Title: "Cognitive Assessment of Authentic Authorship."

Authors: W. Khan, C. Semmler, E. Palmer, D. Gooch, P. Lally, D. Lee, C. Perry, C. Pope & A. Grandison

Abstract: As Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) becomes increasingly integrated into education, it raises critical concerns about academic integrity, authorship, and plagiarism. It is essential that educators provide appropriate support to students to enable them to navigate the emergence and growth of GenAI so that they can use this technology responsibly and with academic integrity. Current evidence suggests that educators show low levels of accuracy in distinguishing between student and AI generated writing (Perkins et al., 2024).  Further, current works in AI detection outline mixed results in efficacy (Elkhatat et al, 2023), and studies highlight the need for a multi-faceted approach to managing issues of academic integrity with AI use (Cotton et al., 2024). 

In this changing state of the digital world, the same studies argue that there is potential opportunity for AI to create personalized assessments and could be useful in creating custom quizzes that focus on language skills and critical thinking (Cotton et al., 2024).  

This poster introduces Auth+, a novel AI-supported tool designed to promote authentic student authorship through ‘cognitive’ quizzing. Auth+ quizzes students on their own submitted work to assess familiarity and cognitive engagement. The tool is based on the principle that students who genuinely authored their work should possess deeper “episodic memories” and recognition of their content. A secondary benefit of this approach is that it does not add to instructor workload while increasing learner personalization.  

The poster presents experiential data collected from 256 students across five international universities, including a significant proportion of English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. Survey responses focused on the quiz’s impact on preparation, ease of use, recall, and engagement – core areas of design focus of Auth+. 

Findings reveal strong student agreement that the tool promoted deeper engagement and reflection on their work. Learners responded positively to the intervention. The results show that students found the use of Auth+ enjoyable, easy and efficient to use and that it helped support a beneficial learning experience. This suggests that AI-driven cognitive quizzing can be a scalable and equitable method for fostering authentic authorship and mitigating misuse of generative AI in academic settings. 

Keywords: artificial intelligence, academic integrity, authentic authorship 

References: 

• Cotton, D. R., Cotton, P. A., & Shipway, J. R. (2024). Chatting and cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. Innovations in education and teaching international, 61(2), 228-239. 

• Elkhatat, A. M., Elsaid, K., & Al-Meer, S. (2023). Evaluating the efficacy of AI content detection tools in differentiating between human and AI-generated text. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-023-00140-5

• Perkins, M., Roe, J., Postma, D., McGaughran, J., & Hickerson, D. (2024). Detection of GPT-4 generated text in higher education: Combining academic judgement and software to identify generative AI tool misuse. Journal of Academic Ethics, 22(1), 89-113.