The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM Bangalore) has introduced a different approach to midterm exams for students enrolled in its Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) course. Instead of taking a traditional pen-and-paper test, students were asked to build their own chatbots to answer 15 exam questions.
The exercise was part of the Generative AI course for second-year students of the Post Graduate Programme in Business Analytics (PGPBA). The institute shared details of the assessment in a post on its official LinkedIn account.
How Did The AI-Based Midterm Exam Work?
The assessment was designed by Professor Subho Majumdar from IIM Bangalore’s Decision Sciences area. Students used a platform developed by the professor to create and test their chatbots.
Each student had to write instructions, known as prompts, to guide the chatbot’s responses. They also had to provide course material and other relevant content for the chatbot to use as its memory.
The students’ performance depended on how well they prepared these prompts and selected the information given to their chatbots. They could experiment with multiple chatbots before choosing one to submit for evaluation.
Who Evaluated The Students’ Answers?
Although students used chatbots to generate answers, the assessment was not left entirely to artificial intelligence. A teaching assistant evaluated the final responses, just as answers are checked in a conventional exam.
The platform was developed using AI-assisted coding and hosted on Vercel, a cloud platform. Each student received a separate login to work on the assessment.
Why Did IIM Bangalore Introduce This Format?
According to the institute’s LinkedIn post, the aim was to make the assessment more practical and engaging. Since the course focuses on Generative AI, the format allowed students to apply what they had learnt rather than relying only on a conventional written test.
The exercise also tested students’ ability to use prompts and course material effectively. It combined their understanding of the subject with practical experience of working with AI tools.
