Presented at the Blackboard/Anthology Annual Teaching and Learning Conference 24 & 25 August 2022. Abstract: It’s not easy to rethink teaching and assessment, particularly when not trained to do so. Or what you’ve been doing still seems to work OK. But contemporary education has been quietly moving on in most disciplines. Not the least reason being, academic integrity, preparing students for the world of work and a push to provide constructively aligned curriculum to help students position themselves for this. This shift involves new technologies, that provide new options for users that didn’t exist in the past. This presentation will highlight a range of approaches to teaching and assessment that have been used for decades in traditional classrooms, but post-COVID we now look at them through a new set of glasses that highlight their value in the virtual classroom. The aim is to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, to learn from them, and not consigning what they did to the history books, just because ‘we now teach online’.

1. CRICOS Provider No: 00300K (NT/VIC) 03286A (NSW) RTO Provider No: 0373 TEQSA Provider ID PRV12069
Re-discovering authentic, collaborative and
active learning within a TEL ecology
Professor Michael Sankey
Director, Learning Futures and Lead Education Architect
Education Strategy
President, Australasian Council on Open Distance and eLearning (ACODE)
michael_sankey

2. Charles Darwin University acknowledges all
First Nations people across the lands on
which we live and work, and we pay our
respects to Elders both past and present.
2

3. 3

4. So how do we
rate and what
do we have to
support
students and
staff?
4
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

5. Unlike traditional assessment theory and methods, authentic assessment plays
a critical role in learning rather than being a process or method for simply
measuring the level, stage, or competency gained because of the curriculum,
i.e. as a result of learning. Assessment of this type is considered ‘authentic’
because it involves the learner in a process of self-development rather than
being imposed from ‘on high’ merely to measure, judge and grade what one
has (or has not) already learned (Fergusson, et.al., 2022).
Authentic Assessment
5
Fergusson, L., van der Laan, L., Imran, S. and Danaher, P.A. (2022), "Authentic assessment and work-based learning: the case of professional studies in a
post-COVID Australia", Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/HESWBL-03-2022-0074

6. Identified 3 dimensions of authentic assessment, isolating 11 characteristics or
principles, that are summarised as:
A meta-analysis of 112 studies
6
Villarroel, V., Bloxham, S., Bruna, D., Bruna, C. and Herrera-Seda, C. (2018), “Authentic assessment: creating a blueprint for course design”,
Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, Vol. 43 No. 5, pp. 840-854, doi: 10.1080/02602938.2017.1412396.
Realism associated with: Cognitive Challenges associated with the developing:
Situations and problems contextualised to everyday life Reflective practice skills and higher order thinking
Relevance and worth of assessment beyond the classroom An ability to solve problems
Authentic performance and practical value An ability to make decisions
Development of competencies for work performance Evaluative Judgement that provide:
Exposure to similar tasks in learning to the real world of
work
Feedback
A formative sense
Criteria known a priori

7. • The widespread practice of setting written assignments as coursework has been
criticised as laborious and unfair (Race, 2018).
• It is also subject to contract cheating through “essay mills” that sell written
assignments to order, at fees of up to £400 for writing a 20-page essay.
• A study by Newton (2018) found that 15.7% of students surveyed admitted to
paying someone else to write an assignment.
• Now, an unintended consequence of generative “Transformer” AI systems such
as GPT-3 is that they democratise cheating.
• A student can generate an entire essay in seconds, at a cost of around 50 US
cents.
Sharples, M. (2022) Automated Essay Writing: An AIED Opinion. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education.
Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-022-00300-7 7
Are essays authentic?

8. • Plagiarism software will not detect essays written by ‘Transformers’,
because the text is generated, not copied.
• A Google search (of the example provided in the article) shows that each
sentence in the essay above is original.
• Two plagiarism detectors each indicated over 95% original text.
• Humans fare no better than machines at detecting AI-generated essays.
• Students employ AI to write assignments. Teachers use AI to assess and
review them.
• Nobody learns, nobody gains.
It doesn’t stop there
8
Sharples, M. (2022) Automated Essay Writing: An AIED Opinion. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. Springer
Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-022-00300-7

9. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/11/artificial-intelligence-writing-universities-plagiarism
Advances in AI in L&T
9

10. • Writing assistance
• For example, if a piece of writing was 49% written by AI, with the
remaining 51% written by a human, is this considered original work?
• Grammarly, etc. Other cloud-based writing tools with automatic text
generation, extraction, prediction, mining, form-filling, paraphrasing,
translation and transcription, etc.
• Knowledge banks: Help with revision identifying
gaps targeting pre-produced sets of materials
• Tailoring exam Q’s
• We need to be really, really interested
in this space before it over runs us
Yes and No
10

11. 11
https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1Gb0000000pTDREA2?tab=publications

12. AI doesn’t always get it right
12

13. 13

14. • There are 1281 sites associated with academic fraud and
contract cheating blocked by CDU. Such as Chegg.
• 84% of these are provided by TEQSA.
• It’s one thing to say we need to change assessment to be
more authentic, but we need to be able to back that up in
a consistent way.
• That means time (proxy for $’s). Or we don’t rush it.
• Two steps: Teachers need a meta understanding around
how they are teaching, and
• Need assessment mentors to help them.
Cheating vs Authentic Assessment
14

15. 15

16. 16

17. 17

18. 18
3507
1570
853
1173
1698
10
3742
8060
3023
2690
8608
9971
9999
9117
1312
1278
3212
7533
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Month
2020
2021
2022

19. Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Unit 4
Set up Portfolio
10%
Blog post
10%
Blog post
10%
Blog post
10%
Essay
30%
Essay
30%
Essay
30%
Essay + Prez
30%
Report
30%
Essay
30%
Prez
30%
Essay
30%
Report
30%
Posts
30%
Essay
30%
Teaching Plan
30%
Essays and Quiz’s eazy peazy for AI
19

20. 20
Instead, can we please
think about using:
• Human voice
• Images
• Collaboration
• Peer-review
• Poster/infographic
• ePortfolio/reflection
• Work Integrated Learning

21. https://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol19/iss2/02/
21

22. Create an online social media advertisement
on the topic you’re learning
22
• Most students today use some form of social media
platform and are familiar with seeing ads being put in in
front of them.
• By students creating an image speaking to a particular topic
they can post this into a safe institutional collaboration tool;
Microsoft Teams or Yammer, a closed Facebook site, or an
ePortfolio platform, where other students can view it, ‘like’
it and comment on it.
• It could be put in Voice Thread with the students giving a
verbal explanation of why they have chosen to do this in a
particular way and what they were trying to convey.

23. • This can easily be done in OneNote or Padlet or even on a shared document
on Google.
• Students can do this in smaller groups or individually, at the same time or
over a set period.
• It is like pasting sticky notes on the wall in the classroom, but online.
• The key here is that there will be a synthesis of the ideas at some point,
again either done individually or by the group.
• This is then presented as the outcome of the brainstorming activity and
students can reflect on this.
Online brainstorming using sticky notes a/synchronous
23

24. Padlet
24

25. • Infographics are all the rage now and students are exposed to these in all
walks of life. The trick here is to get them to precis their ideas and to bring
them back to the core constructs.
• Again, this can be accompanied by a description, either in writing or as an
audio explanation. This could be simply created in PowerPoint or Word, or a
more sophisticated tool, but the tool is not the point, it’s about how they
represent their ideas.
• This can be posted onto a forum, put on Voice Thread, hosted in Teams, or
presented live in a Zoom or Teams meeting. They could prerecord the
explanation also and post this with the visual.
• This would also make for a good peer-review activity in something like
Feedback Fruits or PebblePad.
Create a chart, mind map, infographic, or diagram of a
concept
25

26. 26
https://instructionaldesign.com.au/infographics/

27. • Asking student to act out, through something like a play (written), where
actors could be used to play out a scenario around a given topic being
studied. Think Snap Chat, or an Instagram Story (short and to the point).
• The art of creating a dialog from a concept gets them to see a topic from
different angles, putting on different shoes, as it were.
• A rhyming or acrostic poem may also get them to process information a wee
bit differently to what they normally do. Again, this could be done in an
ePortfolio tool as a blog or journal.
• If it is designed as a play, a group of students could even play this out in
Zoom or Teams. It could also be recorded separately and placed online.
Write a poem, play, or dialogue about the topic of the
week
27

28. 28
https://www.weareteachers.com/poems-about-teaching/

29. • Role play, students pretend to be somebody they are aspiring to be. This
provides valuable meta cognitive insights into their aspirations.
• Many board meeting are now held online and board members have to
present their ideas to their colleagues.
• Papers, memos, etc., can be provided ahead of time for others to read, the
person presenting does not have to rehearse all the concepts in the paper.
• Students post their work into a Team channel or forum set up for this.
• Ideally students take on different roles on the board. One might be the CEO,
another the chief finance person, another the CIO.
• Each one need to see what is being presented through that lens.
Create a policy memo or an executive summary for a
Board Meeting
29

30. 30

31. 31

32. • This can be done by creating an open text field after a question.
• Some systems allow for an audio response.
• Typically done in the LMS, could be done in Voice Thread or media
streaming platform like Kaltura, Panopto or ECO360.
• This is where the use of AI can work for you, as long-form text answers can
look for common words or strings.
• But AI engines need to be trained, so this would not be used in the first
instance, but could be used in subsequent iterations.
Give an explanation for a multiple-choice question
32

33. 33

34. https://michaelsankey.com/2022/06/30/some-authentic-assessment-activities-for-technology-
enhanced-learning-part-1/
34

35. 35
https://towardsdatascience.com/the-old-saying-two-heads-are-better-than-one-4c7d133e16a4
https://www.copperbottom.net/blog/2016/11/7/why-two-heads-are-better-than-one
https://www.teachwire.net/news/two-heads-are-better-than-one-why-teachers-should-talk-to-their-tas
• Two heads are better than one
• Education designers are a great source of inspiration
• Your peers also are a great resource
• Partnership pedagogy (students)
• Be open to new ideas

36. “We are now realising that what was conceived as being
good online learning is being challenged by some of the
newer more student-centred approaches to learning and
teaching. Not the least of these being due to the
technologies that have evolved to allow us to be way more
collaborative.” (p.22)
Sankey 2022
Final word
36
https://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol19/iss2/02/
michael_sankey