcomes_assessing_creativity_and_creative_assessment> [Accessed 17 Mar 2025]