{"id":12223,"date":"2024-03-15T10:38:19","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T14:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/?p=12223"},"modified":"2024-03-19T15:01:06","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T19:01:06","slug":"ai-and-academic-integrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/ai-and-academic-integrity\/","title":{"rendered":"AI and Academic Integrity"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Sarah Achenbach<\/h6>\n
\"Nora

Nora Kizer Bell Provost Laura McLary as envisioned by DALL-E.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n\n\tB<\/span>y identifying patterns to create needed interventions, artificial intelligence (AI) helps humans solve complex problems like improving cancer screenings, identifying diseases, or saving the world\u2019s bee population.<\/p>\n

It’s also impacting college campuses across the U.S. Administrators and faculty are wrestling with balancing AI\u2019s promise while maintaining academic integrity. Until recently, AI was still mainly and firmly planted in the \u201csomeday\u201d realm for most campuses. The November 2022 launch of ChatGPT (short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) changed all that.<\/p>\n

Launched by OpenAI, a private research lab focused on developing safe AI to benefit humanity, ChatGPT is a large language model. All users need to do is go to chat.openai.com or Microsoft Copilot (the AI chatbot formerly known as Bing Chat), register with an email address, and type questions, called prompts, in the message box.<\/p>\n

Users can ask for travel recommendations or type in the ingredients in their fridge for menu suggestions. They can also type in \u201cWhat are the allegorical examples in As You Like It<\/em> and how do they relate to the play\u2019s main themes?\u201d Or \u201cwrite a 1,000-word essay about the causes of the Tet Offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the time it takes to read these last four paragraphs, ChatGPT will have scoured the entire internet, reviewed all publicly available texts, and, using complex mathematics to connect different digital breadcrumbs, spit back an answer to the user\u2019s prompt.<\/p>\n

If that sounds like ChatGPT will research and write a paper, it can. Users can even request a desired style, length, format, and details. Imagine the temptation during finals week when a student is staring down three research papers, none of which are started.<\/p>\n

This new technology has challenged colleges and universities to figure out how to guide students using AI to enhance their own work, not replace it. Hollins\u2019 current academic integrity policy states that anything a student generates using AI that is not cited as such is a form of plagiarism. So far, there have been no Honor Court cases related to AI.<\/p>\n

\"AI

Image created with DALL-E.<\/p><\/div>\n

But there\u2019s no way for faculty to check that a student used ChatGPT, no database to run an assignment or take-home essay through to see if it was AI-generated. And technically, ChatGPT-created work is not original. AI merely parrots back what has already been written and is publicly available on a topic.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur faculty is actively grappling with [AI],\u201d says Nora Kizer Bell Provost Laura McLary. \u00a0\u201cRight now, they decide individually to what extent students can or can\u2019t use AI. Some faculty are embracing it in different ways, while others are choosing to restrict or ban its use altogether in their classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

To help faculty better understand AI, McLary has provided resources curated by Sara Sprague, digital pedagogy and scholarship librarian at Hollins\u2019 Wyndham Robertson Library. This past fall, McLary tapped Vladmir Bratic, associate professor and chair of communication studies, and Giancarlo Schrementi, assistant professor of computer science, to lead several voluntary professional development seminars on AI, which continue this winter and spring. She\u2019s also created a new faculty and administrator task force to explore deeper professional development and student educational opportunities like a possible course on the ethical implications of AI and including the topic in general education courses.<\/p>\n

“How can we get students to think alongside technology? We have responsibility to teach students how to embrace new technology.”<\/p>\n

Vladmir Bratic, associate professor and chair communication studies<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201c[AI] is ubiquitous, and and so we want to encourage faculty to have conversations with their students and some engagement with ChatGPT,\u201d adds McLary.<\/p>\n

She knows students are grappling with the ethical ambiguity of ChatGPT and are looking to professors for guidance. \u201cWe know when they get out into the work world, AI is everywhere. We need to provide students with guidance to navigate that world.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLary, Bratic, and Schrementi agree that for college students today and the coming generations, it’s not a question of whether AI will be a part of their daily work life. It will be.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

AI is being used across all industries \u2013 business, medicine, art. (I used it to transcribe every phone interview conducted for this article, which saved me hours of tedious work.) We can argue boon or bane, but it\u2019s not going anywhere. There are 100 million weekly users of ChatGPT \u2013 one of many generative AI tools today \u2013 and nearly 1.5 billion monthly users. (While free, OpenAI now offers a subscription version for $20\/month).<\/p>\n

\u201cFour years from now, there will be zero bosses who will be saying \u2018Can you do this thing for me, but you cannot use ChatGPT,\u2019\u201d says Bratic, who explains that\u2019s the equivalent today of not allowing someone to use Google for a job. He\u2019s been studying AI for the past decade and has his eye and curriculum on the current, first-year Hollins student who is going to be two years into a new job in 2030. \u201cHow can we get students to think alongside technology?\u201d Bratic asks. \u201cWe have responsibility to teach students how to embrace new technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLary concurs: \u201cHow do we give them the tools that they need to engage with AI critically? It isn\u2019t simply asking ChatGPT to write a paper for you. It\u2019s about teaching students to create better prompts to help edit or find more precise language for a paper they\u2019ve written, even to coach and tutor students to deepen their thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollins\u2019 small class size and focus on student-faculty relationships are advantages to this approach. \u201cOur faculty have their eyes on every single student,\u201d McLary says. \u201cThey know them as individual people. I think it would be incredibly challenging if we were in an institution with really large lectures. How do you monitor that? In some ways, [Hollins] is exactly the right place, the right environment for having really deep and engaged conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some colleges and universities have banned the use of AI, while others, like Hollins, are beginning conversations about how to incorporate it appropriately into deeper student learning. Everybody\u2019s playing catch-up.<\/p>\n

\"AI

DALL-E’s interpretation of female college students focused on taking a test.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhen ChatGPT came out, everybody was unprepared for it,\u201d says Bratic. \u201cAcademia is slow to turn when it comes to embracing new technology. Thinking defensively is the most reductive way to think about new technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last July, he wrote in Faculty Focus<\/em>, an online teaching resource, that integrating AI \u201c\u2026 into traditional human knowledge acquisition is essential to the future of universities.\u201d In the article, he argues that \u201cthe first step might be to accept the inevitability of technological advancement and to embrace collaboration with technology and robots (cobotics) as to combine the strengths of both humans and technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bratic has spent the past few years leading up to ChatGPT\u2019s late 2022 release heralding its reality. In the AI awareness seminars, he works to guide colleagues who\u2019ve never used the technology (the majority of Hollins faculty, he notes) to understand it. Understanding is the first step, Bratic explains, in developing Hollins\u2019 systematic response to AI.<\/p>\n

That response may indeed require a shift in pedagogy or teaching methodology. \u201cIf my class is set up in such a way that a final exam or major midterm paper can be answered by a simple prompt to ChatGPT, the problem is not with the technology, the problem is pedagogy,\u201d says Bratic whose exams are open book, notes, and internet. \u201cI encourage my students to lean on technology to help them solve a problem, to use their brain for analysis or synthesis for the interpretation for contextualization. These are the skills I want them to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

He encourages his students to check their answers with ChatGPT and compare the results to examine the efficiency and inefficiencies in their own thinking. \u201cIf I assign an outline, I ask them to feed their outline into ChatGPT and ask the same questions [the student] would ask of me, then come to me to compare and discuss the answers,\u201d Bratic says.<\/p>\n

McLary sees the coming paradigm shift in the classroom. \u201cTraditionally, higher education\u2019s curricula are focused on content delivery, the lecture mode where students summarize [information] back to the professor in a paper,\u201d she explains. \u201cHow do we then reshape our classrooms?\u201d<\/p>\n

Project-based learning and other newer teaching approaches are finding their way into classrooms and labs across the country. McLary cites flipped classrooms, where students do readings and work prior to class then spend class time engaged in hands-on projects and collaborative problem-solving with peers. AI, she says, can be a valued partner in these newer approaches. \u201cThis gives us the chance to shift the balance toward more dispositional learning, for example, solving complex problems or working collaboratively, rather than solely on content,\u201d adds McLary of the need to incorporate multiple modalities beyond lectures. \u201cThis way, we can put the emphasis on student engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linh Nguyen \u201924, a mathematics major and data science minor, is doing just that \u2013 embracing \u00a0AI as a tool. For her senior research capstone project, she\u2019s created a bot (AI robot) that responds to natural (spoken) language to query private, not public, databases.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo query a database, you have to learn programming languages like structure query language (SQL),\u201d she explains. \u201cWe\u2019re building a tool to allow someone to query a database without knowing SQL.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the guidance of Schrementi and using ChatGPT, Nguyen has created her bot to understand prompts such as \u201cGive me the number of math majors who also minor in the humanities\u201d and then write the needed SQL query and process the results in a data table for the user.<\/p>\n

The complexity of her project lies in the fact that OpenAI does not have access to Hollins\u2019 or any other private database. \u201cThe problem we must overcome is how to have AI interact with our database and maintain data integrity and privacy,\u201d says Nguyen, who plans to work in AI following graduation. \u201cHow do we get the results we want without exposing our database to the OpenAI model?\u201d<\/p>\n

Nguyen uses blockchain technology \u2013 a shared, immutable digital ledger that records and tracks assets safely and securely \u2013 to run the SQL query through the private database and to process the results. To keep OpenAI from gaining access to Hollins\u2019 private data, she cuts off the loop before the bot gives the answers to ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

\"AI

DALL-E’s interpretation of a diverse group of female college students joyfully flying through the air.<\/p><\/div>\n

The impact of her project means more efficient, productive work. \u201cThis makes it more user-friendly for faculty and staff across campus who work with Hollins\u2019 data,\u201d Nguyen says. \u201cMost people don\u2019t know how to query a database or know how to code.\u201d<\/p>\n

She learned to code in Schrementi\u2019s classes. He now allows students to use AI to provide code, standard operating procedure in the computer science field. \u201cThere are not a whole lot of variants with code,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not like you’re writing a paragraph where there’s a variety of word choices. My focus is having them be able to translate their thoughts into code.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Nguyen, this process turns into a conversation. \u201cI ask AI how I can use a syntax or algorithms, and sometimes it provides stuff from different libraries and different frameworks. When the code doesn\u2019t work, I let OpenAI know that it\u2019s not working, so it\u2019s learning from me as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DALL-E

DALL-E created squirrel graduate.<\/p><\/div>\n

She\u2019s seen friends use AI to expand their ideas for essays, literature reviews, and research papers, but admits the results are less than perfect. \u201cI feel it\u2019s really noticeable if you copy and paste the [ChatGPT] paragraphs into your paper because sometimes it uses really weird vocabulary,\u201d she says. \u201cI never use it for my math or statistic courses because there is zero chance that it would give me back anything. You can ask it, \u2018what is one plus one,\u2019 but our math is really advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSoulless\u201d is the word typically used to describe AI-generated writing, a critique with which Bratic agrees. For now. \u201cWriting good fiction, music, poetry, and art are purely human characteristics, but these are all cognitive things that are going to be definitely outmatched by technology,\u201d he explains. Bratic is teaching a spring survey-type course, Communication and Technology, exploring how technologies change societies from cave paintings to AI.<\/p>\n

He cites Wikipedia, which \u201cwhen it first came out, it was widely derided as bad. Now Encyclopedia Britannica<\/em> is no longer published. Judge AI knowing that these things change and get better. I can guarantee that in ten years, it\u2019s going to be much better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schrementi acknowledges that there\u2019s faculty concern about students\u2019 use of ChatGPT for writing. He believes that developing a university-wide policy will be challenging. \u201cThe software out there for determining whether someone has used ChatGPT is just not good enough to use in any sort of Honor Court. There are too many false positives. It\u2019s going to take a year or two before we really start noticing the kind of patterns in students using it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary Clare Abbott \u201925, one of the three chairs for the Honor, Conduct, and Appeal Board (HCA Board), thinks about AI and academic integrity a lot. She\u2019s not aware of Hollins students using AI to write papers or cheat on tests, but she\u2019s heard indirect reports of faculty concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no good guidelines yet on how to use AI in the academic world,\u201d says Abbott, who has begun meeting regularly with Michael Gettings, associate vice president for student success, about the intersection of AI use and the university\u2019s longstanding and well-respected Honor Code.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Squirrel infestation of the Front Quad created with Adobe Photoshop.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhen the word \u2018plagiarism\u2019 was introduced to me in middle school, it was defined as taking someone else’s work,\u201d she says. \u201cAI is not technically someone else’s exact words. If a student comes through the HCA Board for [misusing AI], I wouldn’t really have a good answer for them as to how could they have done this differently the way that I do for other causes of plagiarism. Higher education is going to have to figure out a way to prevent AI from being used in dishonest ways, but I also think that completely taking it out of the picture and pretending it doesn’t exist would be a disservice to students.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I hope to see [higher education] find ways to incorporate this new technology, not as a substitute for learning, but as a tool to foster more learning.”<\/p>\n

Mary Clare Abbott ’25<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This past December, Abbott planned and led Honor Awareness Week, a program that coincides with each semester\u2019s exams. This year, she included sessions on using AI as a tool to benefit education, encouraging students to follow their professors\u2019 guidelines and providing resources to prevent students from using it in dishonest ways. She\u2019s planning more campuswide discussions about AI use and having HCA Board members talk at a faculty meeting about how \u00a0students are using the new technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think [AI] is actually going to be very good, but I think it’s going to take us a little while to figure out how to use it,\u201d she says. \u201cHollins is responsible for preparing its students for successful careers and life beyond graduation. I hope to see [higher education] find ways to incorporate this new technology, not as a substitute for learning, but as a tool to foster more learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schrementi agrees: \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a period of adaptation. We\u2019re just at the beginning of it, faculty and students.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLary shares their pragmatic optimism. \u201cWe will get to the point where we use it sensibly and where AI is seen for its value more than a threat,\u201d adds McLary. \u201cIf we can help students create better AI prompts, then it could be really powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I think faculty integration of AI on campuses and in the classroom will be a difficult shift, and ultimately change is never easy, I do think current and future students will be better prepared for the workforce with the experience of using technology that is not going away,\u201d Abbott reflects, her eye on the world that awaits her.<\/p>\n

Sarah Achenbach ’88 is a freelance writer living in Baltimore.<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

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