What Can Faculty Do to Fight Academic Misconduct?
https://teachonline.ca/ai-resources/tools-trends/when-chatgpt-makes-it-easier-cheat
How to educate students about their digital literacy ?https://pce.sandiego.edu/digital-literacy/
We recommend five steps faculty can take to reduce academic dishonesty.
Paradoxically, ChatGPT itself can offer faculty guidance on steps to reduce the likelihood of students using the tool to cheat and plagiarize. When asked how to do this, ChatGPT responded with these four suggestions:
- Use open-ended assessments: Rather than asking students to answer specific questions or complete predetermined tasks, faculty can design assessments that require students to engage in critical thinking and problem-solving. This can make it more difficult for students to cheat, as they will need to come up with original ideas and solutions rather than simply copying answers from a tool like ChatGPT.
- Use collaborative assessments: Assessing students’ ability to work effectively with others can also help reduce the risk of cheating. This can be done through group projects, collaborative problem-solving tasks and other activities that require students to work together.
- Provide adequate support and resources: If students feel they have the support and resources they need to succeed in their course, they may be less likely to cheat. Faculty can help create a positive, supportive learning environment by offering additional resources and support for struggling students.
- Use a variety of assessment methods: Rather than relying solely on traditional exams or quizzes, faculty can use a variety of assessment methods such as presentations, portfolios and projects. This can help ensure students are evaluated on a wide range of skills and abilities, rather than just their ability to memorize and regurgitate information.
These ChatGPT suggestions make sense and are consistent with general guidelines(link is external) offered for academic use of Internet sources. Here’s a fifth step faculty can take:
5. Check ChatGPT’s answers to assignment questions: Faculty can do this to spot student answers that plagiarize from the tool. They might carry this exercise further and share with students ChatGPT’s answers to various course-related questions. This serves several purposes:
- Illustrates that the instructor is aware of ChatGPT
- Prompts a discussion about the role ChatGPT might play in the course
- Creates an opportunity to compare and contract ChatGPT’s responses to those of authorities on the topic
- Provides a springboard for students to develop their own answers
Coupled with the above should be a discussion with students about the proper citation of sources, including ChatGPT, and how to avoid plagiarism. Ideally, this topic should be addressed at the program level for all courses. This seldom happens — so individual faculty may need to stress, for example, that copying and pasting without using quotation marks and citing the source is inappropriate.
It’s vital to help students understand the appropriate academic uses of a tool that will be a routine part of their future.