The question of whether students are turning in original work, or even work authored by them, is a classic academic integrity question. Students have always been able to plagiarise from other sources but, as educators, we could at least search for the wording to see if it appeared elsewhere on the Internet or in literature. Tools like Turnitin could even help identify where students copied from! However, with Generative AI, the landscape for academic misconduct is very different.
The best resource for facilitating preparedness is the UBC Academic Integrity website, including resources on Academic Integrity and ChatGPT specifically.
It is similar to hiring someone to do your homework (AKA Contract Cheating)
ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools are more similar to the situation when a student hires someone else to do their work for them. In those cases, the student will be turning in original work, but it won’t be their own. As such, this is not a completely new problem. However, the barrier of entry for a student to find someone who would do their homework for them – or take their online tests – is lower and cheaper than before.
Can I identify if students have used Generative AI to do their work?
Tools to detect whether something was written by LLMs are currently not reliable, exhibit bias – falsely identifying original content based on writing patterns – and can not, at the moment, provide ways to intuitively double-check whether they have correctly flagged generated content. You can read more about UBC’s decision not to enable Turnitin’s AI detector.
Some instructors are moving assessments to in-class time
Before moving all assessments into in-person observed settings, consider the need for accommodations, especially if you are moving to finer grained assessments.
Resources
Redesigning assessments: This new landscape may result in changes to the way you do assessments. The CTLT’s resource on Assessment Design in an era of Generative AI can provide examples of assessment design options.
Redistributing your effort: You may also gain back extra invigilation time by using ChatGPT/LLMs to generate your assessments for you, to generate practice materials for students, or to act as a basic office hours helper.