GenAI: Act


If there is an identified risk that an assessment is susceptible to academic misconduct through students' misuse of GenAI , there are two ways this risk should be mitigated: either modifying the assessment type or setting limits on the use of GenAI.

Option 1 (if GenAI is a risk)

Modify the assessment task instructions then set limits for GenAI use.

If it is necessary to modify the assessment but there is not sufficient time to completely redesign the task, consider the following strategies for modifying assessment task instructions:

  • Incorporate personal reflections or local contexts and ask students to tie these to unit concepts, materials and current scholarly sources used in the unit.
  • Emphasise, via weighting of marking criteria, the elements of the task that are less likely to be completed successfully by GenAI, for example, higher-order thinking questions.
  • For mathematical problems, ask students to show their working and explain the rationale of how they reached their conclusions.
  • For group tasks, students can also discuss any collaboration processes they engaged in while working with others.
  • GenAI can also be included in the process of completing the task where you can evaluate the critical thinking skills process students developed while asking the GenAI tools questions (Prompts).

Please ensure that any modifications to the assessment instructions continue to align with the ULOs the task is assessing and adhere to SCU policy.

Then, establish the limits for the use of GenAI based on your modifications.

Option 2 (if GenAI is not a risk)

There is no need to modify the task instructions, however, you must still set limits for GenAI use.

Establishing limits for GenAI use

When defining the limits of acceptable use of GenAI, be clear on what is and what is not acceptable.

Here are some examples of how academics are defining limits for GenAI use at SCU:

  • Research purposes only, to generate ideas and gather initial insights.
  • Using GenAI to refine a draft assignment, making improvements to the content.
  • Drawing information from GenAI and incorporating it into assessments while following Academic Integrity guidelines for paraphrasing and acknowledging sources.
  • Utilising GenAI to generate an initial response to an assessment, but with subsequent human input involved in reviewing, refining, and finding supporting evidence from unit readings and other recent scholarly sources.
  • Employing GenAI as a supportive tool for research and idea generation, but including all prompts and outputs*, along with prompt refinements, as an appendix in the final work.
  • Where GenAI has been used, students are to provide a reflection on how they contributed value to the quality of the GenAI outputs through higher-order human judgments. This reflection should also reference the prioritisation of elements within the task, aligning with the rubric's requirements.

*An approach that is being adopted within the defined limits of an assessment task includes asking students to collect evidence of what they have done in terms of prompts (which may or may not include the outputs) and prompt modification that can be submitted as an appendix or used as a further point of reference if required.

Once you have considered the Act aspects of your assessment, continue with the rest of the assessment design process by clicking on Inform, Educate, Check, Evaluate, Analyse and Design.  


Note: Given the rapidly evolving nature of GenAI technologies and largely opinion-based and low-level evidence on emerging practices for use in higher education, this resource represents the status quo at the time of writing (Aug 2023). As changes to policies and technology develop and evidence for best practice emerges, practice recommendations as outlined here are likely to continue to change and develop.