AI-generated content has plagued higher education. In fact, no university in the world is not discussing the positive and negative implications of artificial intelligence in academia. Chatbot technology has given students an easy way to opt out of critical thinking and their self-expression.
As of March 2023, 10.4% of college students' papers and assignments contained AI-generated content, according Copyleaks data. But while all uses of AI might be unknown, what we’ve seen so far is true: utilizing generative AI has the power to transform a student’s learning experience in higher education for years to come.
For Dave Waters, predicting the future isn't magic; it’s artificial intelligence. And in the world of higher education, that means taking a more complex look at plagiarism, grading bias, and professor efficiency and effectiveness to protect academic integrity.
Cracking Down on Plagiarism
According to the International Center for Academic Integrity, more than 60 percent of university students freely admit to cheating in some form. When a student chooses to plagiarize or use AI-generated text from chatbots in a non-approved manner, such as ChatGPT, they are circumventing the material and not using critical thinking skills to draw their own original conclusions and express thinking in their own words. This means that students need to learn the material and the skills that are only developed through learning, which include critical thinking, identifying biases, identifying logical fallacies, problem-solving and the ability to discern objective versus subjective statements.
It’s also essential to look at AI content from the text level, not just a whole document. This is best because some students use AI chatbots as templates, editing the AI-provided text and interspersing their own content. So the finished assignment might appear original, but the copy written by AI is mixed in with the student’s own content.
This is where AI content detectors become the power player.
Fact-checking and verifying all online content through the utilization of AI content detectors can be a helpful deterrent to staying ahead of AI content generators and setting boundaries. To gauge trends, data from Copyleaks compared nearly a million high school and college assignments submitted to them across the globe between February and March of 2023, all of whom knew their institute was using an AI content detector. Almost across the board, there was a 14.4% decrease in the use of AI-generated content. The key takeaway is that in addition to continued education around the role of AI-generated content and higher ed setting boundaries, one thing is clear: the presence of an AI detector makes students think twice about using AI-generated content.
Reducing Grading Bias
Gender disparities in higher education are just one example of a common global grading bias. According to a published study in October 2022, teachers were apt to give females a higher grade than males. Mitigating this issue is critical for accurate student assessment and the relationship-building vital to teaching. Human error also gives universities a reason to pause. The more exams and papers a teacher needs to grade, the less engaged or focused they become, paper after paper, exam after exam. Professors can embrace AI technology and harness the power of AI to fix the discrepancy between human grading errors and eliminate any doubt of unethical grading practices.
When put into practice, the results speak for themselves. According to a case study done with the Ministry of Education in Israel, using an AI grader showed only a 1% median score difference between an AI grader and two human graders and an increase twenty times over in the delivery of results to students with an AI grader compared to human graders.
Increasing Professor Efficiency and Effectiveness
Professors must aim to find iterative or innovative solutions that lead back to one crucial foundation: teaching students and inspiring authenticity.
AI technology has shown great potential to improve teachers' classroom roles by taking more off their workloads with lesson planning, grading, and taking attendance, freeing up time to devote to a more personalized approach to their craft. Professors with more time and energy for actual education leads to more student engagement and better student performance. This is especially critical for those students who might struggle in their classes.
From detecting plagiarism with AI-created content to grading papers, artificial intelligence certainly has a place in the bright future of higher ed. People fear what they don’t know, and while AI will always have its skeptics, those professors who look to AI as an impactful tool will see more possibilities for themselves and their students.
Alon Yamin is Co-Founder and CEO of Copyleaks.
For more articles on AI and ChatGPT see,
ChatGPT, Generative AI are Wake Up Calls for Higher Education
Presence of AI Content Detector Impacts Student Usage
ChatGPT: Reimagining Assessment in Higher Education
Artificial Intelligence to Play Instrumental Role in the Future of Higher Education