NIC AI Assessment Scale

Gen­er­a­tive AI assis­tants are becom­ing more pro­fi­cient at:

  • Cre­at­ing an out­line for a paper, or bul­let points and graph­ics for slides
  • Writ­ing longer coher­ent prose in mul­ti­ple lan­guages
  • Cri­tiquing a writ­ten pas­sage, edit­ing text, and cor­rect­ing com­put­er code
  • Pro­vid­ing expla­na­tions or ideas for a lit­er­a­ture review with most­ly accu­rate cita­tions
  • Sum­ma­riz­ing longer arti­cles, text, or a cor­pus of texts
  • Sug­gest­ing a response to a ques­tion, such as on a short answer or mul­ti­ple-choice test, or for a dis­cus­sion board post­ing
  • Trans­lat­ing text more accu­rate­ly
  • Cre­at­ing images and videos from images and text
  • Cre­at­ing com­put­er code in mul­ti­ple lan­guages
  • Devel­op­ing entire online cours­es from begin­ning to end includ­ing assign­ments, videos, resources and activ­i­ties
  • Assist­ing users with for­mu­las inside appli­ca­tions such as Excel

These are only some exam­ples. We rec­og­nize that some instruc­tors may want to allow, or even encour­age, their stu­dents to use these tech­nolo­gies, and oth­ers may want to cur­tail their use. Con­sid­er these six areas below before you cre­ate lan­guage for your assess­ments.

Fol­low­ing is a chart of six lanes of how GenAI can be an assis­tance to you in your learn­ing. Please note which course assess­ments fall under each lev­el.

LANE
StUDENT EXPECTATIONS
NOTES FOR INSTRUcTORS:
DO NOT INCLUDE FOR STUDENTS
NO ai

AI Must Not Be Used

 
  • The assess­ment requires your orig­i­nal demon­stra­tions of course learn­ing out­comes with­out AI assis­tance.
  • This is to ensure that you are rely­ing sole­ly on your knowl­edge, under­stand­ing and skills to demon­strate learn­ing.
  • You must not use AI at any point dur­ing the assess­ment.
  • Any AI tools used in your aca­d­e­m­ic work may result in aca­d­e­m­ic mis­con­duct.
 This lane is used when you want full orig­i­nal demon­stra­tion of stu­dent learn­ing that aligns with the learn­ing out­comes with­out the use of AI tools. This lane is idea for test­ing core knowl­edge and com­pre­hen­sion. Exam­ples:
  • In-class dis­cus­sion
  • In-class writ­ten doc­u­ment
  • In-class quiz, test or mid-term
  • Invig­i­lat­ed exam
AI as A STUDY TOOL

 

AI Used as a Study Com­pan­ion or Tutor
  • The assess­ment allows the use of AI to pre­pare, review and study.
  • There are many AI tools that can act as tutors or sup­port­ive study com­pan­ions and may be able to cre­ate study mate­ri­als and help­ful learn­ing guides.
  • You can use AI to cre­ate per­son­al­ized study resources.
  • You can col­lab­o­rate with oth­er stu­dents in the cre­ation of study mate­ri­als using AI.
  • You may be required to include a reflec­tive para­graph detail­ing which tech­nolo­gies and where in your assess­ment you used AI.
 This lane is for being clear with stu­dents that they are allowed to use AI as a study mech­a­nism. Giv­en that you are unable to mon­i­tor out-of-class activ­i­ties, you would use this lane for an assess­ment to be clear with stu­dents about the use of AI for study­ing. You may prac­tice use of this in class, share how to write prompts to have GPTs act as a tutor or point out tutors that have been devel­oped to pro­vide study sup­ports.
 AI FOR IDEA GENERATION

 

AI Used to Enhance Brain­storm­ing
  • The assess­ment requires demon­stra­tions of course learn­ing out­comes that allow for use of AI for brain­storm­ing and idea gen­er­a­tion.
  • You are respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing, refin­ing and pre­sent­ing your own argu­ments, analy­ses and con­clu­sions with­out the use of AI.
  • You may use AI to enhance your own brain­storm­ing, cre­ation of struc­ture of the assign­ment, and idea gen­er­a­tion.
  • There is to be no AI con­tent in the final sub­mis­sion of the assess­ment.
  • You may be required to include a reflec­tive para­graph detail­ing which tech­nolo­gies and where in your assess­ment you used AI.
 This lane is when you are okay with stu­dents get­ting ideas and gen­er­at­ing pos­si­ble direc­tions using GenAI as they may already do with friends, fam­i­ly and search engines. This lane is suit­able for assess­ments for demon­strat­ing writ­ing skills. Stu­dents may use AI tools to gen­er­ate ideas for an essay or report. AI may pro­vide stu­dent assis­tance in get­ting start­ed, expand­ing on ini­tial thoughts or pro­vid­ing oth­er per­spec­tives.
AI as EDITOR

 

AI Pro­vides Feed­back for Improve­ment
  • The assess­ment requires demon­stra­tions of course learn­ing out­comes that will allow for use of AI for edit­ing, refin­ing and eval­u­at­ing your work.
  • AI may assist in the final qual­i­ty of writ­ing (spelling, punc­tu­a­tion, gram­mar, struc­ture), word choice, clear and effec­tive expres­sion of ideas.
  • You may use AI to receive feed­back on draft ver­sions or iden­ti­fy areas for improve­ment of writ­ing and struc­ture of the writ­ten assess­ment.
  • You are respon­si­ble for decid­ing if the sug­ges­tions are appro­pri­ate and then appro­pri­ate­ly incor­po­rat­ing into your work.
  • You must not use AI for cre­at­ing new con­tent.
  • You may be required to include a reflec­tive para­graph detail­ing which tech­nolo­gies and where in your assess­ment you used AI.
 This lane is used when you want the stu­dents to pro­duce orig­i­nal work, but they can use GenAI tools to edit, get feed­back on areas for improve­ment and cre­ate cita­tions and ref­er­ences. GenAI acts like an edi­tor.
AI OUTPUT EVALUATED

AI Results are Crit­i­cal­ly Eval­u­at­ed
  • The assess­ment requires use of AI to gen­er­ate con­tent and then you must crit­i­cal­ly eval­u­ate it for accu­ra­cy, bias and cita­tions while build­ing your eval­u­a­tive judg­ment skills.
  • This lane is suit­able for assess­ments that require you to dis­cern accu­ra­cy, iden­ti­fy bias­es and assess the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the sources.
  • AI may be used to con­struct out­lines, per­form search­es, cre­ate draft notes, design slides, under­take analy­ses of data, sug­gest counter argu­ments, sum­ma­rize lit­er­a­ture, etc.
  • AI may com­plete some of the parts of the assess­ment and then you must dis­cuss the results and make deci­sions about what is accu­rate, use­ful and rel­e­vant to the assess­ment.
  • You may be required to include a reflec­tive para­graph detail­ing which tech­nolo­gies and where in your assess­ment you used AI.
 This lane is use­ful when you want stu­dents to devel­op a deep­er lev­el of engage­ment with course mate­ri­als, under­take more inde­pen­dent learn­ing and devel­op­ing skills involved in eval­u­at­ing the infor­ma­tion pro­duced in this GenAI era. You would choose assess­ments where you want to see stu­dent analy­ses of AI results, com­par­isons of oth­er data sources, explor­ing what is true and not true, etc.
FULL AI

AI is Inte­gral to Assess­ment
  • AI is used as a co-pilot to enhance cre­ativ­i­ty and meet learn­ing out­comes.
  • This lane is suit­able when your work may be based on an ear­li­er orga­ni­za­tion, idea gen­er­a­tion, dis­cus­sion, oral activ­i­ty or oth­er meth­ods.
  • AI acts as an assis­tant help­ing you orga­nize your thoughts, inte­grate var­i­ous view­points and present find­ings in a cre­ative man­ner.
  • You may use tools that help you draft out­lines, sug­gest struc­ture, or even pro­vide ini­tial con­tent that you can build upon and refine.
  • You may be required to include a reflec­tive para­graph detail­ing which tech­nolo­gies and where in your assess­ment you used AI.
 This lane is used when the AI output/submission may use pre­vi­ous­ly cre­at­ed orig­i­nal work.

Exam­ples of assess­ments might include: input notes from a group dis­cus­sion to gen­er­ate a sum­ma­ry, pro­duc­tion of themes from a num­ber of indi­vid­ual pre­sen­ta­tions, col­lat­ing research find­ings into a sum­ma­ry report, stu­dents sub­mit­ting orig­i­nal design con­cepts for a pro­posed urban plan­ning sce­nario and hav­ing AI gen­er­ate a visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of those ideas etc.

Stu­dents: Be aware of lim­i­ta­tions and issues with using GenAI, such as the fol­low­ing:

  • If you pro­vide min­i­mum-effort prompts, you will get low-qual­i­ty results. You will need to refine your prompts to get good out­comes. This will take work.
  • Almost all GenAI tools sit on servers out­side of Cana­da and if you require an account your per­son­al iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion will be stored and accessed by many orga­ni­za­tions. Many GenAI tools also require a fee or a sub­scrip­tion or pro­vide a lim­it­ed free account and any upgrades to more tools requires pay­ment that you must pay for.
  • A pro­tect­ed ver­sion of Microsoft Copi­lot is avail­able to all stu­dents, fac­ul­ty and staff through North Island College’s Microsoft Office license. This is the most secure tool to use. If you use oth­er tools, any­thing you upload, type in or sub­mit to the tool may be used by that tool or oth­ers to train GenAI. Be care­ful.
  • Do not trust any­thing GenAI says. If it gives you a num­ber or a fact, assume it is wrong unless you either know the answer or can check with anoth­er source. You will be respon­si­ble for any errors or omis­sions pro­vid­ed by the tool. It works best for top­ics you under­stand.
  • GenAI is a tool, but one that you need to acknowl­edge using. Please include a reflec­tive sum­ma­ry at the end of any assign­ment that uses AI explain­ing what you used the AI for and what prompts you used to get the results.
  • Be thought­ful about when GenAI is use­ful to you in your learn­ing. Do not use it if it is not appro­pri­ate for the case or cir­cum­stance.

NOTE: A pro­tect­ed ver­sion of Microsoft Copi­lot is avail­able to all stu­dents, fac­ul­ty and staff through North Island College’s Microsoft Office license. How­ev­er, oth­er gen­er­a­tive AI appli­ca­tions may require reg­is­tra­tion and/or a sub­scrip­tion fee and per­son­al infor­ma­tion for an account will most like­ly be host­ed on a serv­er out­side of Cana­da and pri­va­cy of per­son­al data is need­ing to be not­ed. Please con­sid­er offer­ing stu­dents a choice to opt-out of using a sys­tem oth­er than the pro­tect­ed ver­sion of Microsoft Copi­lot if they have con­cerns about the cost, pri­va­cy, secu­ri­ty or oth­er issues relat­ed to the tech­nol­o­gy.

For sim­plic­i­ty, when the word assess­ment is used in the chart below it could mean either the for­mal or infor­mal com­po­nents of assess­ment. The word assess­ment can mean two things: 1) a for­mal eval­u­a­tion of learn­ing that is assigned a val­ue (mark, grade, lev­el) that con­tributes to the final grade. (e.g., a test, project, assign­ment, exam, assign­ment) and 2) infor­mal engage­ment of learn­ing that is not assigned any val­ue (mark, grade, lev­el) con­tribut­ing to the final grade (e.g., a dis­cus­sion, quiz, read­ings, group activ­i­ty etc.)

The fol­low­ing sug­gest­ed state­ments are intend­ed to help you shape the mes­sage you pro­vide to your stu­dents on a course out­line as well as on your assign­ment instruc­tions to rein­force a shared under­stand­ing of what is, and is not, allowed in your course.

  • Inspired by work of those list­ed in the cred­its (below), aligned to learn­ing out­comes and enhanced by Liesel Knaack, Direc­tor, Cen­tre for Teach­ing and Learn­ing Inno­va­tion, North Island Col­lege (Decem­ber 8, 2024)

NOTE: As our under­stand­ing of the uses of AI and its rela­tion­ship to stu­dent work and aca­d­e­m­ic integri­ty con­tin­ue to evolve, stu­dents kind­ly dis­cuss your use of AI in any cir­cum­stance not described here with me to ensure it sup­ports the learn­ing out­comes for the course. Stu­dents, you are to act eth­i­cal­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly at all times in align­ment with NIC Pol­i­cy 3–06, Com­mu­ni­ty Code of Aca­d­e­m­ic, Per­son­al and Pro­fes­sion­al Con­duct (Code of Con­duct). If attri­bu­tion of gen­er­a­tive AI work is required con­sult MLA Style Guide 9th Edi­tion – Cre­at­ing Ref­er­ences for Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (NIC Library web­site)

Attribution

The work was inspired and devel­oped from the already amaz­ing work done by these edu­ca­tors around the world specif­i­cal­ly these list­ed below: