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8 Ethical reasons to avoid using AI apps for student assessment

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Most institutions in Manitoba have yet to vet and purchase custom education apps specifically for the assessment process. So, some educators like yourself may have considered using publicly available generative artificial intelligence (genAI) or large language models (LLM) apps to help with student learning assessment. You may be looking for ways to streamline or reduce workloads or exuberantly adopt them in your courses with students.

Until your institution has approved an app for assessing your students, we suggest you read Sarah E. Eaton’s list of eight good reasons not to use publicly available genAI or LLM apps to help assess student learning. This list intends to “provide guidance on ethical ways to teach, learn and assess students’ work.” (Eaton, 2024)

Important: Follow your institution’s policy on using genAI tools. Ensure that the tools used adhere to guidelines for privacy, data protection regulations, data storage, and respect for copyrighted content and training data. 

8 Tips  

Academic integrity 

Educators model ethical behaviour, which includes transparent and fair assessment. If you are using tech tools to assess student learning, it is important to be transparent about it.  

Your employee responsibilities 

If your job description includes assessing student work, offloading assessment to a genAI app or LLM may violate your employment contract.  

Impersonal 

GenAI and LLM apps can provide generic feedback, but as an educator, you can personalize feedback to help the student grow. 

Intellectual property 

A student’s work is their intellectual property. Unless you have permission to use it outside of class, then avoid doing so. 

Privacy 

A student’s personal data, including their name, ID number and other details, should never be uploaded to an external app without consent. 

Data security 

Content uploaded to a genAI or LLM app may be added to its database and used to train the tool. 

Bias 

GenAI and LLM apps are known to be biased. Feedback generated by a genAI or LLM app can be biased, unfair, and even racist.  

Lack of context (student growth and potential)

A genAI app does not know your student like you do. It provides generic feedback but may not help to scaffold a student’s learning. You will see the context of the student learning. Has the student repeatedly made the same type of errors, or have they progressed? You can provide that feedback. 

Creative commons 

This document is developed by Sarah E. Eaton, from the University of Calgary in September 2024 

This document is reproduced and modified from the original publication under the terms of the Creative Commons License, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0.    

Reference

Eaton, S. E. (2024, September 10). Ethical Reasons to Avoid Using AI Apps for Student Assessment. Learning, Teaching and Leadership: A Blog for Educators, Researchers and Other Thinkers by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D. Retrieved September 13, 2024, from https://drsaraheaton.com/2024/09/10/ethical-reasons-to-avoid-using-ai-apps-for-student-assessment/ 

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