CYMar 18
Explainability and Certification of AI-Generated Educational AssessmentsAntoun Yaacoub, Zainab Assaghir, Anuradha Kar
The rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in educational assessment has created new opportunities for scalable item creation, personalized feedback, and efficient formative evaluation. However, despite advances in taxonomy alignment and automated question generation, the absence of transparent, explainable, and certifiable mechanisms limits institutional and accreditation-level acceptance. This chapter proposes a comprehensive framework for explainability and certification of AI-generated assessment items, combining self-rationalization, attribution-based analysis, and post-hoc verification to produce interpretable cognitive-alignment evidence grounded in Bloom's and SOLO taxonomies. A structured certification metadata schema is introduced to capture provenance, alignment predictions, reviewer actions, and ethical indicators, enabling audit-ready documentation consistent with emerging governance requirements. A traffic-light certification workflow operationalizes these signals by distinguishing auto-certifiable items from those requiring human review or rejection. A proof-of-concept study on 500 AI-generated computer science questions demonstrates the framework's feasibility, showing improved transparency, reduced instructor workload, and enhanced auditability. The chapter concludes by outlining ethical implications, policy considerations, and directions for future research, positioning explainability and certification as essential components of trustworthy, accreditation-ready AI assessment systems.
AIApr 19, 2025
Assessing AI-Generated Questions' Alignment with Cognitive Frameworks in Educational AssessmentAntoun Yaacoub, Jérôme Da-Rugna, Zainab Assaghir
This study evaluates the integration of Bloom's Taxonomy into OneClickQuiz, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven plugin for automating Multiple-Choice Question (MCQ) generation in Moodle. Bloom's Taxonomy provides a structured framework for categorizing educational objectives into hierarchical cognitive levels. Our research investigates whether incorporating this taxonomy can improve the alignment of AI-generated questions with specific cognitive objectives. We developed a dataset of 3691 questions categorized according to Bloom's levels and employed various classification models-Multinomial Logistic Regression, Naive Bayes, Linear Support Vector Classification (SVC), and a Transformer-based model (DistilBERT)-to evaluate their effectiveness in categorizing questions. Our results indicate that higher Bloom's levels generally correlate with increased question length, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), and Lexical Density (LD), reflecting the increased complexity of higher cognitive demands. Multinomial Logistic Regression showed varying accuracy across Bloom's levels, performing best for "Knowledge" and less accurately for higher-order levels. Merging higher-level categories improved accuracy for complex cognitive tasks. Naive Bayes and Linear SVC also demonstrated effective classification for lower levels but struggled with higher-order tasks. DistilBERT achieved the highest performance, significantly improving classification of both lower and higher-order cognitive levels, achieving an overall validation accuracy of 91%. This study highlights the potential of integrating Bloom's Taxonomy into AI-driven assessment tools and underscores the advantages of advanced models like DistilBERT for enhancing educational content generation.
CLMay 1, 2025
Enhancing AI-Driven Education: Integrating Cognitive Frameworks, Linguistic Feedback Analysis, and Ethical Considerations for Improved Content GenerationAntoun Yaacoub, Sansiri Tarnpradab, Phattara Khumprom et al.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming education, presenting unprecedented opportunities for personalized learning and streamlined content creation. However, realizing the full potential of AI in educational settings necessitates careful consideration of the quality, cognitive depth, and ethical implications of AI-generated materials. This paper synthesizes insights from four related studies to propose a comprehensive framework for enhancing AI-driven educational tools. We integrate cognitive assessment frameworks (Bloom's Taxonomy and SOLO Taxonomy), linguistic analysis of AI-generated feedback, and ethical design principles to guide the development of effective and responsible AI tools. We outline a structured three-phase approach encompassing cognitive alignment, linguistic feedback integration, and ethical safeguards. The practical application of this framework is demonstrated through its integration into OneClickQuiz, an AI-powered Moodle plugin for quiz generation. This work contributes a comprehensive and actionable guide for educators, researchers, and developers aiming to harness AI's potential while upholding pedagogical and ethical standards in educational content generation.
CLApr 19, 2025
Analyzing Feedback Mechanisms in AI-Generated MCQs: Insights into Readability, Lexical Properties, and Levels of ChallengeAntoun Yaacoub, Zainab Assaghir, Lionel Prevost et al.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated feedback in educational settings has garnered considerable attention due to its potential to enhance learning outcomes. However, a comprehensive understanding of the linguistic characteristics of AI-generated feedback, including readability, lexical richness, and adaptability across varying challenge levels, remains limited. This study delves into the linguistic and structural attributes of feedback generated by Google's Gemini 1.5-flash text model for computer science multiple-choice questions (MCQs). A dataset of over 1,200 MCQs was analyzed, considering three difficulty levels (easy, medium, hard) and three feedback tones (supportive, neutral, challenging). Key linguistic metrics, such as length, readability scores (Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level), vocabulary richness, and lexical density, were computed and examined. A fine-tuned RoBERTa-based multi-task learning (MTL) model was trained to predict these linguistic properties, achieving a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 2.0 for readability and 0.03 for vocabulary richness. The findings reveal significant interaction effects between feedback tone and question difficulty, demonstrating the dynamic adaptation of AI-generated feedback within diverse educational contexts. These insights contribute to the development of more personalized and effective AI-driven feedback mechanisms, highlighting the potential for improved learning outcomes while underscoring the importance of ethical considerations in their design and deployment.
CYOct 3, 2025
Lightweight Prompt Engineering for Cognitive Alignment in Educational AI: A OneClickQuiz Case StudyAntoun Yaacoub, Zainab Assaghir, Jérôme Da-Rugna
The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into educational technology promises to revolutionize content creation and assessment. However, the quality and pedagogical alignment of AI-generated content remain critical challenges. This paper investigates the impact of lightweight prompt engineering strategies on the cognitive alignment of AI-generated questions within OneClickQuiz, a Moodle plugin leveraging generative AI. We evaluate three prompt variants-a detailed baseline, a simpler version, and a persona-based approach-across Knowledge, Application, and Analysis levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Utilizing an automated classification model (from prior work) and human review, our findings demonstrate that explicit, detailed prompts are crucial for precise cognitive alignment. While simpler and persona-based prompts yield clear and relevant questions, they frequently misalign with intended Bloom's levels, generating outputs that are either too complex or deviate from the desired cognitive objective. This study underscores the importance of strategic prompt engineering in fostering pedagogically sound AI-driven educational solutions and advises on optimizing AI for quality content generation in learning analytics and smart learning environments.