When Zach and I talk to colleagues about ChatGPT and other generative AIs, the conversation always includes the topic of plagiarism and cheating. For many different reasons students cheat and for many different reasons instructors and students are concerned about cheating and plagiarism. This post isn’t about the politics and best practices of academic integrity. Rather it is a cautious warning about the quest to find a technical fix to cheating with AI. As soon as ChatGPT was released in the fall of 2022, individuals and companies have been building AI detection tools. These tools began to roll out in 2023. This is the arms race that we theorized in our first post in February 2022.

Previously we covered what you need to know if you are starting from scratch with Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education. We mentioned our intention to follow up with action steps for the Fall. In researching we found an excellent guide posted on 8/2 by Inara Scott who serves as the Senior Associate Dean in the College of Business at Oregon State. We strongly recommend reading her well thought out piece. Several of the points she makes mirrored our own draft and we want to point you to her work. In correspondence with Scott we received permission to link and republish sections of the article. Here are some key highlights from her article.

It’s summer and as professors that means we’re not on the clock as it were. Zach and I have been posting nearly 1-2 per weeks since February, trying to stay on top of all the changes to ChatGPT and its impact on higher education. So, we’re taking a summer break but we’ll be back in mid to late August with new content with some super relevant topics for the start of the new fall semester.

As Zach wrote last week, one of the most common responses we get from faculty when showing them ChatGPT or talking about it is that we need to move away from analytical assignments to personal reflection assignments, or at least combine them. Some faculty think that we can out smart ChatGPT or they think there are truly human things that ChatGPT can’t produce. As Zach outlined, it is becoming increasingly clear that this is not true.

While Zach and I are working on new material, please join us on a webinar we are giving titled “ChatGPT in Higher Education: A New Frontier” organized by Alchemy. The webinar will be held Wednesday May 3 9am Pacific/12pm Eastern. Register here.