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Approaches to AI and Academic Integrity

Anna Mills

English Instructor, College of Marin

A presentation for College of the Siskiyous, January 24, 2025

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What to expect: One teacher’s thinking and current set of practices to discourage unlabeled AI use that interferes with learning

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  • Slides, open for commenting: https://bit.ly/AISiskiyous
  • Feel free to put questions and comments in the chat!

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Let’s acknowledge some reservations around focusing on AI and academic integrity

  • Most teachers don’t want to put their energy into “policing” students. It’s not why we went into teaching. Many of us have serious concerns about harms from an adversarial relation to students.�
  • We don’t know exactly how widespread misuse of AI is or how widespread it might become.�
  • But! I would still argue that even given these reservations, we need ways to reduce potential learning loss and unfairness.

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Fundamentally, if we assess a student’s learning by reading text, we need to know if that text was put together by the student

  • How can we design for and assess learning through writing otherwise?
  • Writing helps students learn and think, so let’s not give up on assigning it!

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(A slide by Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant)

Ignoring the impact of GenAI Tools on your Course Learning Outcomes undermines:

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  • teaching
    • you’re not teaching the skills/knowledge you think you are
  • learning
    • the students aren’t learning what we intended
  • assessment integrity
    • we aren’t evaluating what we think we are
  • degree integrity
    • Students don’t have the knowledge & skills we say they do

This slide is from “Crafting Your GenAI & AI Policy:

A Guide for Instructors” by academic integrity expert Dr. Tricia Bertram-Gallant, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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AI Policy Development

“You should be able to expect clear guidance from your instructor… guidelines should make clear which specific systems or tools are appropriate for any given assignment.”

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--Kathryn Conrad in A Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights for Education, Critical AI (Duke University Press)

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AI is a lot to process for all of us…

AI policy can offer

  • Guidance
  • Anxiety relief as it clarifies
  • Empathy for the dilemmas students face today

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Students want and deserve clear policy surrounding AI. And that may be a tall order. But we don’t have to figure this out on our own once and for all.

  • There is plenty of guidance for faculty! I’ll share templates and examples.
  • We can seek input from students as well as colleagues and department or program leadership
  • We can plan to revisit and continue to revise our policies. We’re exploring this territory and seeing how things go…

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Seek student input or collaboration on AI policy formation

  • Have an open discussion at the beginning of the course–when do we need to know how AI was used in writing? Come up with examples of when it matters, when it doesn’t.
  • My department chair Ingrid Kelly does a first writing assignment and discussion about her AI policy. She tells students, “After you read a few articles, discuss questions and concerns surrounding the topic of AI with classmates, and explore how AI works, you will draft a new AI policy for this class that you feel will meet the needs of all classmates. Consider how you think AI technology can best support student success in this class. “

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Activity: discuss Joss Fong’s Vox.com video interviews with teachers and students

“AI can do your homework. Now what?

Students and teachers grapple with the rise of the chatbots.”

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Of course, ultimately the teacher needs a policy that they are comfortable will help students meet learning goals, a policy consistent with department, program, and institutional policy

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Are you aware of any college, program, or department policies or guidance on AI use? Describe where to find any and/or what they say.

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Go to the Mentimeter poll at https://www.menti.com/al5gfof99qtc(in the chat).�

Or go to Menti.com and enter 4818 7735 to rate each option.

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It’s hard to get specific enough about all possible uses of AI. That will always be a work in progress, but it’s worth working on.

Consider: There are many possible uses beyond auto-generating the whole assignment (i.e. AI for brainstorming, AI for feedback, AI for help with organization, grammar, or genre conventions)

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How can we make a policy that accounts for that variety and the variety of ways such uses could impact learning for different assignments?

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The AI Assessment Scale developed by Leon Furze and colleagues is helpful; I’d like to share my adapted version.

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An AI Assessment Scale (the short version)

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Note: This is the short version. See also the version that explains each one.

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This scale is adapted by Anna Mills from the Perkins, Furze, Roe, and McVaugh (2024). The AI Assessment Scale. CC BY NC SA. I have incorporated aspects of the earlier version by the same authors and made my own edits.

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Sample policies

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–From Crafting Your GenAI & AI Policy: A Guide for Instructors by Tricia Bertram Gallant of UC San Diego

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A large collection: Classroom Policies for AI Generative Tools, curated by Lance Eaton

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Templates and worksheets

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A “Tools and Rules” Section for each assignment?

The idea and phrase come from ESL instructor Julie Carey of Cañada College. Here’s some sample language I use:

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  • *You are welcome to use grammar-checking software, just be skeptical of the suggestions.
  • *No AI for coming up with ideas or text for your essay. The learning happens as you figure out what to say and clarify your points as you put the sentences together.
  • *You can use AI to help with research or reading comprehension as long as you do the reading yourself and don't fully trust the AI summaries.
  • *You can use AI for feedback on your writing or for ideas about writing strategies.
  • Did you think of another way AI could be useful for this assignment? Please run it by me! I am open to ideas as long as the AI use doesn’t get in the way of learning.

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Students will want to know what to expect from you if you suspect AI misuse. Recommendations to consider:

  • Meet with the student in a spirit of supportive, collaborative inquiry. Try to remain open and curious.
  • Clarify what path forward you will offer them if indeed they did turn in unlabeled AI text.
  • Ask the student to describe their process.
  • Ask them questions about the ideas expressed and their choices.
  • Remind the student of your desire that they get the most out of the assignment.
  • Acknowledge the gray areas and sense of uncertainty with AI today.

�From the MLA/CCCC Task Force on Writing and AI working paper on policy development

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Purposeful, meaningful, supported writing instruction

Known best practices in writing instruction may be the most effective way to reduce incidence of AI misuse.

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Why is writing in college important? Not for the product. For the thinking process.

“A fundamental tenet of Writing Across the Curriculum is that writing is a mode of learning. Students develop understanding and insights through the act of writing. Rather than writing simply being a matter of presenting existing information or furnishing products for the purpose of testing or grading, writing is a fundamental means to create deep learning and foster cognitive development.”

-- The Association for Writing Across the Curriculum

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First and foremost, emphasize purpose and engagement

  • Emphasize how writing helps us think and form our own ideas and voice.
  • Share how we personally use the writing process to help our thinking process.
  • Create assignments that have intrinsic meaning and are likely to be motivating.
  • Allow room for creativity, original thinking, and choice about the focus of the assignment.

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Build relationships and community as the context for reading and writing�

  • Hold conferences with students
  • Offer video feedback
  • Ask students to record audio or video notes about their writing.
  • Invite peer responses on what is interesting in each student’s writing

Presentation by Anna Mills, licensed CC BY NC 4.0.

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Teach and support the writing process

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  • Collaborative annotation of the foundational texts for the writing assignment (try Hypothes.is or Perusall)
  • Prewriting/brainstorming/�drafting
  • Reflections on the thinking and writing process and on feedback
  • Peer review
  • Required tutor visits
  • Revision

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Accountability

I focus on the preventative, supportive practices just described. But I don’t find them to be adequate.

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“Trusting students not to cheat isn’t fair to the students who don’t cheat no matter what….For all other human behaviors, we understand that people need help sticking to their goals or keeping their promises.” –Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant, “Crafting Your GenAI & AI Policy Guide”

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In-class and oral assessments

These don’t have to be the sole mode of assessment to help reduce AI misuse.

Used judiciously, these may allow us to get to know student voice so we inquire when there’s a discrepancy.

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Of course, many students have anxiety about performance and about talking to teachers, and their spoken style may differ widely from the way they write.

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Are there kinds of academic writing assignments it can’t generate?

I don’t know of any.

It can produce something passable for most prompts with persistent prompting.

Feed it a reading, snippets on current events, bits of personal experience, a transcript or an image (with Bing)—whatever the prompt demands.

It will generate a personal essay, a piece about something timely and hyper-local, a simulated reflection on the writing process, a close analysis of a text, or a response to its own outputs.

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Can we distinguish AI text from student writing?

Our intuition about what is AI text may help us initiate important conversations if we know the student’s writing well. But let’s be wary of our own unconscious bias and possible overconfidence. AI can imitate student writing styles.

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Is this AI? Turnitin said 0%. Previous workshop participants largely guessed it wasn’t AI. But it is.

Robin Marantz Henig wrote an article in National Geographic about kids and their feelings about gender. She looks at two viewpoints: one from a scientist named Eric Vilain and one from a mom named Marlo Mack. Vilain thinks kids often mix up liking things typically done by the opposite gender (like a boy liking dolls) with feeling they are that gender. He says most kids who feel this way end up comfortable with their birth gender as they grow up. So, he suggests parents should tell kids it's okay to like whatever they want, but that doesn't change who they are. Mack shares her own story, where even after telling her child that boys can like 'girl' things, her child still felt she was a girl. The article seems balanced, but it feels like it leans more towards Mack's side. Henig uses Mack's story to show that what Vilain suggests might not always work. Readers might leave the article feeling more supportive of kids deciding how they feel about their own gender.

Generated by ChatGPT

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Studies on the extent to which instructors can differentiate AI from student writing suggest we are quite unreliable (drat!)

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Is AI detection reliable? “In short, no”--OpenAI, after taking down its detector

Ars Tecnica, September 8, 2023

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Is AI detection biased against English language learners? Maybe

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Note: free software exists that rephrases AI text to “humanize” it and get around AI detectors

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The accuracy of detectors is constantly changing as AI and detectors change. Right now, Turnitin seems to be ahead.

“Turnitin turned out to be the most accurate and consistent one, with a 100% AI score even with the adversarial techniques.”

It even did pretty well on AI text that was edited or paraphrased. Researchers used “three adversarial techniques (edited through Grammarly, paraphrased through Quillbot, and 10%-20% editing by a human expert).. The study found that the four AI-detection tools showed inconsistent AI scores - from very high by Turnitin (almost perfect) to very low by Writer AI. ”

–AI vs AI: How effective are Turnitin, ZeroGPT, GPTZero, and Writer AI in detecting text generated by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini? (Malik and Amjad 2025)

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“For those who decide to use AI detectors, please consider the following questions”

From the MLA/CCCC Task Force on Writing and AI working paper on policy development. (The Modern Language Association and the Conference on College Composition and Communication are the professional associations for writing, language, and literature faculty in American higher ed.)

• What steps have you taken to substantiate a positive detection?

• What other kinds of engagement with the student’s writing affirm your decision to assign a failing grade outside the AI detector’s claim that the text was AI generated?”

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Process tracking

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Process tracking means ask students to share their document history

“If a student actually does the writing themselves, they will…write things, move things around, add bits, delete bits; all the usual meandering manoeuvres of human writing. And all of that will appear in the version history, indelibly timestamped and tagged per user.”

Dave Sayers

“A simple hack to ChatGPT-proof assignments using Google Drive,” Times Higher Ed, May 25, 2023

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Various apps and extensions allow replay and analysis of a document history, including cut/paste and time spent (check for FERPA compliance)

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How much teacher labor does this involve? My approach involves some setup and then minimal labor.

I create a shared folder for the student to store their Google Doc (using a school Google account) so I have edit permission.

When they turn in an essay I use the Revision History Chrome extension to see some basic stats about their process across the top. These provide a basis for further inquiry and conversation if needed.

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I can see the text of any large copy/paste (might be from another preferred writing app or from another place in the document.)

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I can replay typing and edits.

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Why I’m switching to Grammarly Authorship

  • Students won’t have to share edit permission on their Google Docs with me. That always seemed intrusive.
  • Students will see the authorship report before I do. They may feel a greater sense of control and be able to recognize and correct any inappropriate use or failure to cite. They can also proactively explain any unsourced text they didn’t type (such as from a voice transcription app like Otter.ai.)
  • Grammarly Authorship notes when Grammarly itself has been used to edit, revise, or generate text, so this becomes part of our class conversation on how to use Grammarly and be skeptical of its suggestions.

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The user can decide if the authorship report includes a replay of the whole drafting process. I probably won’t require students to share this. I pay more attention to time spent.

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Grammarly authorship reports attempt to label text by origin

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I ask students to reflect when they share an Authorship Report

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  • If there is any AI-generated text, have you labeled it appropriately in the essay and cited or acknowledged its origin?
  • If there is any text labeled as “copied from an unknown source,” where did it come from?
  • If any text is copied from a website, have you quoted and cited it correctly?

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Steps to try Grammarly Authorship

  • You need a Grammarly account. Free is fine.
  • Install the Grammarly Extension for Google Chrome
  • Open a Google Doc in Chrome
  • Click the thumbprint icon in the lower left corner:
  • Select “Track writing activity”
  • Click the thumbprint again and choose “See report.”

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Is process tracking intrusive? This informal poll suggests opinion is divided.

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We could make process history tracking part of the way students reflect on their learning process, as Nigel Robertson suggests.

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Allow for alternative processes

My message to students: “Think of this as an online version of in-class writing that allows you more flexibility. It gives me a way to understand your writing process, both to encourage academic honesty and to encourage reflection on the writing process itself. If you have concerns or do not feel comfortable sharing your process in this way, please let me know and we can meet and work out another plan.”

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Caveat: process tracking can discourage AI misuse, but it can’t completely prevent it.

  • Students can re-type (and edit or paraphrase) AI text.
  • Free software exists that will simulate typing any text into a Google Doc over time, even inserting edits. (Undetectable.ai and duey.ai)
  • Still, the hassle and risk involved makes cheating significantly less likely than if we weren’t asking to see process history at all.

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Mentimeter Rating activity

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I’ve just listed (too many?) strategies for discouraging misuse of AI.

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  • Which are feasible in your context?
  • Which seem likely to be effective?
  • What are the barriers to implementing these?

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Use the arrow to move to the next page in the same Mentimeter to answer at https://www.menti.com/al5gfof99qtc (in the chat).�

Or go to Menti.com and enter 4818 7735 to rate each option.

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Questions or comments?�Thank you, and feel free to get in touch!

AnnaRMills.com

LinkedIn: anna-mills-oer

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Slides, open for commenting: https://bit.ly/AISiskiyous

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�This presentation is shared under a CC BY NC 4.0 license, except where otherwise noted.