Academic and Social Controls
Living with it
Academic and social controls are the other way to limit plagiarism through teaching students how and why not to plagiarise, as opposed to physically or technologically preventing them from doing so.
Controls relating to your knowledge of the students' work
Know your students
· The strongest social control is to know the students you are teaching as individuals and what their work is like
Validation tasks
· Can be performed under controlled conditions to affirm student understanding. Be mindful of the relative weightings and the potential for the parameters (e.g., test vs assignment) to affect students outside of the assessment construct
Check-ins and points to ensure that you are aware of how the student has constructed the work
· Informal or formal interviews
· Using Virtual Learning Environment to “snapshot” drafts
· Class discussion and drafting
In-class research undertaken that will be reported on (e.g., experimentation, literature review)
· In-class construction of a work (e.g., art, woodwork, fashion, drama, choreography) to observe the process of design and construction
Marks assigned to parts of the preparation and drafting
· Drafting scaffolds that are marked during the process
· Use of tasks such as annotated bibliography as part of the task
Read
Read p.3 of this article (you can read the rest if you like, but you do not need to). This is the one-page section that begins with the heading "Teacher Autonomy-Supportive Practices".
Investigating how autonomy-supportive teaching moderates the relation between student honesty and premeditated cheating
Reflect
In your workbook, make some notes; what are strategies in your subject that can help support student autonomy?
Controls relating to academic misconduct information
Clarity about the penalties for academic misconduct and consistent application of those penalties
· Whole-school education about plagiarism
· Consistent application of penalties in all classes by all teachers
· Use of text-matching software or similar software to pick up facile cheating
· Consistent messaging about the ethics of plagiarism
Explicit teaching of discipline-specific academic integrity information
· Modelling from high-quality sources in your discipline
· Modelling how quotes and sources are used to place students’ work in the discourse of your discipline – ensure they know the positive elements of the use of sources, not just the litigious elements
· Clarity and specificity in rules for the course and assessment: e.g., MIT’s programming course has clear rules about what is acceptable and unacceptable collaboration
Read
Look at the collaboration policy for this MIT computer course. You may need to click on the link for "Collaboration Policy" if you get redirected to the front page. It is about halfway down the page.
http://web.mit.edu/16.070/www/indexr.html
This policy, although old, uses elements of autonomy supportive teaching and disciplinary literacy:
The reasoning behind the requests is explained
The procedures are clearly and precisely defined, including when it it/isn't appropriate to work together
The skills are linked to the specifics of the discipline and workplace
The skill of collaboration is clearly and precisely defined in terms of the course, and the discipline of computer programing.
Now look at the AI Acknowledgement guide for Monash University: https://www.monash.edu/student-academic-success/build-digital-capabilities/create-online/acknowledging-the-use-of-generative-artificial-intelligence
This policy makes use of autonomy supportive teaching:
The guide acknowledges that this is an emergent technology
The guide specifies when and how AI can be used, and the exceptions to general rules.
The guide shows examples so that students can model from them
Using AI
Use of AI as a fundamental task element
· Critiquing or refining an output generated by AI (e.g., an essay, piece of code, artwork) to demonstrate the students’ subject mastery
· Use of an AI output to form part of a response in a critical or analytical way (e.g., AI generated art used as part of a broader work commenting on humanism) where that output does not take the place of a student’s independent thought or demonstration of their understanding of course content and goals
· Use of AI to create an essay scaffold, with the essay itself written longhand/under supervised conditions
Examples
Refine or critique text or code generated by AI: the assessment is marked on the critique or refinement, and the reflection
Generate an essay scaffold using AI, but write the essay in controlled conditions
Demonstrate the use of successful prompt strings to construct AI materials and then reflect on this
Generate story ideas, art ideas, choreography, or dialogue that is then embellished
Write originally, get the AI to critique it, and then make changes based on the AI’s feedback
MathGPT is a group training a chatbot using the OpenAI model and a specific mathematics textbook to create an adaptive learning program for students. It’s likely more like this is on the way.
Reflect
What are some tasks you might be able to undertake in your discipline with the use of AI?
Consider:
Tasks for when only teachers can access it (e.g. ChatGPT's over 18 stipulation restricts current student use)
Tasks for when both teachers and students can access it
It is fine to use AI to generate ideas.
Please note that your school and sector may have rules associated with the use of AI -- check them prior to use with students. "Getting around" school bans on tools by asking students to use AI on personal devices is inadvisable.