(Editor's Note: This blogpost was created using Bard, ChatGPT-4, and Bing. The only content created by the human was my own responses as a panelist. I gave Bard the following prompt and then acted as the liaison between Bard, ChatGPT-4 and Bing, giving them each the answers from the others. As I gave Bard the answers from the panelists, it came up with the next question to ask. I did not edit the output of the three tools. I did have to remind Bard several times that it was a moderator, not a panelist and it also lied to me saying that it could moderate the panel in a GoogleChat and that it could open that chat up and invite the three of us into it! The prompt I gave Bard was: "You are a moderator of a panel with Bing, ChatGPT and me. You will ask me the questions for the panel. I w...

In a 2019 installment of the popular NPR podcast, “Hidden Brain,” Shankar Vedantam explores the cognitive challenge of making good decisions in the heat of the moment, or what he calls a “hot state.” We are poorly equipped, he says, to anticipate how we will act when thrust into difficult “emotional states.” The intensity of those experiences can be so pronounced that we quickly forget what we may have learned; as a result, we are predisposed to making the same mistakes in the future.

This phenomenon is analogous to the predicament of students who find themselves the subject of an academic integrity allegation. Once the process is over and charged emotio...

If you are an academic integrity professional, or academic integrity expert on your campus, you have likely experienced what I’ve experienced the last 9 months: repeated calls for help in responding to the release of GenAI tools like ChatGPT, Bing, Bard, Midjourney, and CoPilot. Maybe those calls came from your institutional leadership or maybe they came from the faculty, but they all likely sounded a lot like this – “how do we assure academic integrity when students can outsource their academic work to GenAI?”

It can be self-affirming when our institutional colleagues turn to us for advice. Finally! They’ve noticed that I have some expertise and can provide support during these challenging times. It’s nice to be appreciated, after all.

However, when the call...

Academic integrity is a fundamental principle in universities, ensuring fairness, honesty, and trust among students and faculty members. As an instructor of first-year students in a university perspectives course, I like to create a discussion of academic integrity. My primary focus is to define academic integrity by creating discussions around situations that may constitute violations and ask students for their opinion. One incident that transpired in my class a few years ago continues to spark discussions among my current students:

In a business math course that I taught, students have four tests during the semester. Each test has a two-day period reserved in a testing center for the student to drop in to complete their one-hour test. The dates are given at the beginning o...

About the orientation 

The orientation for students enrolled in online undergraduate programs at the University of Arkansas is a facilitated two-week course offered prior to their first semester. Various information and assessments are covered in the course to help students get orientated to the technology and the systems used at the university. Some of those assessments include preparing a weekly calendar, writing a short paper about ethics in the workplace, creating a success plan, etc. Students are not required to participate in this course.  

Lesson Structure and Assessments 

We can't discuss the orientation without mentioning our start student, Yvonne! She's a fictional character that we developed to give...

About a year ago, I had a conversation with a colleague regarding academic integrity.  The catalyst for this conversation was a situation the colleague had experienced in class that day.  In her class, students were given weekly in-class quizzes for which the questions were available in advance.  As the students were taking the quiz, she noticed a student attempting to surreptitiously view answers on his phone.   Although my recollection of the situation has faded, I remember that she was devastated by this discovery.  The student was a “good student” who always participated in class and submitted assignments.  Whether or not to report the incident weighed heavily on the mind of my colleague and I know that I was not very helpful at that time in al...

Recientemente he tenido la oportunidad de entender y explorar un poco el sistema educativo de este país. He aprendido que existen distintas formas de manipular el sistema para poder costear u obtener apoyo económico para poder tener la mejor opción académica posible en cuanto a prestigio se refiere. He sido testigo y participe de la presión social y académica a la que un individuo se somete para poder lograr sus objetivos académicos.

Soy una persona que creció en un país donde el desempeño académico es prácticamente lo único importante y decisivo en cuanto admisión y apoyo económico se refiere. En los últimos diez años de mi vida, he tenido la oportunidad de convivir y experimentar con estudiantes con talentos extraordinarios, a quienes sin embargo les han sido ...

I’ve been teaching for over 20 years and have often wondered, which student is the best of the best?  I decided it had to be Carl.  Carl was a motivated, bright student who wrote his work beyond the basic requirements, was friendly and polite, and served as a messenger from the student group-me to me as part of my class advisory board.  I taught him in multiple classes and became the advisor to a student group he formed.  He kept in professional contact often letting me know when he reached goals.  Carl was a delight. 

Carl recommended friends to my class including Jane, who he said was a friend.  Jane missed some key material but turned in an excellent submission despite a lack of attendance.  I clicked on the Safe Assign report and fou...

(Editor's Note: During UC San Diego’s Virtual Symposium on “The Threat & Opportunities of Artificial Intelligence and Contract Cheating: Charting a Teaching & Learning Path Forward”, Kane Murdoch gave a talk on Detecting Contract Cheating. This blog post is a follow-up to that talk.)

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Amidst the uproar and shock of ChatGPT and similar Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools, it's easy to forget that while there is certainly a brave new world ahead of us, it is not yet here in some ways. GenAI has not so much supplanted all of the existing forms of academic misconduct, as supercharged them. In fact, GenAI makes contract cheating servi...

When you live in San Diego California, especially when you were raised with cold Ontario winters, you hate to complain about the weather (or, at least, you hate to complain too loudly). After all, San Diego has a reputation of always being Sunny and always with the perfect 20-24oC or 70-75oF air temp. But, it’s a lie. San Diego isn’t perfect, isn’t always Sunny, and isn’t always the perfect temp, and especially wasn’t this year. We have been colder, wetter, and greyer than I've experienced in my 23 years of living here. And it’s been this way for months. So, when we hit our normal and expected “May Grey” and “June Gloom” weather, it wasn’t a refreshing or even palatable change from the winter Sunshine and warmer temperatures; it was just more ...