It was a great joy to co-host the International Day of Action for Academic Integrity #IDoA2023 on October 18 with Rachel Gorjup, University of Toronto Mississauga. This is the first year with the new positive and educational title of the event (from the previous title of ‘International Day of Action Against Contract Cheating’) which enabled us to broaden the scope and interest in the event. Our carefully framed theme for this year of ‘Championing academic integrity in the age of AI’ also kept our focus firmly on promoting academic integrity all day, while acknowledging the current challenges with Artificial Intelligence.
Panel perspectives
One of the key ways we aimed to champion academic integrity this year was through our five student panels across the day. It was really inspiring to listen to student perspectives, experiences, knowledge and insights from students in 11 countries (New Zealand, Australia, UK, Nigeria, UAE, Turkey, Czechia, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and Chile) who represented all levels of education from high school to undergraduate, Master’s and PhD. Our first student panel facilitated by Sheryll McIntosh from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, involved four PhD students discussing the burning questions surrounding use of AI in their studies such as short and long-term impacts, equity of access and accuracy of output. They shared their wisdom in debating where knowledge comes from, and thus the position of AI within knowledge which may be ‘inaccurate but convincing’. I was involved in the next panel with students from my university Oxford Brookes, UK, Claudia Gottwald and students from the University of Adelaide, Australia and Emilienne Akpan and students from the American University of Nigeria; we have all been collaborating for some months as an international network of student academic integrity champions. In this panel, the students debated whether AI can ethically be used to frame your thinking, the benefits of engaging with AI such as improving workflow and getting feedback or evaluation of a draft, the concerns about data privacy and the recommendation for the future introduction of custom AI tools within institutions. In the third panel which brought together members of the IDoA student planning group from Nigeria, Canada and Turkey co-hosted by IDoA co-chair Rachel Gorjup, Dr Jennie Miron from Humber College, Canada and myself, students discussed navigating social media responsibly and avoiding cheating traps. We discussed how custom writing companies may try to deceive and manipulate students into thinking they are providing legitimate help, or that students can gain positively from connecting with them. Students noted that they could be possible targets of these companies, needed to choose legitimate support from their institutions and realize that there is a difference between social media followers and people you really know, trust and are friends with. As Jennie asked: ‘Do you know anyone who has 1,000 friends?’
The following panel was led with great enthusiasm by Dr Zeenath Reza Khan from the University of Wollongong Dubai, with students from Dubai, Turkey and Czechia, including a remarkable range of high school, undergraduate, Master’s and PhD students debating the responsibilities around AI for students, faculty and institutions. Students demonstrated impressive awareness of AI issues and their own agency in approaches to AI. The final student panel was in Spanish (with translation available), led by Dr Lucila Puente from Tec de Monterrey with students from Mexico, Guatemala and Chile. In discussing two real-life scenarios, the students engaged energetically in the debate around ethical use of AI for studying and learning and presented practical ideas for their study and future work involving AI. This final student panel was particularly important in integrating a non-English medium session into the International Day of Action, giving voice and benefit to the highly motivated Latin American academic integrity community, and demonstrating the international reach of the day. This session gained the highest number of attendees over the day (189 participants), which shows the level of interest generated!
Dialogic discussions
In addition to the student panels, another popular and engaging session format was faculty dialogues. The first dialogue of the day came in the form of a ‘fireside chat’ between Dr Monica Ward and Eoin Crossen from Dublin City University, Ireland. Monica and Eoin discussed the benefits of interactive oral assessment as a positive response to concerns about unethical use of AI in assignments, particularly as a means of testing whether students ‘know their onions’! The next dialogue was between Dr Thomas Lancaster from Imperial College and Dr Irene Glendinning from Coventry University, long-standing contributors to this event whose conversations always offer very useful food for thought. Their lively discussion this time about academic integrity in 2023 included concerns about AI hallucinations, privacy and copyright, AI detection tools and the need to keep checking the accuracy of any AI generated output. The third conversation was between Dr Salim Razi and Burcu Özge Razi from Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey. Salim presented the anonymous multi-mediated writing model while Burcu discussed her MA research into a ‘wind of change’ model to approach AI positively and nurture academic development. The fourth conversation was between Emma Duke-Williams, University of Dundee and Dr Laura Lane, Brock University Canada who exchanged views about how academic integrity and AI are being currently handled in their institutions, concluding that academic integrity should not be taken over by AI. Their conversation provided a great example of the value of a comparative exchange between colleagues in different institutions and different countries. The last conversation between Dr Benjamin Liu, University of Auckland, New Zealand and Kim Pettigrew, University of New South Wales, Australia, moved to discuss the potential legal issues in use of AI by students. The main messages were to be more careful of AI platforms, look at privacy and copyright and recognize that ‘AI has unimaginable potential for all of us’.
Individual insights
That warning was also sounded in the first of the individual sessions of the day, by Prof Ann Rogerson from University of Wollongong, Australia. She argued that training for both staff and students to check terms and conditions with any technology is essential, yet tends to be forgotten. The next individual session was by Jamie Cawthra who presented the benefits of Menti discussions as an inclusive, accessible and flexible way to teach about academic integrity and appropriate use of AI, and engaged the audience very interactively through the Menti poll results. The third individual session was from Dr Liz Newton of London South Bank University, UK on staff collaboration to increase academic integrity and emphasized the sound advice to avoid ‘fishing trips for breaches’. The fourth individual session was delivered by Dr Brenda McDermott from University of Calgary, Canada in which she presented her innovative framework for evaluating different AI interfaces and highlighted that tools do not have responsibility, humans have the responsibility to judge and make decisions, so to use AI appropriately requires training humans and AI. She also introduced us to the collaborative practice of a ‘waterfall chat’ by asking a question where everyone enters their response at the same moment, creating a waterfall of answers. The fifth individual session was a very powerful talk by Dr Tricia Bertram Gallant, University of California San Diego calling on attendees to have the courage to change the way they teach, learn and assess in the era of AI, not just through incidental changes but significant transformation. The final individual session was given by Dr Jessica Kalra from the University of British Columbia, Canada who presented an engaging analogy of health care education in parallel to academic integrity education and the use of Universal Design for Learning to help build a positive and accessible culture of learning.
Round up
As co-hosts of a packed schedule across the day of nearly 15 hours, 18 sessions, 59 presenters in 15 countries of whom 32 were students, with 1,479 attendances across the day from 23 countries, Rachel and I finally wound up the day! We gave a summary of sessions and an important vote of thanks to all panelists, planning committee members, ICAI Board of Directors and the wonderfully engaged attendees. Recordings are now available via the IDoA website. We are already looking forward to next year! If you have suggestions, please get in touch mdavis@academicintegrity.org.
Thank you for being a member of ICAI. Not a member of ICAI yet? Check out the benefits of membership at https://academicintegrity.org/about/member-benefits and consider joining us by contacting info@academicintegrity.org. Be part of something great.