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Designing Writing Assessments in the Age of GenAI

Originally published September 12, 2025

Embracing the value of the Writing Process

The emergence of GenAI has raised much discussion on the value of written assessments in higher education (Marche 2022; Rim 2022). Perhaps one of the most worthwhile responses to these debates is to reexamine what educational values are conveyed in our writing assessment design, particularly how “assignments that reward perfection and correctness over process and growth further incentivize the use of AI as a shortcut, reducing learning to prompting and receiving rather than engaging in the intellectual labour of constructing meaning” (Sabbaghan 2025). In short, the educational value of the written assessment is not ultimately the product nor (GenAI) output itself but in the process and development that occurs along the way (Southworth 2023).

How can we more intentionally structure assignments to prepare students for the writing process– where students learn that “human writing is spiky, weird and messy... [and to embrace the value] that writing is hard”? (Warner 2025)

In this week’s Teaching Together newsletter, TEI invites you to explore approaches to writing assignments in the age of GenAI through new design strategies, peer learning with Kathleen Clarke’s Assessment Snapshot, support from student writing services, and our new faculty learning community on GenAI and Academic Integrity for Laurier Faculty.

Strategies for Writing Assessment Design

  • Guide students with the end in mind 

  • Identify your writing assessment genre (e.g. creative writing, critical reflection, literature review, book review, argumentative essay, Op-Ed, science article) with an authentic rhetorical audience. 

  • Teach appreciation and features of good writing with exemplars. Support your students in developing their skills to read like a writer and explore the craft of the composition (Warner 2025; Rudenga 2025). 

  • Show students what different levels of quality writing look like in your discipline and provide a rubric for mastery (Novice, Developing, Meets, Mastery).

  • Instructors can book an in-class workshop with Writing Services to help students learn about writing in the genre for your assessment (see also the section below for Writing Services supports).

Identify and explain the level of AI integration in your assessment 

Elevate the process beyond ‘one and done’ submissions through scaffolding assignment components and developmental feedback cycles 

  • Select a point in the process to engage in review (sections or drafts) and a reviewer to provide feedback, whether it is the instructor, a peer, or a Writing Services Consultant.

  • Watch Kathleen Clarke’s Faculty Snapshot featured below to learn how to use feedback and response templates in your class.

  • Feedback: Create a template to support a ‘feedforward’ approach (Hirsch 2017) where comments are actionable, future-oriented, and targeted to support a developmental approach to improvement (rather than judgemental or a vague review).

  • Response: Signal the importance of the writer’s response to the feedback by using the same template to prompt students to demonstrate how they integrated (or why they disagree with) the feedback they received in their edited submission(s). Share how academics do this in authentic contexts of article peer review processes.

  • Explore creative approaches to embedding revisions in the writing assignment process, such as multiday in-class essays, which are administered over 2 or 3 classes via MyLS Quizzes supported by Lockdown Browser to allow for thinking and typing but minimize academic integrity concerns of cutting and pasting from GenAI chat tools. 

Create opportunities for multi-level or multi-modal assessments by embedding opportunities to display meta-cognition or evidence of deeper learning  

  • Request that students use the ‘Review>New Comment’ function in Word or write an accompanying reflection to identify components of their composition, how they utilized course concepts in action, or what they learned and how they achieved the purpose of the assessment in their work.

  • Plan for students to engage in self-review by evaluating and discussing their work in relation to the rubric and exemplars you have provided.

  • Create multi-modal assessments, where written submissions are accompanied by an oral, visual or performance-based demonstration of their skills and knowledge underpinning or related to the written submission. 

Laurier Assessment Snapshot: Writing in an Age of GenAI with Kathleen Clarke

Kathleen Clarke, from Laurier’s Faculty of Education, shares strategies she uses in her classes for making small adjustments to grapple with the influence of AI on written assessments, proposing a three-step process that helps instructors identify where AI can fit within one’s teaching philosophy, context, and existing practices.

Kathleen continues to support students’ writing skill development by scaffolding writing assignments, providing developmental peer and instructor feedback at key points, and building student and instructor self-reflective practices. In doing so, she builds trust with the students in her class and creates space for open dialogue on AI use, while also fostering the necessary critical thinking skills for engaging responsibly and ethically with the tools available to them.

Kathleen reminds us that, just like our students, we too will make and learn from mistakes, so experiment, reflect on lessons learned, and focus on small changes that support your teaching practice. Watch the video now >>

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