assessmentQ unpacks a striking new feature. The AI-driven ‘distractor generator’ now allows test authors to quickly generate answer options for multiple choice exams. 

An enormous range of options

Education institutions and exam centres have been following the developments around ChatGPT and other AI-based tools with suspicion. They are extremely concerned about plagiarism and other forms of exam fraud. “But in our view, artificial intelligence actually opens up a whole raft of new options for the world of education,” says Filip Vanlerberghe, Product Manager at Televic Education, the Televic division that focuses on e-assessments.

“We’ve been researching AI technologies for years, and have already experimented with it in beta versions of assessmentQ,” continues Filip. “So for us, the emergence of ChatGPT was certainly not our first encounter with the possibilities of AI-based language models. However, it did accelerate the launch of our ‘distractor generator’.”

“We’ve been researching AI technologies for years, and have already experimented with it in beta versions of assessmentQ.”

Filip Vanlerberghe, Product Manager Televic Education

Time-saving source of inspiration

So what exactly is assessmentQ’s ‘distractor generator’? “Actually it’s pretty simple,” explains Pieter Pangat, R&D Engineer at Televic Education. “Examiners input their multiple-choice question with the correct answer into assessmentQ. They then click on a button, which sends their question to GPT. After a few seconds, they receive five alternative answers to their question on the platform.”

“A big plus of this system is that beside every suggestion, there is an explanation of why it is a clever distractor. Based on this information, examiners decide which distractors they will include in the exam. Frequently, teachers can come up with two wrong answers but struggle to find a third. Our ‘distractor generator’ therefore serves as a fantastic source of inspiration that saves an examiner a huge amount of time.”

“Examiners decide which suggestions they will use. Our ‘distractor generator’ serves as a fantastic source of inspiration that saves a huge amount of time.”

Pieter Pangat, R&D Engineer Televic Education

Tip of the iceberg

“During the creation process, AI has already proven its added value with the ‘distractor generator’, but there are a great many other innovations in the pipeline,” assures Filip. “For instance, we could use AI to generate alternative questions with the same difficulty level for various exam versions, which would make cheating during an exam virtually impossible.”

“Artificial intelligence will also be indispensable in the correction process. With assessmentQ, most closed questions are already corrected automatically. AI means this could also be the case for open questions. And with AI-based speech-to-text applications, teachers will be able to (partly) correct oral exams automatically too.”

“So the ‘distractor generator’ is just the tip of the iceberg,” concludes Filip. “AI will take the quality and reliability of digital exams to an unprecedented level. We are early adopters in integrating AI solutions and will continue to be very responsive – all the more so now we see how positive the reactions to our ‘distractor generator’ have been!”

Also read: ‘How AI can help ou build better exams’ >