Beyond the Artefact: What are we actually assessing when AI can produce the paper?

Walking into the HERGA Conference today around the central theme of Transition, Technology, and Trust, an unavoidable tension runs through higher education: we have spent decades assessing the finished productrather than the process of thought.

Across health sciences, business, STEM, and the humanities, traditional assessment has relied on the static artefact - the 2,000 word essay, the literature review, the case analysis, or the slide deck. When generative AI can synthesise literature, emulate academic tone and assemble a coherent paper in seconds, evaluating solely by the final deliverable no longer guarantees authentic understanding.

Much of the institutional response across the sector has defaulted to risk containment:

-> Detection & Surveillance: Relying on automated detector tools that carry high false-positive rates and place an uneven burden on students.


-> Compliance Checklists: Requiring generic AI declarations that often function as administrative theatre rather than pedagogical dialogue.


-> Defensive Assessment: Reverting entirely to high-stakes invigilated exams or attempting to scale resource-intensive oral vivas across hundreds of learners.


These approaches treat the symptom rather than the underlying shift. When surface fluency is commodified, policing whether a tool was touched matters far less than whether students can exercise authentic evaluative judgement.

The greatest casualty of this adversarial dynamic is trust. Constant suspicion creates distance between educators and students, discouraging the vulnerability and intellectual friction needed to develop independent, critical thinking. If the polished, final artefact is no longer reliable proof of learning, assessment must shift toward making the arc of inquiry visible.

A Provocation for Colleagues Today

-> How do we make the messy, iterative process of thinking visible and assessable without turning higher education into a continuous panopticon?


-> If the static document is no longer sufficient evidence of learning, what forms of intellectual engagement deserve our trust?


If you’re attending sessions today, test the discourse operators below to challenge or build on this premise—or drop your thoughts on how your discipline is tackling this shift.