A useful redesign pattern
Keep the important learning goal. Improve the clarity of the assignment and change the evidence you collect about how the student learned, decided, checked, revised, and can explain the work.
Design principle: collect enough evidence to make the learning claim defensible, but not so much documentation that students experience every assignment as surveillance.
Your redesigned assignment
Why redesign this way?
The central question is not simply whether AI was involved. It is whether the assessment provides defensible evidence of what the student knows, can do, can explain, and can transfer.
“Any AI use is cheating.”
AI can support very different activities: brainstorming, proofreading, critique, debugging, generating complete answers, or practicing with hints. Set boundaries according to the learning purpose of the task.
“A finished product proves learning.”
Assisted performance and independent capability are not the same. Process evidence and brief transfer or explanation can strengthen the interpretation of a grade.
Cognitive offloading and over-reliance
Offloading is not automatically harmful. The concern is when AI replaces cognitive work students need to practice or when students stop evaluating the output.
Think first → use AI second → reflect and verify.
“Confident AI is probably right.”
Fluent output can still be inaccurate. Teach students to calibrate trust to evidence, stakes, and verifiability.
AI proposes; the learner verifies.
“AI detectors prove authorship.”
Detector output should not be treated as proof. Use assignment rules, process evidence, source checking, student explanation, and ordinary institutional procedures.
Proctoring is a narrow tool
Honorlock may be appropriate when secure individual performance is necessary to the construct. It should not substitute for clear expectations, thoughtful assessment design, accessible alternatives, or instructional support.
Resources
Transparent Assignment Design
Organize assignments around Purpose, Tasks, and Criteria for Success, and use exemplars to make quality visible.
Canvas Studio
Student guidance for creating and submitting Canvas Studio media.
Honorlock HonorPrep
Honorlock's student practice environment for becoming familiar with the secured assessment experience.
Accessibility Checklist
Use alongside institutional accessibility guidance when implementing these activities.
If a submission raises concern
- Re-read the exact assignment-level AI and collaboration rule.
- Review evidence already required of all students.
- Check sources, calculations, methods, or reasoning where relevant.
- Give the student an opportunity to explain consequential decisions.
- Treat detector output, if used at all, as corroborating information rather than proof.
- Follow institutional procedures and due-process requirements.