Colleges change assignments, assessment methods with GenAI integration

the institute has incorporated AI-assisted simulations in some courses.

Universities and colleges in India are grappling with a new challenge: students increasingly using OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other generative AI (GenAI) software to complete assignments.

This has compelled educational institutions to rethink their approach in assignment creation and assessment methods. Engineering and management institutes are shifting from conventional assignments that require straightforward answers to more application-based tasks that assess critical thinking and problem-solving skills rather than mere information retrieval.

At Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM) in Chennai, case study assignments often involved extensive reading, research, and writing of reports. Assessments typically included class participation, group presentations, and reports.

However, the institute has incorporated AI-assisted simulations in some courses. Tools such as ChatGPT are leveraged to create dynamic, real-time business scenarios in accounting, statistics, HR, operations management, and economics.

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In accounting, students are presented with a simulated financial scenario embedded with challenges such as revenue recognition fraud and capitalising-expensing dilemma. For statistics, ChatGPT can be used to simulate data for business settings that bring out the effective use of regression analysis or hypothesis testing in a brand management context or advertising-sales linkages.

Using GenAI

While written reports are still required, GLIM students can use AI tools to process and interpret large datasets, enhancing the depth and accuracy of their analyses.

“We have examples where students are asked to use ChatGPT (or such similar tools) wherein they are asked to report the ‘prompt’ that was used to enhance the submission and highlight the exact changes that they have made to the ‘answers’ obtained from such sources,” Vishwanathan Iyer, director (accreditation & ranking) at Great Lakes Institute, told Moneycontrol.

To counter the misuse of AI, institutes are implementing innovative assessment techniques. The Indian Institute of Management Udaipur faced challenges last year when students used GenAI to complete home assignments.

The institute has now changed how assignments are conducted. In its communication course, which includes oral and written communication, ChatGPT has been incorporated.

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In the written communication course, students now write their assignments and then utilise ChatGPT to rephrase their content. The process involves self-evaluation and requires students to identify the differences between their original text and the output from ChatGPT.

Instructors then guide students in how to leverage ChatGPT for improvement, a two-step correction process that combines AI assistance and instructor feedback.

“Furthermore, in regular courses, we've minimised take-home assignments due to concerns about tool misuse. Instead, we've introduced quizzes and in-class examinations to ensure a fair assessment environment,” Ashok Banerjee, director of IIM-Udaipur, told Moneycontrol.

GD Goenka University has taken to intertwining subjects as a solution. Since most GenAI has enabled data and a reference framework up to a certain date, professors ensure that assignments are multidisciplinary and beyond the conventional requirements.

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Secondly, the assignments will have a contextual correlation to a recent event, product, process, or legislation, along with questions or conditions linked to a non-documented personal situation or futuristic context or prediction.

According to BS Satyanarayana, vice chancellor of GD Goenka University, students may be asked to prepare a report on India’s electronics market growth over the next decade to meet India’s electronics need in the age of information and communication technology and its impact on climate change and the circular economy under two different situations.

One situation could be based on India’s current status of electronics system design and manufacturing capability and semiconductor capability or based on the adoption of emerging alternative materials and new process technologies including flexible and printable electronics, he said.

Such assignments would call on students to draw inputs and insights that are not in published books, articles, and reports – and so not accessible by GenAI – besides linking information over 10 different domains.