AI in Higher Education
ChatGPT is an advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) that is transforming the workforce and making waves in higher education. Similar to a search engine, it is a web-based tool that can generate human-like answers to any question posed to it. However, there are many misunderstandings about what ChatGPT can and cannot do.
ChatGPT can be helpful with creating outlines, composing text, suggesting ideas, providing feedback, and creating examples.
ChatGPT cannot be trusted as a source of factual, current, and and citable information. Nor is it a plagiarism scanner in itself!
Academic Integrity and AI
Although there are some benefits and limitations to using generative AI as a study tool, many institutions are concerned about academic integrity. Because the adoption of AI tools is growing rapidly and expected to impact future careers, creating policies to block its use is not realistic or helpful to our students. As educators, we have a responsibility to help students learn how to use emerging technologies in their studies effectively and ethically. We have gathered some resources below to spur thought and help faculty respond to concerns about this emergent technology.
Critical Thinking & Digital Literacy
AI and Blackboard
Plagiarism Detection
Although Blackboard has a tool called SafeAssign to detect plagiarism against known works on the Internet, this tool does not scan for AI generated works. Anthology does not plan on building an AI writing detector due to the following limitations of such technology:
They may yield inaccurate and inconsistent results that result in harm to students.
They may wrongly flag works written by English language learners or minorities as plagiarized due to biases in AI technology.
They may wrongly flag written works in science and technical fields as plagiarized due to the complexity of the content.
They cannot keep up with the pace of AI's rapid technological changes and expansion.
With relative ease, students can use generative AI tools and prompts to revise AI generated works to circumvent detection!
Anthology is focusing its efforts on supporting authentic assessment countermeasures. Authentic assessment strategies focus on student knowledge construction over time, personal reflection and connection to real world experiences, critical analysis of information, and applied digital literacy. Furthermore, strong regular and substantive interaction with students will help you learn about individual student writing practices and voices; this knowledge will help you detect major shifts in writing style that may be indicative of using AI.
AI Writer Detection Tools
As it currently stands, most AI writing detection tools are problematic. If you decide to use an AI Detection tool to scan a text for signs of generative AI, use such tools with extreme caution and skepticism. Never upload personally identifying student information to these tools. Only use these tools as a supplement to your own expert evaluation of a student’s work!
