The capabilities of Generative AI present faculty with the challenge of continuing to ensure that their assessments, assignments, courses, and programs are equitable, promote learning, and overall maintain academic integrity. UBC students have also reported being concerned about how easy it is to use GenAI to facilitate academic misconduct. In other sections of this resource, you can find advice for designing assessments that either incorporate GenAI or mitigate against its use, with academic integrity in mind.
With the evolution in capacity of GenAI tools, it can be challenging to tell if students are doing their own work or engaging in unauthorized uses of GenAI. There are tools that claim to detect AI-generated text, though their effectiveness varies. There are risks of false positives, and there are important privacy considerations with use of these tools as well.
Currently, as noted in AI in Teaching and Learning Guidelines, UBC strongly discourages the use of GenAI detection tools, due to concerns about accuracy, privacy, possible bias, and intellectual property. In addition, faculty should not upload student work to GenAI detection tools that have not undergone a PIA assessment at UBC.
There are, however, other approaches instructors can take to support academic integrity in assessments, including sharing clear guidelines for GenAI use in courses, explaining to students the value of learning and practicing particular skills on their own, integrating more in-class work, and more. Please see the section of this resource on designing GenAI-resilient assessments for more information.