📖 Overview: Moving beyond detection to better assessment design.

Generative AI has exposed a fundamental challenge in traditional higher education assessment: we have often treated the final written product as evidence of the learning process itself. When chatbots can generate fluent 2,000-word essays in seconds, relying on AI detection software becomes an unwinnable arms race and can unfairly disadvantage multilingual learners.

This guide offers an evidence-based alternative. Drawing on the original idea of the essay as a process of inquiry, it explores how assessment can be redesigned to make learning visible through drafts, checkpoints, reflections, contextual evidence, and informed academic judgement.