Assessments will now be identified as ‘Can use AI’, ‘Can’t use AI’ or ‘Must use AI’, helping students understand when and why AI can be used.
UNSW is taking a new three-mode, program-level approach to assessment from Hexamester 6. The change was announced during the new Assessment Policy briefing for teaching and education support staff on 22 June 2026.
In a recent UNSW Education blog, Associate Professor Tracy Wilcox, Associate Professor Mark Ian Jones and Professor Alison Beavis explain the rationale behind the new approach.
The ‘can, can’t, must’ approach moves beyond permissions-based systems that focus primarily on whether students can use particular AI tools. Instead, the new modes are designed to communicate the purpose of an assessment and the capabilities students need to develop and demonstrate in an AI-enabled world.
“For the past two years, much of higher education’s conversation about generative AI has centred on a deceptively simple question: What should students be allowed to use?”, the blog said.
“Universities responded with AI categories, traffic light systems and lists of permitted or prohibited tools. These frameworks were an understandable first response to a rapidly evolving technology and a genuine attempt to preserve academic integrity while institutions found their footing.
“But as AI continues to accelerate and become embedded in the way people work, the question facing universities also needs to evolve. Rather than asking what technologies students use, universities need to consider which capabilities students should develop and demonstrate in an AI-enabled society: What kind of learning are we trying to assure?”
A program design decision
The student-facing assessment modes deliberately answer the practical question students ask: Can I use AI for this assessment? Behind them sits a program architecture that answers a different question: Why has this assessment been designed this way?
Each of the assessment modes serves a distinct educational purpose:
- ‘Can use AI’ assessments reflect contemporary professional practice, where AI is one of many resources available. Assessment focuses on disciplinary understanding and professional judgement, not on the use of AI itself.
- ‘Can’t use AI’ assessments provide assurance that students have independently developed key knowledge, judgement and capabilities without relying on AI or other unauthorised assistance.
- ‘Must use AI’ assessments require students to use AI because AI capability is itself a learning outcome. Students are expected to demonstrate their ability to use AI critically, ethically, responsibly and effectively.
The modes are fundamentally a program architecture decision rather than a series of course-by-course choices. Program teams determine how assessment modes are distributed across the curriculum to ensure students progressively develop disciplinary knowledge, AI capability and academic integrity in a coherent, scaffolded way.
“AI capability develops progressively and therefore requires intentional scaffolding across a program,” the authors said.
The goal of the framework is not to regulate AI use, but to assure learning while preparing graduates for the realities of contemporary professional practice.
Read the blog From permissions to purpose: a program level approach to assessment in an AI-integrated university by A/Prof. Tracy Wilcox, A/Prof. Mark Ian Jones and Prof. Alison Beavis.
- Log in to post comments