‘GenAI Kills the Trust?’: The Relational Turn to Understand GenAI’s Implications on Higher Education Assessment
Dr. Jiahui Jess Luo, Assistant Professor, Department of Education Policy and Leadership, the Education University of Hong Kong
Discussions around GenAI in higher education assessment have largely centred on its cognitive impacts on student learning and issues of student misconduct. An equally important yet often overlooked dimension lies in how relationships in assessment – particularly between students and teachers – are being reshaped by GenAI’s growing presence in higher education.
This talk will centre on trust as a cornerstone of student-teacher relationship and explore how GenAI subtly mediates it in the context of assessment. Moving beyond the one-sided narrative of teachers (dis)trusting students of their GenAI use, the talk will unpack how student trust in teachers is also being complicated, negotiated, and even compromised in the GenAI-mediated assessment landscape. A series of provocative scenarios drawn from my research and teaching – from students perceiving teachers as ‘hypocrites’ who use GenAI to write feedback to the immense moralising pressure on teachers to quickly and effectively redesign assessment – will be used to anchor this talk and bring to light some relational tensions not yet sufficiently captured in the literature.
The talk is grounded in the belief that assessment is more than a technical, transactional process to measure student learning but is inherently relational. Now, three years into ChatGPT made its public debut and with much important work already published in this field, the talk calls for a “relational turn” to better understand and research GenAI’s role and implications on higher education assessment. The talk concludes with practical suggestions and reflective pointers for researchers, practitioners and policymakers as we continue our efforts to make assessment more inclusive and meaningful in the GenAI age and beyond.
Biography
Dr Jiahui Jess Luo is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Education Policy and Leadership, the Education University of Hong Kong. Jess’s research focuses on the implications of emerging technologies, particularly generative AI, on educational assessment as well as the governance of these technologies through education policies at different levels. Her research on generative AI and assessment has been recognised for its impact, such as the 2025 Editor’s Choice Award from Teaching in Higher Education Journal and Taylor & Francis’ 2024 Top 10 Humanities and Social Sciences Research of Global Interest. She is also leading several external and internal research grants on generative AI and assessment, including one funded by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council under the prestigious Early Career Scheme.
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