Let’s go to the world of fraud to get a sense of what might be at play here, and ways to plan risk mitigation. Holden et al did this in 2021 in their literature review about academic integrity, online examinations, and cheating, referring to the established concept of the “fraud triangle” as providing an underlying paradigm for understanding cheating. Wolfe and Hermanson (2004), however, suggest an update to the “fraud pyramid” to make it into a “fraud diamond” – this is relevant to our consideration of AI in Senior Secondary Education, because the fourth point of the diamond – capability -- is the factor that has changed for most students.

Wolfe and Hermanson conceptualise the points of the diamond as such:

“Incentive: I want to, or have a need to, commit fraud.

Opportunity: There is a weakness in the system that the right person could exploit. Fraud is possible.

Rationalization: I have convinced myself that this fraudulent behaviour is worth the risks.

Capability: I have the necessary traits and abilities to be the right person to pull it off. I have recognized this particular fraud opportunity and can turn it into reality. (Wolfe and Hermanson, 2004)”

Let’s think about how this might apply to cheating and plagiarism.

Incentive

Bureau et al (2021) note a range of incentives for cheating. These may be impulse/sensation seeking, personality traits, social factors (e.g., perception that other students are cheating), institutional factors (e.g. students know that teachers do not punish plagiarism), or even the severity of parental discipline.

It’s not difficult to see that a major incentive for student cheating in the ACT is to improve their grades, scores or rank due to a perception that this will give them an advantage in life. Pressure also may come from:

·         Procrastination

·         Prioritisation (e.g., prioritising video games or socialisation over assessment work)

·         Disengagement with the topic or idea

·         Identity factors such as imagined identity (e.g., a student who feels that they “can’t fail” a task because it will be damaging to their identity as an intelligent person)

·         Social factors such as fitting into a social group

·         Perceived or actual lack of consequences for cheating

·         Self-perceived or actual lack of skill

·         Self-perceived or actual expectations from family

·         Self-perceived or actual pre-requisites for tertiary/workforce opportunities

·         Circumstances outside the student’s control (e.g., anxiety, life events, caring responsibilities).

Once the incentive becomes overwhelming, the student may feel pressured to cheat.

Opportunity

Opportunity to cheat may be assisted by:

·         technology (e.g., generative AI, cut and paste)

·         procedures (e.g., having the same assessment tasks year-in-year-out despite knowing the work is out there in the school community)

·         social connections (e.g., the student having contact with a person who enables cheating)

·         poor information security (e.g., tests left on desks or left on photocopiers, everyone knows you take your questions from old exam papers)

Once the opportunity becomes salient to them, the student may feel that they have impetus to cheat.

Rationalisation

This is how the person explains their cheating to themselves.

This may be:

·         a social reason – e.g., “everyone else is doing it”, “xyz source said this particular action isn’t cheating” “knowledge wants to be free, and it belongs to everyone”

·         a philosophical reason – e.g., “it doesn’t matter” or “in my planned profession this is the norm”

·         a lack of trust in the conditions of the task – e.g., “if I don’t cheat, I’ll be disadvantaged, because everyone else is cheating”

·         or in the case of unintended plagiarism, the rationalisation may be a misunderstanding or false belief that the action is not cheating

·         there may be another form of unintended plagiarism from students of cultural backgrounds where the concept of sourcing is dealt with differently to that in Western academia (Grey et al, 2019). This does not excuse plagiarism, but it does emphasise the salience of ensuring understanding of plagiarism for students who may not have encountered the idea in previous studies.

If a student can rationalise their behaviour in a way that reconciles with their moral or academic schemas, they may feel able to cheat without guilt or qualms.

Capability

This is the area that’s had the largest change in the world of generative AI. Where previously students may have doubted their capability to cheat without detection, the introduction of generative AI has changed that doubt. This is, perhaps, partly because media organisations around the world have reported with increasing degrees of anxiety about the ability of generative AI to make even the least capable student seem to be a genius.

It is very easy to log onto a generative AI and ask it questions to finesse a response. 

If a student feels that they have the capability to cheat without detection, they may choose to cheat.