Multimodal Considerations For Assessment Design Re ChatGPT

I know that in my last post I kind of promised I wouldn't talk about ChatGPT because frankly there are just too many takes on this right now. I didn't want to add to the long list of blogs, videos, articles, or podcasts on this because an un-curated list of links that folk expect instructors to navigate on top of everything else as they are thinking of their assessment design is just not helpful. And for the most part these posts are mostly, oh my goodness look what this can do the sky is falling chicken little type resources that don't provide any sort of guidance on next steps and things to consider. So yes I am adding to this cacophony, but I promise it will be short (735 words) and I promise I will give you suggestions as to what you absolutely should be doing. And I am adding to this cacophony because, as per usual, I want to talk about something that I am not seeing in this discussion at all (quelle surprise).

A lot of the guidance and suggestions around how to redesign writing assignments in relation to ChatGPT, when it is given, focus on using more multimodal assessments that focus on process. There has been a lot of talk about oral exams (accessibility yikes), and more presentations. There has also been a lot more discussion about multimodal assessment projects along the lines of scaffolded podcast, or using some sort of visualizations (data visualizations, mind maps, infographics) as the end product that demonstrates process as opposed to an essay or report. As someone who supports UDL, I love that this is part of the discussion, and in one way, this may be a way to get folks who were hesitant about multimodal aspects of course design to apply it in interesting ways to their courses. 

But, and you knew the but was coming, nowhere is there any discussion about how to make sure these multimodal assessments are accessible. Text-only assignments were already lacking accessibility; few students or instructors know about things like headings, style, font type, or alt texts for images in documents for example. Now that there is discussion about having more multimodal assessments where students critically assess concepts and processes, there also needs to be discussions about how the 10-minute video presentations handed in are going to be captioned, how students are going to create transcripts for their podcasts, how infographics are going to have alt-text, how data visualizations will also have ways to describe visuals for those who use screen readers. None of that is part of any of the discussions I am reading or the sessions I have gone to.

I am of course not surprised. No one talked about accessibility of documents, videos, images, and assessments before, so why would they talk about it now? But that's the thing, if you are asking for more multimodal assignments then you need to reinforce the accessibility of what is being produced. This needs to happen because one, if this is peer or group work with any kind of feedback component you need to make sure what is produced is accessible to all students in your class (including the instructor), and two, if you do not set the ethical inclusive accessible example now, students and instructors will continue thinking it is absolutely okay to keep creating things that are inaccessible. This will create even more inaccessible resources for the future.

So that's it, that's the post, if you are redesigning assessments to have more multimodal components you better have accessibility as part of that conversation. If you don't know how to do that, reach out to your teaching and learning centre (if you have one), your instructional designer (if you have one), an educational developer who works on this topic (if you have one), or accessibility/disability support office (you definitely have one of those) and ask for help. If they say they can't help with that then tell them they need to hire someone who can like yesterday, and if they say they don't have capacity to help with that, you say they need to hire even more someones. It is 2023, this cannot be the responsibility of one random person on your campus or the handful of instructors who care or know. Please make this the year you ask for training on this and make it a priority on your campus.