The recent Learning and Teaching Forum was an opportunity to learn from one another about innovations in learning, teaching and assessment at UTS and beyond. At the Forum, the Education Portfolio presented plans for the future of assessment at UTS as well as immediate guidance for preparing your content and assessments for Autumn 2025. You can access/download the slides from that event here:
To help address any questions, refer to the following FAQs and resources. A ‘deep dive’ session to explore future direction and consider practical examples will be held in February.
1. Can I ban the use of GenAI in my Autumn 2025 subjects?
No. Students must have the opportunity to engage with GenAI within clear parameters. This is why it is no longer appropriate to ban the use of GenAI for a whole subject. You need to start a conversation about GenAI with your students and think about learning activities where they can incorporate GenAI. Students need clear guidelines about where and when they can use GenAI in each subject. For example, can they use it for editing work, generating ideas or other tasks?
You should also review your assessments to determine if and where you should adjust assessments for greater security. If GenAI needs to be banned to support student learning, a secure assessment strategy should be used.
2. What makes an assessment secure?
A secure assessment is one that gives you confidence that each student is demonstrating their own understanding, skills, and knowledge. In general, assessments that involve real-time interaction are more secure than other assessment types such as written submissions. Vivas or oral assessments, presentations, OSCEs or practicums with real-time interactive components and interactive seminars are more secure because they provide opportunities to probe students’ knowledge, skills and understanding. These strategies need to be designed with both staff and student workloads, as well as student accessibility, in mind. It is not necessary nor desirable to convert all assessments into more secure assessment types. The expectation remains that students will always present their own work for assessment.
3. Do I have to incorporate GenAI into my assessments?
No. Any use of GenAI in an assessment should be appropriate to the subject and discipline. At this stage, you need to ensure that you start a conversation about GenAI with your students, being clear about when and how they are permitted to use GenAI in your subject. You should also review your assessments to see where GenAI might be used and where you may want to make an assessment more secure, but there is no requirement to put GenAI in assessments.
4. Do I have to re-design my whole subject to accommodate GenAI?
No. You don’t have to change everything all at once. Small-scale incremental steps in the right direction each session is a good goal. The small steps you take will have immediate impact now, while also improving the student experience and reducing the work required during more comprehensive curriculum reviews later.
5. What’s the long-term plan for assessment at UTS?
We are moving to a whole-of-course approach with authentic secure assessment at milestones that will focus on assuring learning against CILOs. This means securing some assessments (using more real-time and interactive elements) across a course to ensure academic integrity as well as equipping students to engage ethically with GenAI in more formative tasks. This process will take some time and will involve a number of steps to help us move in the right direction as supported by the Education Portfolio.
6. What does whole-of-course assessment mean?
A whole-of-course assessment approach considers assessment across an entire degree program, aiming to provide a more holistic view of student competence and better prepare students for professional practice. To implement this change, the Education Portfolio will support faculties to work through a four-phase process: assuring learning and securing assessment; curriculum mapping; whole-of-course assessment implementation; and ongoing refinement and evaluation. This framework is designed to be flexible and customisable, allowing us to adapt the approach to suit the diverse requirements of different academic programs. This assessment reform presents a significant opportunity to enhance the quality and relevance of our assessment practices, improve student learning outcomes and address challenges posed by emerging technologies.
7. Where can I find more information?
Learn more about preparing the content and assessments in your subjects for Autumn 2025 in this LX blog post. There is also a suite of resources around GenAI in learning and teaching.
If you want to learn more about the basics of GenAI you can complete this brief introductory Canvas module. At UTS, all staff and students have access to Microsoft Copilot, a GenAI tool that is secure and accessed via your UTS credentials. When requiring students to use GenAI tools, remember to direct them to use UTS’s Copilot environment for security.
Join us for a ‘deep dive’ session in the new year to further unpack assessment reform for 2025: