August 2025 – Page 3 – Critical Research Journal

Navigating AI use in summative assessment on photography courses

My university has issued formal guidance on the permitted use of AI in summative assessment across the institution. The policy reflects growing recognition that AI use is both inevitable and, in many disciplines, essential. Rather than banning AI outright, the institution advocates a values-led, task-specific approach grounded in integrity, transparency, and fairness.

Key principles include:

Integrity and transparency must underpin both teaching and assessment. Students and tutors alike should clearly articulate when and how AI is used.
Assessment design should align with the specific aims of each task. The ‘purpose’ of the task should determine the extent and nature of permitted assistance.
Clarity of expectation is essential. Each assessment brief must explicitly state what forms of assistance are allowed and how students should declare their use.

For teaching staff, the policy requires:

Clear statements on AI use for each assignment.
Review of assessment formats and criteria to ensure alignment with permitted AI use.
Equal access to approved AI tools where use is allowed.
Transparent declaration processes for students.
Avoidance of unauthorised AI detection tools; instead, academic misconduct must be identified through marking or approved processes. (NB The university doesn’t authorise any detection tools at present.)

For students, the policy requires:

Adherence to assignment-specific AI guidelines.
Formal declaration of any AI use in a prescribed format.
Awareness that undeclared or unauthorised use of AI may constitute cheating or plagiarism and will be treated under standard disciplinary procedures.

AI is already ubiquitous in photography, especially professional photography

AI is now used extensively in most modern image editing software – often deeply integrated into the core tools and workflows.

Photographers are using AI in many ways beyond just editing – often reshaping how they plan, capture, critique, organise, and conceptualise their work.

The extent varies by product and purpose, but includes:

Category	Examples
Editing	Retouching, compositing, enhancement
Organisation	Auto-tagging, sorting, culling
Planning	Light prediction, location scouting, real-time feedback
Shooting	AI autofocus, exposure blending, portrait modes
Conceptual Development	Mood boards, prompts, storyboards
Client Interaction	Virtual previews, AI-generated options
Education	Feedback, simulation, training
Art Practice	AI-generated commentary, critical or hybrid photographic works

Significant challenges for the photography course leader

This policy framework therefore raises several significant challenges for teachers – especially in creative fields like photography, where process, originality, and authorship are central but increasingly entangled with AI tools.

1. Assessment Design Under Pressure

Challenge:
Teachers must redesign assessments to be AI-resilient, not AI-proof. This means distinguishing what the student has learned from what they have merely produced.

Implications:

Task briefs must move beyond product-based judgement.
Teachers must evaluate process, decision-making, and reflection.
Oral components or viva-style defences may become more common.

2. Maintaining Fairness and Access

Challenge:
Ensuring that all students have equal access to permitted AI tools while avoiding undue advantage.

Implications:

Institutions must provide a baseline of AI resources.
Teachers may need to teach responsible and critical AI use.
There’s a risk that students with more digital fluency or external subscriptions will outperform others unfairly.

3. Erosion of Traditional Marking Criteria

Challenge:
Standard assessment rubrics may no longer apply if AI assists with key aspects of the task (e.g. structuring essays, refining grammar, or generating images).

Implications:

Criteria must shift toward evaluating judgement, reflection, and authorship.
Tutors must judge what was done with AI, rather than by AI.
Aesthetic or technical excellence alone may no longer indicate ability.

4. Time and Training Burden

Challenge:
Keeping up with AI developments while redesigning courses and assessments.

Implications:

Teachers may lack training or time to engage with the fast-evolving AI landscape.
The pace of change in tools like Adobe Firefly or ChatGPT can outstrip curriculum updates.
Colleagues may disagree on what constitutes legitimate AI use.

5. Student Trust and Dialogue

Challenge:
Creating a climate of honesty where students feel safe to disclose their AI use.

Implications:

Students may fear being penalised for use that is in fact legitimate.
Tutors must balance rigour with openness.
Conversations around AI may become part of routine supervision.

6. The Shifting Concept of Originality

Challenge:
Students may produce highly ‘polished’ work with the aid of AI – but does it reflect their voice, their development, or their struggle?

Implications:

Teachers must redefine originality – not as isolation from tools, but as discernment in their use.
There is a risk that AI flattens diversity of thought unless students are encouraged to critically challenge it.

Summary

The core challenge is not preventing AI use, but evolving our educational values to guide it. Teachers must:

Redesign tasks around thinking, not typing.
Teach discernment, not detection.
Embrace AI as part of the medium, not just a threat to it.

This requires time, shared practice, and institutional support – not just policy.

Holding the Line: Course Leadership in an Age of Creeping Complexity

Across higher and further education, the role of the course leader has undergone a quiet but profound transformation. This evolution hasn’t been announced in headlines or policy briefings – rather, it has crept in incrementally, through shifting expectations, institutional restructuring, and the slow absorption of tasks once distributed more widely across academic departments. Today’s course leader, whether in photography, humanities, or applied sciences, is no longer merely the steward of curriculum quality or assessment processes. They are increasingly required to be the first responder to student crises, the internal marketer of their programme, the frontline interpreter of AI policy, the mediator of staff disputes, and the figurehead for inclusion and decolonisation initiatives.

This expansion of duties, often referred to as “role creep,” is seldom accompanied by formal recognition or appropriate workload adjustments. The problem is not simply the accumulation of tasks, but the blurring of boundaries between pedagogical leadership and institutional firefighting. What was once a role rooted in subject expertise and educational vision has been transformed into one that requires managerial agility, emotional intelligence, and diplomatic patience – often exercised without training, time, or tangible support.

The implications of this shift are serious. Course leaders are increasingly being pulled in opposing directions. They are asked to nurture intellectual curiosity and critical independence while also improving student satisfaction scores, ensuring graduate employability, and complying with externally imposed metrics. They must innovate within risk-averse quality frameworks, and they are expected to defend creative experimentation in a system that increasingly quantifies value through retention data and algorithmic projections. These contradictions are more than frustrating; they are corrosive. They invite moral injury – the internal dissonance experienced when acting against one’s pedagogical or ethical convictions in order to meet institutional demands.

At the same time, many course leaders report feeling disconnected from the decisions that shape their working lives. Strategic choices around educational technology, AI integration, or curriculum reform are frequently made by senior leaders without sufficient consultation. The result is a sense of alienation: a growing gap between those who lead learning and those who manage policy. This disconnect is compounded by a persistent undervaluing of pedagogical expertise. Amid rising managerialism, it becomes harder for course leaders to make the case for education as a dialogical, relational, and intellectually demanding process – one that can’t always be reduced to “value for money” or “student satisfaction.”

The emotional load is equally concerning. As students bring more of their lives into the classroom – including mental health challenges, housing insecurity, and political despair – course leaders often become the default pastoral support. Many step into this role willingly and with care, but the cumulative weight of this emotional labour is rarely acknowledged, let alone resourced. Nor is it supported by broader safeguarding frameworks, which often lag behind the lived reality of contemporary student experience.

What action, then, is needed? First and foremost, institutions must revisit and redefine the course leader role in formal terms – recognising the full spectrum of responsibilities and resourcing them appropriately. Leadership training should be tailored, not generic, focusing on the unique pressures and skills required in contemporary education: trauma-informed practice, inclusive pedagogy, conflict navigation, and digital fluency. Course leaders also need protected time – time to think, to collaborate, to renew their knowledge, and to adapt curricula meaningfully rather than reactively.

Equally important is the need to restore academic voice in strategic planning. Course leaders must be invited back into the conversations that shape the future of teaching and learning, not only as implementers but as co-designers. This also means fostering communities of practice – both within institutions and across the sector – where course leaders can share experiences, develop solutions, and build solidarity.

Finally, there is a need for broader sector-wide advocacy. Many of the issues course leaders face stem from systemic pressures: funding models that reward short-term metrics over long-term learning, accountability frameworks that privilege compliance over creativity, and policy agendas that treat education as a service rather than a public good. Change at the local level is essential, but it must be accompanied by collective efforts to push for national reforms.

Unless these steps are taken, we risk hollowing out one of the most vital roles in contemporary education. Course leaders are not merely administrators. They are the connective tissue of our institutions: holding together pedagogy, people, and purpose. To allow this role to collapse under the weight of contradiction and neglect would be to fail not only our educators, but our students, and the very idea of education as a transformative, human endeavour.