Permutation When Art is the Assessment

I was thinking back earlier to the professional development that actually inspired my most recent book on how to build AI-resistant academics. What was interesting was that it was not the intention of the presenter for us to be thinking about AI at all. The whole purpose of this PD was to show teachers in various different occupations at the school—math teachers, social studies teachers, ELA teachers—how we could integrate the arts. The whole professional development was literally labeled “Art as an Assessment.” Now they were not just talking about your standard watercolors or pastels on paper, although there is probably a place for those as well depending on the assessment, but they were talking more about things like how to integrate concepts from stage acting, plays, and things of that nature, and how this kind of activity, the physical embodiment of lesson concepts and the ability to translate an abstract concept like larger numbers and smaller numbers by physically having to act it out, was a great method of helping to make sure that students were more engaged with their learning and had more buy-in to the lesson itself. They showed us various techniques. One, when they were talking about how to integrate it into math, was something along the lines of giving students assigned numbers and, in their small groups, telling them without talking—so using only pantomime—to illustrate that idea. She also mentioned that it would take time for students to begin to think in more abstract ways and be able to change things like numbers or ELA concepts into acting, but that this process also helps to build creativity.

Now I am going to be completely honest with you. While I have great respect for the arts, having done a bit of radio theater and acting myself in high school and college, this whole professional development, with its heavy use of theater jargon, even its title of “Art as an Assessment,” and the idea of trying to act out numerators and denominators or making little vignettes around an ELA concept like making inferences, all struck me initially as a desperate gasp of former theater kids trying to maintain relevancy in an educational system that is increasingly being dominated by making sure that students can read, write, and do mathematics, with a lot of the other subjects—especially, but unfortunately, the arts—being sidelined and their time reallocated for the more core subjects which students so badly need. I must have been feeling particularly cynical that day because it took me several hours to actually begin to see the value of what was being offered, and the more I thought on those words, “Art as an Assessment,” the more I realized these former theater kids were actually onto something.

What they were actually describing fits directly into one of the core pillars of AI-resistant academics: permutation. Permutation, in the academic sense, is the ability for a student to take knowledge or understanding in one format or medium and accurately translate, transform, or express that same understanding in another format or medium. It is not simply repeating information—it is demonstrating understanding by shifting the form of expression. If a student truly understands something, they should be able to write about it, talk about it, draw it, act it out, diagram it, model it, or teach it. Understanding that exists in only one format is often memorization. Understanding that can move between formats is comprehension.

A great example comes in one of our modules that actually includes a stage play. It is the only stage play that we have in our entire year, and it perfectly encapsulates how one can use this kind of art as an assessment and how permutation between modes of thinking can help reinforce and enhance a student’s comprehension of the topic. Naturally we read the play as it is written, we analyze the different notations, the stage directions, the way it is written, and how it looks different from a traditional narrative, and of course the characters’ thoughts and feelings. After we have done a very traditional look no different than we would for any other essay or text, that is when I inform the students of how we are going to test their knowledge. They say that Mrs. Green Bean feels sad, so show me—we are going to act out this play. 

Usually I am immediately greeted by a large chorus of no’s and about two kids yelling yay. However, once they resign themselves to the fact that it is in fact happening and they will have to be a part of this play, “The Miracle of Spring”, they start to calm down and begin jockeying for what they believe to be the best positions, usually those positions that require them to say the fewest lines for most of them.

As soon as roles were assigned, students were told to start reading about their character, note who comes before you so you don’t miss your start, see if there are any stage directions related to your character. We are now fully moving the thinking between a simple abstract look at the play to an experiential knowledge of the play. Instead of looking at what they are thinking, now you have to show what they are thinking by pretending to be that person. From analytical to experiential, the permutation shift will show whether they truly understand what it was they said they thought they knew. Permutation exposes shallow understanding very quickly, because you cannot act what you do not understand.

This is probably one of my favorite modules all year because after the initial groans are got through, and students who claim they have stage fright are told that they have to speak out loud anyway so they can get their A—by the way, turns out the promise of an A can cure nearly every case of stage fright—students actually dive in. It surprises me every year that it is not just the theater-loving kids who get excited about their roles and about really being able to participate in a play, but it really is all of them. Everyone from the class troublemaker to the quiet straight-A recluse, every one of them is excited to be able to pretend, to be creative. Most years they ask me if they can have 20 minutes to make some rudimentary props using their various crafting supplies they have stashed in their desks or cubbies. My answer is always a resounding yes. Twenty minutes sacrificed for them to make paper hats and sashes really helps to drive the buy-in for the students, ensuring that they are fully committed to their roles.

While it is a fantastic play I will allow you to read yourself without giving you the play-by-play, what I will say is that the laughter that your students will have as they hear their character name being called—whether it is Mr. Apple Tree, the guards, the Maiden of Spring, the flubbed or improvised lines, the paper hats falling off, all of this makes this by far one of the most fun assessments the students have and by far the most human centric of all our assessments. It is exciting, it is highly different, and it features that strong permutation layer between the analytical and the experiential, although those are not the only kinds of permutation one can have. There could be permutation between slideshow and podcast, between oral presentation and video narration, between writing the math problem out and then taking pictures of food at the grocery store and using the math process in real life with real groceries and documenting the journey.

Any time students move knowledge from one form to another, they are strengthening understanding and weakening the usefulness of AI shortcuts.

Permutation is a strong pillar of AI-resistant academics for a very simple reason: it reintroduces the human element, with all of its flubbed lines, improvisation, surprise, laughter, and being able to do something unique and new, learning in a new way. Using art as an assessment method has strong benefits when it comes to making assessments that are not only difficult for AI to fake but more importantly re-engaging our students with their own educational journey. AI can generate an answer, but it struggles to perform understanding across multiple forms. Students, however, were built to do exactly that.