How e-portfolios help create AI-resistant assessment strategies

The rise of ChatGPT, Claude, and other generative AI tools has forced higher education institutions (HEIs) to rethink their assessment strategies. Many AI tools excel at producing the written artifacts, such as essays, that many universities have historically relied on for their assessments. So, what can universities do to future-proof their assessment strategies?

This article explores how ePortfolios (digital portfolios) can help HEIs move towards more secure, sustainable, and AI-resistant forms of assessment.

The Challenge: traditional formats for assessment no longer suffice

The emergence of generative AI has presented a fundamental challenge to traditional assessment in higher education. With tools capable of producing coherent essays and reports in seconds, formats that once measured knowledge are now perceived as less secure. This has created a sense of urgency for teaching and learning professionals across UK universities to rethink their approach (Walker, 2025).

The approach that UK HEIs have taken towards this challenge has been twofold. Many have banned the usage of AI by students to complete their coursework, while leveraging so-called AI detectors to flag any students that may have used generative AI to complete their work.

However, due to concerns about the validity (among others) of these AI detectors, the conversation is shifting from how to detect AI use to how to redesign assessment practices assuming that students can and will use AI tools (O’Sullivan, 2025). These new assessment approaches no longer focus on simply measuring what a student knows, but on evaluating how they apply that knowledge, reflect on their learning journey, and demonstrate a unique, authentic understanding that AI cannot replicate.

ePortfolios like Portflow are a great tool for universities to create assessments that accurately measure student learning in an AI-enabled context.

What is an e-Portfolio?

An e-portfolio is a digital space where learners can collect, curate, and share artifacts that demonstrate their skills and competencies. Additionally, it is a place where learners gather and interact with feedback on these artifacts. Unlike a static report or essay, an e-portfolio captures a rich, multimedia record of learning that is difficult for AI to replicate. A modern e-portfolio, like Portflow, is student-owned, allowing learners to create a dynamic, longitudinal record of their achievements from a wide range of learning contexts. This enables them to tell the unique story of their learning journey and showcase a personal, authentic demonstration of their abilities to different audiences.

How can e-portfolios help create AI-resistant assessment strategies?

UK HEIs can utilise e-portfolios to help create secure, AI-resistant assessment strategies.

E-portfolio solutions allow students to gather and organise different types of evidence to showcase progress towards their learning goals. As a result, an e-portfolio typically holds a rich body of evidence that speaks to a student’s development. This is in contrast with traditional assessment methods such as written assignments or multiple choice exams, which evaluate students on a single data point (and which can easily be created or solved using AI tools).

As a result, e-portfolios paint a much richer, more holistic view of how a student is progressing towards their learning goals. It is much more difficult – though, admittedly, not impossible – for AI tools to create such a body of evidence.

By requiring students to submit a rich body of evidence using an e-portfolio, institutions are able to design assessments that are not only more authentic but also significantly more difficult for AI tools to replicate.

A commonly heard phrase in AI-resistant assessment strategies is “process over product”. This approach entails a focus on not only the final product that a learner has created, but also the process the learner has gone through to complete the task at hand (Kalra, 2019). Since it incorporates how a learner has produced evidence of learning in addition to the evidence itself, it is considered a way to safeguard academic integrity in a generative AI context (Berkeley Center for Teaching & Learning, 2024).

e-portfolios are a very powerful tool that can capture both the learning process and product. This is because e-portfolios like Portflow provide a single overview of the following elements of the learning process:

• Final product
• Intermediate products (e.g. previous drafts)
• Feedback requests (for each intermediate product)
• Feedback obtained (for each intermediate product)
• Reflections, notes, thoughts

In this overview, both the final product and process can be visualised. It shows a learner’s iterative thinking process through various drafts, points of feedback, and reflections. This demonstrates and encourages self-reflection and meta-cognitive abilities beyond what AI tools can provide.

Finally, one of the key strengths of e-portfolios is their ability to support a longitudinal assessment strategy. Unlike traditional university systems tied to individual academic units like modules or courses, e-portfolios operate on the level of the student’s entire learning journey. This allows students to capture and demonstrate their progress incrementally across their curriculum. When institutions adopt assessment strategies that take a more longitudinal approach, such as continuous or programme-level assessment, they can focus on assessing student growth over a period of time. This creates a more AI-resistant practice, since AI only generates content in isolated moments rather than over an extended period of time.

Final thoughts: e-portfolios provide a resilient digital space to capture evidence

Regardless of the approach HEIs will take (the University of Sydney’s hybrid two-lane assessment approach comes to mind), it is clear that the emergence of generative AI tools is forcing a rethink in assessment practices. New approaches such as holistic, process-based and longitudinal assessment can help to demonstrate student learning while ensuring academic integrity.

Implementing any of these new approaches requires the right tools. That is where e-portfolios come in. They provide a digital space for students to capture the diverse evidence required for these assessments, as well as showcase how they have produced these artifacts – and both over an extended period of time.

Sources

Berkeley Center for Teaching & Learning. (2024). Valuing process equal to or greater than product. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved from https://teaching.berkeley.edu/valuing-process-equal-or-greater-product

Kalra, J. (2019). Focusing assessment on process and product. In Encourage Academic Integrity. BCcampus. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/encourageacademicintegrity/chapter/focusing-assessment-on-process-and-product/

O’Sullivan, S. (2025, August 5). The unfairness of AI-flagged academic misconduct investigations in UK universities. Newcastle University. Retrieved from https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/sin/2025/08/05/the-unfairness-of-ai-flagged-academic-misconduct-investigations-in-uk-universities/

Walker, S. (2025). Trends in assessment in higher education: considerations for policy and practice. Jisc. Retrieved from https://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/trends-in-assessment-in-higher-education-considerations-for-policy-and-practice