By adjusting their teaching methods, teachers and professors can significantly reduce incidents of student cheating due to AI. As it turns out, these changes aren’t all that different from what worked to deter fraud in the past.
That’s the argument of Tricia Bertram Gallant, a longtime academic integrity expert and director of the Office of Academic Integrity at the University of California, San Diego. In her view, “everything has changed, but nothing has changed” when it comes to student cheating in the age of AI.
Mr. Gallant co-authored an upcoming book.Against Cheating: Teaching Integrity in the Age of AI;”, we spoke with David Rettinger, associate professor of psychology at the University of Tulsa.
“Many teachers think that only bad students cheat, and that students cheat intentionally or maliciously,” she says. However, remember that students are only human and some humans will always misbehave in certain situations, especially young people who are still exploring their own ethics and values. That’s important, she says.
Keeping in mind that most students do not want to be cheaters, instructors can “lower the temperature” so that they are not “so sensitive about cheating.”
But Gallant acknowledged that student cheating has become more prevalent in the past two years due to new AI tools, making it a particularly difficult problem for college professors. “ChatGPT is truly ubiquitous,” she says. “Access is free. It’s much faster than other classmates. And it feels safer. It’s kind of anonymous, right? You’re not letting anyone know you’re doing this.” That’s frustrating for many leaders.
However, the solution recommended by this expert remains unchanged. “It’s about teaching integrity, and there are some things you can do, whether AI is involved or not, and they work.”
For Gallant and many other experts on student cheating, the best strategy is to focus on how assignments and tests are designed, rather than relying on high-tech cheating detection tools. It is said that
This week on the EdSurge podcast, we asked Gallant for advice on how teachers and professors can adapt to AI. One key, she says, is for educators to understand the most common reasons why students cheat in the first place.
Listen to the episode of spotify, apple podcast Or in the player below.
