EU projects

ASSAI on AI policies started

Christian M. Stracke

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) fundamentally transforms many areas of life and society. It also has particular impacts on education, as it challenges roles, activities, and interactions in teaching and learning.

To address these challenges, the new EU project “AI-Driven Assessment in Education: Shaping Policies for Responsible and Ethical Implementation” (ASSAI) started now, co-funded by the European Union.

The key research question of ASSAI is:

How can we enable policymakers, leaders and professionals to innovate and improve formative and summative assessment in higher education with the effective, inclusive, human-centred and ethical use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)?

ASSAI provides guidance to policymakers, leaders and professionals in higher education to support them in considering the benefits and constraints of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its ethical and systemic effects for education systems and individual institutions.

In particular, the role of assessment in education is given attention, as the use of AI for the evaluation of learning outcomes can have pronounced impact on traditions of higher education systems and practices. In the European AI Act, it has accordingly been classified as high risk, given that assessment is often considered as the fulcrum by education systems and institutions to measure success of their pedagogical mission, learning outcomes and operational models.

Ultimately, ASSAI thus enables policymakers, leaders and professionals in higher education to improve their organisational readiness and expertise building for planning and regulating the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI).

Two new EU projects won!

Christian M. Stracke

Exciting news came in:

I have won two new EU projects in the very competitive Erasmus+ call ERASMUS-EDU-2025-PI-FORWARD that has got an acceptance rate of 1.8% of all submissions!

The first project called “ASSAI” fosters AI policies for formative and summative assessment in higher education:

ASSAI fosters the organisational readiness and capacity of higher education (HE) policymakers, leaders and professionals in planning and regulating the use of GenAI. Interactions between individuals and GenAI are receiving extensive attention. ASSAI adds to this by recognizing that education policymakers and institutional leaders need to consider the systemic consequences of AI for education systems and institutions, as it transforms roles, activities, and interactions.

ASSAI focuses on assessment because (a) the European AI act classifies the evaluation of learning outcomes as high risk, and (b) assessment is the fulcrum of education institutions pedagogic mission and their business models. ASSAI provides guidance to policymakers and other stakeholders to support them in thinking through the benefits, constraints, ethics, and systemic impact of AI systems.

The second project called “DC4Democracy” focuses democracy building in schools with AI support:

Democratic systems in Europe are facing increasing challenges. Trust in institutions is declining, e.g., only 11% of young Europeans believe democracy functions effectively. Simultaneously, political participation is shifting to digital spaces, where youth are vulnerable to disinformation, polarization, and manipulation. According to the EC, 63% of young people regularly encounter online disinformation, yet only 9% have received training to recognize it. In this context, building civic resilience demands competences for critical, ethical, and informed digital engagement. In response, a growing number of digital democracy courses have been introduced into secondary education curricula across Europe. However, without robust tools to assess these competences, progress remains difficult to track and sustain.

DC4Democracy addresses this need by advancing the assessment of digital deliberation competences (skills that enable one to engage meaningfully and responsibly in digital democratic life). Aligned with DigComp, the project will co-create a multilingual framework and toolkit for assessing these competences across Europe.

More details about both projects will follow after their official starts in March 2026 (ASSAI) and May 2026 (DC4Democracy) including invitations to contribute to their objectives and activities!