As we navigate the 21st century, educators are confronted with a rapidly evolving landscape, propelled by the emergence of AI knowledge bots and advanced learning and writing programs. The world is changing fast, and traditional assessment methods are facing a challenge from students who are empowered to develop more detailed and structured knowledge. An AI revolution is about to happen, and it will significantly impact how we evaluate college students. It is the right time to try more diverse assessment tools in our teaching and evaluation practices. In this context, we are excited to present the recent adoption of digital diaries at Bifröst University in Iceland.

Using diaries as a tool for students to reflect on their learning is not a novel concept in educational settings. It is a tried-and-tested method for individual assessment. Since it is hard for basic AI bots to write humanoid texts reflecting on their feelings and discovery of Eureka moments in the learning process, it is one of the old tools to test again to fend off the AI soldiers. It has attributes that could help grade individual students without the assistance of AI, thereby instilling a sense of confidence and rigour in its effectiveness. There is a dire need for diverse methods and assessment tools to evaluate the knowledge acquired by each student in the university system.

The authors have utilised diaries in their teaching through the years in different settings. They had both positive and negative prior experiences. The positive aspects included valuable insights into students’ learning experiences, how they managed to reflect on their previous experiences through the theoretical lenses of the course material, and in what way they plan to implement their newly gained knowledge, skills and potential competencies in the future. There were some instances where particularly male students made derogatory comments towards their female professor in a gaslighting manner. It is well known that female professors are more likely to be harshly judged by their students than their male counterparts, and this might be a discouraging factor in using diaries as an evaluation tool, particularly if students are encouraged to express their views and concerns in the diaries.

However, expanding the possibilities could be interesting, trying these methods in different disciplines and study programs, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The findings suggest that digital diaries could be helpful and lead to more diverse teaching and assessment methods. The cases can show how these experiences with classic proven tools can lead to more practical learning outputs in higher education.

Keywords: Assessment, university, distance education, e-learning, diary, AI.