The homework assignment is broken
More and more instructors are telling us that the homework assignment, as it has existed for decades, is broken. AI is the biggest driver, and instructors around the world are scrambling to rethink assessment. We are in a transitional period, but there are things we can do today to build assessment that works even when students have AI at their fingertips.
One increasingly popular response is to flip the problem on its head: use technology tools like Blended Teaching to handle the pre-class teaching, and bring assessment back into the room where you can see it happen.
What one instructor is doing this fall
Kerry Beck shared a detailed post on LinkedIn explaining his plan to flip his classroom this fall. The core idea is straightforward: teach students before class, and assess them during class.
For the pre-class work, Kerry is leaning on AI in two distinct ways.
First, he built a small app that lets an instructor upload a slide deck, chat with AI to shape the narration line by line, and then generate audio using an ElevenLabs cloned voice. The result is a short lecture video produced far faster than recording yourself would allow.
Second, he is wrapping Matt Pocock's "teach" skill into a course-specific version students can use to have AI walk them through the material one-on-one, at their own pace, before they arrive.
Class time then becomes a quiz on that pre-class material, followed by an in-depth discussion. The assessment happens in person, observed, with no opportunity to quietly hand the question to a chatbot.
Why this structure holds up
The approach works because it separates the two things we often bundle together in a homework assignment: exposure to content and demonstration of understanding. AI is genuinely useful for the first part. It is patient, available at midnight, and can explain the same concept five different ways. Letting it carry that load frees up class time for the part that is much harder to fake: showing, in front of an instructor, that you actually understood what you studied.
It also reframes the role of class time. Rather than using precious contact hours to deliver information students could receive just as well from a recording, instructors can focus on probing understanding, correcting misconceptions, and pushing students further than the pre-class material took them.
The homework assignment may be broken, but the underlying goal of checking whether students have learned something is not. Moving that check into the classroom is one concrete way to keep it meaningful.
