Reimagining Assessment: Fall 2026-Spring 2027
A year-long professional development program hosted by the Chancellor’s Office.
Following on the heels of the Futures Summit, this systemwide webinar series reframes the “cheating crisis” as a design opportunity and introduces faculty AI agency as an alternative to both techno-hype and detection panic. Reimagining Assessment is a yearlong response: not a program about surviving AI, but about faculty taking their agency back from the tools, from the transactional model, and from a culture of depletion. Building on the Reclaiming Joy event hosted in Spring of 2026 by the Chancellor’s Office in partnership with faculty AI Fellows, Fabiola Torres, Rachel Tatro-Duarte, and Scott James, this year, we re-engage by sharpening the lens.
The fall program includes provocative kickoff webinars and discipline-based spotlight sessions where CCC faculty share what they stopped policing, what they rebuilt, and what joy it returned to them. Speakers may also offer an office hour following the spotlight session for extended dialogue.
In the spring, agency picks up its tools with a statewide untethered event, Reclaiming Joy, on Friday, March 19, 2027. We invite the entire system to participate in a day of building together. Participating colleges will gather on-campus in Build Circles to create teaching artifacts that make student thinking visible using digital tools guided by creativity and curiosity. If you’re interested in coordinating a Build Circle, we’ve got you covered too! We’ll be holding an informational session this fall with more information.
Fall gives us the lens. Spring is when we build. The agency is ours all year.
Kick Off Sessions
Beyond the Finished Product: Reimagining Assessment in the Age of AI
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
1:00 – 2:00 PM
Presenters:
- Scott James, AI Fellow; Professor and Distance Education Coordinator, Santiago Canyon College
- Bill Moseley, Computer Science Professor, Bakersfield College
- Fabiola Torres, AI Fellow and Ethnic Studies Professor, Glendale College
We ask students to justify their answers. Are we willing to justify the assessments we use to judge them? In this kickoff, faculty will examine the gap between completed work and demonstrated understanding, question designs built around ranking and shortcuts, and explore assessment that values the learning process—not just the finished product. Through inquiry, feedback, dialogue, and revision, we’ll consider how to make disciplinary thinking visible while supporting academic integrity, student voice, and linguistic justice. Participants will identify a feasible starting point for redesign and explore frameworks and resources for the work ahead, supported by the series’ discipline-specific spotlights.
This session will address the following questions:
- What is shaping the way we assess learning and are our assessments actually measuring what we think they are?
- What could assessment look like if we centered learning, inquiry, feedback, revision, and student voice and not just the finished product?
- Where do we go from here and what resources and support can help us reimagine assessment in our own courses?
Office Hours
Each speaker will hold an office hour for faculty colleagues on Monday, October 5, 2026. Join office hours below; the Zoom link will also be provided to attendees during the webinar.
- Join Professor Bill Moseley from 11:00-12:00 on October 5
- Join Professor Scott James from 12:00-1:00 on October 5
- Join Professor Fabiola Torres from 1:30-2:30 on October 5
Discipline Spotlights
In each of the one-hour discipline spotlight sessions, two California Community College faculty share how they’ve redesigned their assessments in response to generative and agentic AI — what they changed, what they kept, and what brought them joy. You’ll hear candid reflections on the messy middle of experimentation, including the attempts that didn’t work, and gather inspiration for what you can adapt for your own courses. All sessions will be recorded and shared in the Vision Resource Center, Teaching and Learning Cooperative Community.
Spanish and Communications Spotlight
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
1:00 – 2:00 PM
Presenters:
- Joseph Harrington, Associate Professor of Spanish, San Joaquin Delta College
- Christine Cruz-Boone, Communication Faculty, Bakersfield College
In this session, the speakers will address the following questions:
- What happens when we stop thinking about assessment as something students complete and instead start designing it as something students experience?
- How can we engage students in active, accessible, and authentic learning through board games and chatbots?
English Spotlight
Thursday, October 8, 2026
10:00-11:00 AM
Speakers:
- Janet Mitchell Lambert, AI Changemaker, Lead Distance Education Coordinator and English Professor, Cerritos College
- Amy Leonard, AI Changemaker, English Faculty, De Anza College
In this session, the speakers will address the following questions:
- How can we design writing assignments that make students’ thinking, decision-making, and learning visible—not just their finished products?
- What does authentic student voice mean in an AI-assisted writing environment, and how can we help students develop and recognize their own voices?
- How do we use UDL to design for student agency without compromising the conditions students need to learn?
Chemistry and Biology Spotlight
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
3:00-4:00 PM
Speakers:
- Tara Bunag, Chemistry Instructor and OER/ZTC Faculty Coordinator, Modesto Junior College
- Nick Schooler, Professor of Biological Sciences, Ventura College
This session will address the following questions:
When the science is about them, what changes in how students learn, and how we measure it? If we let go of the exam, what does evidence of learning look like?
Rather than fighting AI, how can we help students question it, build on it, and create something unmistakably their own, a skill that carries well beyond our classrooms?
Sociology and Ethnic Studies Spotlight
Friday, October 16, 2026
1:00-2:00 PM
Speaker:
- Anthony Blacksher, Ph.D., Faculty Chair, Sociology and Ethnic Studies, San Bernardino Valley College
Allied Health and Computer Studies Spotlight
Wednesday, October 28
3:00-4:00 PM
Speakers:
- Par Mohammadian, AI Fellow and Professor of Life Sciences, Los Angeles Mission College
- Vincent Calip, Professor of Computer Studies, Artificial Intelligence, Long Beach City College
The speakers will address the following questions:
- How can faculty use AI as a thinking partner in healthcare and business courses—for example, through patient cases, virtual labs, client briefs, and workplace scenarios—to strengthen critical thinking?
- How can healthcare and business faculty redesign assignments and assessments so students demonstrate their reasoning, judgment, and decision-making even when generative AI is available?
- What practical AI-supported teaching and assessment strategies can faculty use in healthcare and business to create authentic, equitable, and manageable learning experiences?
Complete Transformation
The Full Build/Rebuild
Tuesday, November 10
2:00-3:00 PM
Speakers:
- Lynn Dickinson, Media Studies Professor, Santa Monica College
- Gary Huff, Professor of Early Childhood Education, Santa Monica College
Learn from two faculty who rebuilt their courses from the ground up.
The speakers will address the following questions:
- How do you decide what to build, adapt, or rebuild to actually assess student learning in the age of AI?
- How can AI tools help you design or rebuild a course that emphasizes three-dimensional learning?
- What would you need to see to know your own students’ learning is real?
Reclaiming Joy Returns this Spring!
Join us on Friday, October 9, for an info session about hosting a Watch Party and/or Build Party. These are simple ways to connect the event to the assessment redesign already happening and to the tools your college already has. This free, statewide event will provide a series of online sessions that will build on the fall series. Attendance is welcome from participating on-campus watch parties or online.
Everyone is welcome. Come curious; no commitment needed.
Friday, Oct. 9, 2026
10–11 a.m.