You know you are in for a long day when a learner who can barely string together a sentence suddenly submits an assignment that reads like a government white paper. “Hmm,” you think, “either I have just witnessed the fastest academic glow-up in history, or there is a robot somewhere writing about WHS procedures.”
Welcome to the new reality of training and assessment in 2025. AI is not the enemy (well, not unless it starts asking for a pay rise). It is simply the newest classroom assistant you did not hire. It never sleeps, it never complains, and it knows the correct referencing style better than half your team.
The challenge is not stopping students from using AI. It is teaching them how to use it properly. Because let us be honest, you can spot a copy-paste job a mile away. The trick is helping learners think with AI, not cheat with it.
Here’s a few of our favourite tips:
- Ask for the process, not just the product. Get students to show their prompts, drafts, or reasoning steps. If they can explain how they reached the answer, you know they did more than click “generate.”
- Build AI literacy into your lessons. Teach them what AI can and cannot do. When they understand its limits, they are less likely to rely on it blindly or submit robotic nonsense about teamwork written by someone who has never met a colleague.
- Encourage human examples. Ask for workplace scenarios, personal reflections, or recent experiences. AI struggles to sound authentic when talking about Karen from accounts or the time the forklift ran out of fuel mid-assessment.
- Keep a sense of humour. You will catch a few who swear they wrote it all themselves while the grammar screams “Silicon Valley.” Smile, take a breath, and remind yourself that every generation has its shortcuts. This one just happens to have Wi-Fi.
So, if you are a newly trained trainer and assessor, buckle up. Between deciphering ChatGPT-speak and marking “original” essays that sound suspiciously familiar, your job just got a lot more interesting. AI might be able to write the report, but it cannot assess genuine understanding, critical thinking, or eff ort. That part still needs a human touch.
Article written for RAM Training Services, by Dee Powis at Halcyon HR Consultancy.
