OpRaise: Opportunities and Potential Risks of AI in Supporting Evaluation
- tgwm49
- May 15
- 8 min read
Updated: May 20
As AI continues to advance, concerns are growing about its impact on traditional grading systems across the HE sector. AI models are now capable of writing essays and providing detailed feedback that is improving rapidly, raising questions about how universities should adapt to this technology.
OpRaise (opportunities and potential risks of AI in supporting evaluation) aims to transform higher education assessment by establishing an evidence-based framework for integrating AI into academic evaluation processes.
To do this, the winning team will systematically analyse a comprehensive corpus of university essays from summative assessments in UK Universities. The team will compare expert academic evaluations against assessments from multiple AI systems, varying prompting strategies to optimise AI performance. By analysing the differences between human and AI assessments the goal is to develop targeted interventions to enhance AI effectiveness.
This project is supported by Accelerate Science and ai@cam, the University’s flagship mission on AI for science, citizens and society.
This challenge-led programme is part of the AI-deas initiative, ai@cam’s incubator for challenge-led AI research that tackles major scientific and societal challenge.
OpRaise Team
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Associate professor and Director of Curriculum Development, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge; Director of Studies in Psychology, Lucy Cavendish College
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Assistant Professor, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham
Assistant Professor, Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham and Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge, UKRI Policy Fellow at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and co-director Institute for Replication
Senior Lecturer and Equality and Diversity Lead, Department of Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan University
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge
Lecturer, School of Engineering and Computing, University of Central Lancashire
Senior User Experience Researcher at the University of Cambridge
Principal Researcher, OCR, UK Education. Cambridge University Press & Assessment
Research coordinator, University of Cambridge
OpRaise Advisory Board
Senior Members:
John is programme co-director of the Kinds of Intelligence programme at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI). Here his work focuses on evaluating AI systems by drawing on techniques and methodologies from Cognitive Science and Metrology—-aiming to more accurately measure salient properties of AI systems.
John has a background in Computer Science, having completed his PhD at the University of York, as well as holding a Master’s degree from Oriel College, Oxford.
Dr Gladson Chikwa is a Higher Education professional with almost two decades of successful experience of working in different universities. He has championed learning and teaching enhancement projects at various institutions in China, Oman, the UK, and Zimbabwe. Dr Chikwa is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) (PFHEA) and a Fellow of the Staff & Educational Development Association (FSEDA). His research expertise is extensive, with numerous publications in areas such as learner autonomy, assessment and feedback, and technology-enhanced learning. Currently, he works as a Senior Lecturer in Academic Development at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he teaches on the PGCert/MA in learning and teaching in Higher Education. In 2021, he established an international cross-institutional network that now includes academics from over 15 countries (see: https://itlsig.mmu.ac.uk).
Keeley Crockett SMIEEE SFHEA is a Professor in Computational Intelligence at Manchester Metropolitan University She has over 27 years’ experience of research and development in Ethical and responsible AI (for both SME’s and an advocate for citizen voice), computational intelligence algorithms and applications, including adaptive psychological profiling, fuzzy systems, semantic similarity, and dialogue systems. Keeley has led work on Place based practical Artificial Intelligence, facilitating a parliamentary inquiry with Policy Connect and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Data Analytics (APGDA), leading to the inquiry report “Our Place Our Data: Involving Local People in Data and AI-Based Recovery”. She is one of the five EPSRC Public Engagement Champions and currently the Principal Investigator on the EPSRC “PEAs in Pods: Co-production of community based public engagement for data and AI research.” Keeley was one on the Founders of the People Panel for AI, funded originally by The Alan Turing Institute and in 2024 by Manchester City Council. She is currently working on several Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with business such as COUCH and Greater Manchester Combined Authority. She is a steering committee member for the UK Government Inquiry on Skills in the Age of AI. Keeley is working with the UK Government Digital Cabinet Office and was a collaborator on the AI Playbook for the UK Government released in 2025. She is also part of the International Agentic AI Safety Experts Focus Group (25 members) which includes the development of the Guidelines for Agentic AI Safety Volume 1&2 (2024, 2025). Keeley was appointed to the UKRI’s AI & Robotics Strategic Advisory Team (SAT) on 1st April 2024 and is a collaborator with HMG Digital Cabinet Office. She is a member of the IEEE Computational intelligence Society ADCOM (2023-25), Founder and past (2022-2024) Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee SHIELD (Ethical, Legal, Social, Environmental and Human Dimensions of AI/CI) and chairs the IEEE AI Coalition Responsible AI subcommittee. She is passionate about people.
Dr Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel (CPsychol, SFHEA) is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow, an expert in applying Cognitive Psychology to education, and an enthusiastic science communicator. She leads the TILE Network and is part of the Learning Scientists. She obtained her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Mannheim, Germany, and pursued postdoc positions at York University in Toronto, Canada, and the Center for Integrative Research in Cognition, Learning, and Education at Washington University in St. Louis, USA. Before joining the University of Glasgow, she was a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Dundee, UK. She has delivered workshops and talks on research-informed teaching worldwide. Carolina is convinced that psychological research should serve the public and engages in scholarly outreach activities. She is passionate about research-informed teaching and aims to provide students with the best learning experience possible. She is on the advisory boards for Evidence-Based Education and for a project of the National Institute of Teaching. See her linktree with links to papers, open educational resources, and outreach projects. In her free time, Carolina enjoys books, vinyl records, running, and movies/series.
Education and Student Experience Senior Administrator, University of Nottingham
I am the school-based Education and Student Experience (ESE) Senior Administrator for the School of Psychology. I work closely with students, academic staff within the school and the wider ESE team across the Faculty of Science to improve the education and student experience for all Undergraduate and Postgraduate students.
Steven Watson is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. He is also co-founder of the University of Cambridge knowledge enterprise spinout, Cambridge Global Knowledge Nexus. His research uses transdisciplinary approaches, social systems theory, cybernetics; his current focus is on the philosophy and sociology of technology, and in particular the role of generative AI in organisations, education, and society. While his research is strongly theoretical, he integrates this with contextual empirical research and development. His previous professions include secondary school mathematics teacher and telecommunications engineer. He holds degrees in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, a masters in education from the Open University and a PhD Education from the University of Nottingham. He is currently working on four books, Emergent Discourses on Generative AI in Education and Society (Expected publication 2025), Generative AI and Meaning Mediation (forthcoming), Autopoietic Ecology (Forthcoming) and Educational Research: an autopoietic ecological systems approach (forthcoming). Linkedin
Gabriela C. Zapata holds a PhD in Spanish (Linguistics track) from the Pennsylvania State University. She is Associate Professor in Education at the University of Nottingham. She also serves as the editor of the book series Multiliteracies and Second Language Education (Routledge) and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Diversity & Inclusion Research (Wiley). Her main research areas are Generative AI in higher education instruction, assessment, and teacher training; AI literacy; multiliteracies-based instruction (focus on Learning by Design); and multimodal social semiotics. Throughout her career, she has published articles in a variety of peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, as well as four books on multiliteracies-based second/heritage language education and four textbooks for the teaching of Spanish as a second language. She has also been involved in the development and implementation of inclusive, research-guided methodologies and open educational resources for language teaching and teacher education. Dr Zapata has been part of several interdisciplinary collaborative projects that have had the objective of serving Hispanic/Latinx and Black/African American students and communities in Southern United States and the Salinas Valley in California. She has recently completed two new volumes with a focus on AI, Generative AI technologies, multiliteracies, and language education (Routledge) and Literacies: Learning how to mean in the age of digital media and Artificial Intelligence (Wiley, co-authored with Drs Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis). These books are scheduled to appear in the upcoming months.
Student Members:
Yashraj Garg, University of Cambridge
Yashraj is a first-year Psychological and Behavioural Sciences undergraduate at Cambridge. Previously, he has assisted Cambridge laboratories in conducting research at the intersection of neuroscience and psychology. Through this experience, he honed his computational modelling skills, while also gaining insight into various AI-based data analysis tools like machine learning. Additionally, Yashraj is an avid writer, having published ‘Journey of a Teenager’s Mind – a self-help guide for adolescent wellbeing in a. digital world – along with a research paper on social media use and narcissistic tendencies in Indian adolescents. Yashraj’s passion for initiating pedagogical changes and improvements in the education system has been honed by his role as an Undergraduate Representative for the Council of the School of Biological Sciences. Not only has this role enabled him to grapple critically with the challenge of curriculum development, but it has allowed him to envision the future of education in a digital world. He is enthusiastic about harnessing his skillset in research and policy application to grapple with the socio-ethical challenge of an AI-centred summative evaluation system.
Grace Macewan, Manchester Metropolitan University
I am currently in my final year of a BSc Psychology degree, set to graduate this summer. For my dissertation, I explored the topic: “How students’ use of Generative AI links to feelings on imposter syndrome and guilt”. Since the beginning of this year, I have actively engaged with this subject looking into a wide range of studies and articles that examine the psychological impact of Generative AI on students. This research has sparked an interest in the topic, and I believe the insights I have gained allow me to provide a unique and valuable perspective to this research project.
Rowan Meijer , University of Nottingham
My name is Rowan (they/them), and I am a second-year psychology student at the University of Nottingham. I care very much about the way the teaching in my course is run, and so I'm excited to be able to contribute to this project. While I do not have any direct experience with AI myself, I learned about it during my workshops in first year and found the subject very interesting.
OpRaise Events
Hopes & Fears lab - April 3rd 2025
Dr. Deborah Talmi recently participated in "The Hopes and Fears Lab: AI Edition," an engaging public dialogue event held at The Copper Kettle on King's Parade on April 3rd, 2025. As part of this Cambridge Festival initiative, Dr. Talmi joined fellow AI researchers to facilitate meaningful conversations with community members about the future of artificial intelligence. Through informal discussions, attendees explored both the promising benefits and potential concerns surrounding AI technologies that increasingly shape our daily lives. The event, organised in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, Kavli Centre for Ethics, Science, and the Public, Isaac Newton Trust, and AI@Cam, successfully created an accessible space where public perspectives could inform the responsible development of AI.
AI and Assessment workshop: Navigating Ethical Implementation and Future Possibilities – June 23rd, 2025
The OpRaise team is pleased to announce our participation in the upcoming workshop "AI and Assessment: Navigating Ethical Implementation and Future Possibilities" on June 23rd, 2025. Hosted at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, our researchers will facilitate a workshop exploring the ethical dimensions of AI-supported evaluation practices. This collaborative event, led by the AI & ED Community with partners including Cambridge University Press & Assessment, AI@Cam, Accelerate Science, and Google, brings together researchers, educators, and industry professionals to examine approaches that foreground fairness, authenticity, and ethical integrity in assessment systems. The workshop creates a valuable opportunity for our team to share experiences and insights from our research so far, while gaining new perspectives and thinking collectively about these critical issues. We encourage colleagues interested in the future of ethical assessment in the age of AI to join us for this insightful event.
Comments