From Classroom Design to Newsroom Practice: Designing GenAI Assessment Intervention

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) presents journalism educators with a paradox. It promises efficiencies and new creative possibilities for students, yet threatens academic integrity, authorship, and the core values of the profession. This paper presents a practice-based curriculum intervention based on an ethical framework that embeds GenAI into undergraduate journalism assessment. The framework integrates Colin Beard’s Experiential Learning Design with Bloom’s revised taxonomy to scaffold students’ movement from human-only reporting tasks to AI-integrated work and critical reflection. Qualitative data from a second-year journalism unit at an Australian global campus in Sarawak, Malaysia, reveal that students already use GenAI strategically but hold deep concerns about accuracy, originality and disclosure. These findings inform the design of authentic, scaffolded activities that aim to convert students’ intuitive concerns into explicit competencies in ethical decision-making, prompt engineering and verification. The paper contributes a model that links Australian and institutional quality expectations to the realities of GenAI in journalism education in Malaysia campus.