In this episode, Camie talks to Chris Bryson, Director of Academic Initiatives and Integrity at the University of Arkansas, about Academic Honesty with AI.

honesty.uark.edu

Welcome to the pedagogy toolkit. In this episode, Camie talks with Chris Bryson about academic integrity with the use of AI.

Stay tuned.

So I'm sitting here with Chris Bryson. He's the director of academic initiatives and integrity here at the University of Arkansas. Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sure, Camie. Thanks for having me.

Adjudication of justice misbehavior in general so worked in the Student Conduct Office of Colorado State University of Arkansas.

And was thankful in a way to get away from actually doing the hearings related to academic integrity or any kind of misbehavior. When I came into this position, because we do it a little differently, but so very close to investigations, adjudications related to any kind of like cheating allegations with our office.

How is it different here than how you've had it?

In the past.

At Colorado State and then I guess right before I came to the University of Arkansas, there was a centralized office of staff members that essentially investigated and adjudicated any kind of cheating allegation that was reported by faculty.

And so my role as the director of the office is 1 to work on prevention.

Make sure students and faculty know.

The policy and and the policy that's essentially written and adopted by a faculty.

In it.

And implement that way, but.

I'm not actually in the in the weeds of investigating each case and deciding whether or not a student violated a policy. I'm supporting, the assistant associate Deans in each college that are doing that.

And I think there's a lot of value in that model because each associate Dean speaks the language of that college much better than probably a staff member than me.

I don't do calculus, you know. So having having in engineered.

Anything related to the differential equations of class offered in the College of Engineering is probably a lot more efficient than having someone like me.

Do that so.

Right. And I think you guys actually have quite a few resources from your office that are available even to faculty or other instructors for the classroom as well.

Yeah, we absolutely do try to do that. There's a, there's literally a faculty tab on our homepage that walks people through FAQ's, gives people an idea of how the process would flow, explains really quickly, like what common violations look like, and then also what the consequences would be based on how the the policies.

Putting.

And then we're in eight to five office Monday through Friday. So I go to e-mail. Honesty.uark.edu anytime or call us and we're going to answer and going to talk to a person.

Yeah, and and that website will be linked in.

The show notes so.

We'll look down below for those.

Now we have seen in recent, you know, really the last year, year and a half, AI has stormed the palace, so to speak, right?

Really.

I didn't notice.

He didn't notice.

It's got taken over and I feel like that's.

And one of the biggest conversations.

Wins.

On AI that I have had is the academic integrity one with my instructors.

So.

How with AI or?

Through that lens of academic integrity, how do we define the use of AI to begin with because.

You know, we've had things like Grammarly and even the Microsoft Grammar checker. You know, we we've had some AI uses prior to things like chat GPT and Gemini and the others that have emerged recently. So how do we define AI through that academic integrity lens?

Yeah, it's a great question, you know.

We didn't actually define artificial intelligence or generative AI. OK, if we did, it'd probably have to change, like, every month because the technology is changing so fast.

Right. So.

You know, let's start with just the definition of academic dishonesty. According to our policy, and that's just gaining an advantage for yourself or another person. OK, that otherwise wasn't available to other students. And so if that's the basis, you know, the lens we look through academic dishonesty.

I would say that artificial intelligence or Gen AI stuff tools.

Are most likely just viewed as a resource.

So there, there's definitely policies in place that say.

Essentially, a faculty member has to authorize a resource for it to be used and not be considered academic dishonesty. And that's way before Gemini and ChatGPT right like.

We.

If you even think about even just like regular old school math courses.

You know, faculty are essentially going to permit a certain type of calculator.

Certain functions on a calculator or not, right? And so.

Anytime a student just walks in with their phone out to start a test, it's probably going to be considered a violation unless they have permission.

And so a phone would be considered a resource. A calculator calculator would be considered a resource.

And any kind of generative artificial intelligence tool would also be considered.

Source and so if a student doesn't have permission to use that tool, then it would be considered.

An academic advantage. And so that's typically how we're approaching through that lens.

What academic dishonesty would look like?

I think you've always been really good at just kind of not only explaining but bringing down academic integrity to terms that people can understand and concepts.

In this case.

You know, people have been so concerned about AI and how students are using it and whether or not they're going to plagiarize with it or something else. You know, it's.

It's pretty easy to stick a prompt or the directions from your assignment into a generative AI and and get those pieces, but to think through it as OK.

Do I have the permission for this if I don't?

This is giving me an advantage over the other students who aren't right and so thinking of it in terms of advantage and resource versus.

This specific tool.

I think gives it a very different that becomes a very different conversation then.

And I I love that I love that a.

Lot cool. I'm glad it helps that.

It's a conversation, you know, given that it's so widely used now.

It forces that conversation, hopefully between the student and fact member in terms of what's permitted, how it's permitted, what our expectations regarding use, if it is, all those things kind of, it starts a trickle down effect, right. But if that conversation doesn't happen on the front.

End.

It's a difficult, you know, environment.

For students and faculty that.

OK.

Right. And I mean our first episode on AI for the podcast, we kind of focused on what AI meant in terms of redefining literacy. Now, you know, is that now included on how to use this? And if so, like, what is that instructor role?

And I think you know you've really pinpointed there.

You've got to have a conversation about it, no matter how you're talking about it, whether that's this is simply not allowed in the class or this is allowed under these circumstances, or we have one particular project that this is allowed with and the others are not. You know, however, you are talking about in your classroom, you have to have the conversation.

Totally agree, I also think.

It's been a weird year for me in the sense that each college at different times had reached out to our office to say, you know, a certain programmer department reached out to our office and said, hey, can you talk a little bit about artificial intelligence tools and academic integrity?

And it was very it was a unique experience in the sense that I could go to one college where professors are extremely pro artificial intelligence and they're trying to integrate in their courses. And they're saying all these students, they're going to graduate, are going to have to use it. And then there's other faculty on a different spectrum that are like, well, look, this is.

We don't view this as a value adding value to the learning process to our curriculum.

And we need to be able to assess the students knowledge in a way that doesn't rely on those tools.

And so there was a lot more.

I don't want to call it fear, but frustration in the sense that it was so accessible and it was just upending aspects of.

Curriculum to the extent that it was causing headaches and stress, and So what I took from that going from 1 college to the other is man. It might. It's really hard to navigate this world as a student.

Everybody has their computer open and their ChatGPT and.

You know, lecture notes to understand it better.

Or writing papers with that and it's OK. And then the next time at 1:00, it's entirely not permitted and considered a violation. And so.

I hope you know that that.

That there's a level of understanding there from.

Faculty and students perspectives that that conversation just has to happen now because.

Students don't necessarily.

Go into every classroom understanding expectations because they could be different based on the discipline they could be based on. They could be different based on the the faculty members approach. There's there's disciplines that are already highly impacted by AI to the extent that they're just widely adopted and accepted, where there's others that might not.

Be that way.

And so students, students needing some kind of guard rail would be a great starting point. And it just places a burden on faculty. At the same time, I understand that.

It it definitely does. And I do think there's something to be.

Thought through there from a faculty standpoint in terms of, you know, what value does it add to the learning process in my particular field and for this particular class because.

Field specific, yes, there are certain ways that you can use AI that may not be, you know, great. And we've seen that in certain fields like already you see a lot of AI generated books that people have started to try to just mass sell. And there have been some companies who.

Have banned those.

Just because they're they're flooding the market in such numbers that people who are actually writing their own books, you know, they're having trouble getting them out there because there's so many others on the map.

No.

And and they're always quality because we know AI doesn't always give us the best and the best quality when we just.

Throw you know a non specific prompt at it.

But also there's something in terms of, you know, what foundational knowledge does that student need to know?

To be able to use the tool of AI, because that's what it is, it's a tool, right? It shouldn't replace the knowledge that we have. It should help us use the knowledge that we have, but it shouldn't replace the learning that we do. So what? What does that look like? I think that's a really tough question that instructors.

You know, have to grapple with right now, so thinking you know kind of in that framework what are some of the difficulties in upholding academic integrity with AI in the classroom?

And we're starting with the difficulties, but we're not. We're not staying there. People we will get to the good stuff.

Thank you.

Yeah. Well, so I think some of that is also discipline specific. So if you think about an architect.

An architecture student and art student and graphic design student or an engineer coding I mean AI is way different depending on those disciplines versus a historian, right? But broadly speaking, going into that conversation, what I would say.

Right.

AI like when ChatGPT basically hit the market, it was just so widely adopted to the extent that it presented challenges that we and at least in the world of academic integrity hadn't seen before. So I was aware of websites that could read paraphrase, you know or.

Yeah.

Like.

Certain websites that would basically make it easier, right? To paraphrase other work into your own words, that type of a deal. But I I mean, there was millions and millions of people over a two or three month.

Span that adopted.

You know the use of and then at the same time it was either super cheap.

Right.

20 bucks a month or free right. And so. And you could it. It was it was much better than anything else that we had seen.

And then it it continued to get better. So if you think about just a year ago compared to now, how much less AI hallucinates, right, there's just there's the pace of change, the pace of adoption, the accessibility.

Definitely.

And then the fact that it could basically.

Present a pretty good answer to a lot of typical, you know, challenges or hurdles that students would face in a classroom.

Coupled with the fact that there's a private industry, just this feasting on this new technology, calling it a revolutionary technology.

And all the private sector competition to present product to society. I mean, I don't want to, I mean, I'm not trying to be negative, but that's just that's just those all those challenges are.

Exceptionally different than anything I've seen in the last 10 or 15 years, and it was clearly a disruptor in the industry.

Right.

And I felt like.

The the other aspect of this that is just like nuts and bolts is that there's really, at least when it was first presented.

And adopted it was. It's really hard to identify, at least when we're just.

Talking about text.

It's really hard to identify, so it wasn't easy. There was no easy solution to students using this in a way that would benefit them significantly and.

Right.

I think an unfortunate but.

True reality of that as it created a level of distrust.

Between students and faculty that probably I hadn't seen before, that I had felt.

Students not really knowing what to do and faculty not really knowing what to do. And yeah, there could always. You could say that that's always been there, but.

I mean, we never, I don't know. I I had never seen a world where a tool is so widely used and so accessible that could literally like pass the, you know.

Med School law school exams and GRE's.

Like better and better every month, you know, so.

Good.

It was. It was just fundamentally a shift in terms of what was accessible.

And it created some growing pains, right? It still is for education.

Yeah. What does it mean to educate in the?

World of AI.

Yeah. Yep, exactly. And so those are the challenges it presents.

And it I mean it, it really has created.

A level of.

Like wow, just.

Fascination with the technology I tell people, sometimes I feel like the confessional on campus for faculty to come tell me, hey, well, I used it to help me write a letter of recommendation. You know what I mean? And I'm like, I think this is a technology we're all going to use someday. It's not bad.

Yeah.

Necessarily, you know.

But at the same time.

It's it, you know, if you're an yeah. If you're an instructor and and you don't know how it works and you haven't looked at your curriculum related to.

There are challenges.

Yeah.

That tool.

Right. And I think you said it best when you called it a disruptor. It's a disruptor to what we were doing before.

It's not necessarily that some of the issues that it's.

Enhanced, you know, and brought like more to the forefront and didn't exist before, just not at this level and not this broad.

And so I think you know pre generator they I when when you had exploded you did have some students with mistrust or some instructors with mistrust of a few students but then it became this broad thing because like you said it was so accessible to everyone.

And there was nothing in place really that was.

Able to detect or able to figure out like.

OK. How do I change?

My assignment so that it's, you know, AI proof to a certain extent, what? What can I?

Do.

To encourage students to not replace their thinking with this tool. And so I think that's been kind of some of the.

Totally.

Issues that they've had.

I'll jump in there too real quick. So if you think about it this way, pre AI, I would say most students had an idea of what would be considered like quote UN quote a cheating website.

They feel kind of weird when they're on the website, knowing that they can take a picture of their test question and post it on some form and get some answer right. And we all kind of knew that was.

And.

Cheating.

Right.

But then, like with AI, you could give Grammarly is a great example. Like pre AI, Grammarly was pretty much widely accepted as just this editing tool. That's a little better than the Microsoft Word thing. If you have the money, you could pay the subscription and it's just going to make it a little better right where now, gram. Really, like many other companies, is essentially renting out.

A portion of open AI's chatGPT, large language model, and just branding it as grammarly.

And an AI assistive tool and so essentially anytime a student is using Grammarly, they're essentially using ChatGPT.

Yeah.

And they can have whole papers rewritten. They can have paragraphs rewritten.

And perhaps if they started on a word doc or a Google doc, it was their idea to begin with. But the final product is not.

What you would consider or some instructors would consider their own word and so.

Right.

That's a much more blurred line where it's that technology is so embedded in tools and websites that we kind of think are OK and it's a real transition for students and faculty get their head around like, OK, this is this is everywhere in a way.

Microsoft Word right now, you know, they're they've got their own AI that they're embedding in Microsoft Word it's.

It's pervasive, so even like your regular tools aren't necessarily.

OK. Anymore. And whereas before you could use a grammar checker, whether it was Microsoft Word or Grammarly, you know pretty this generative AI rush it, it wasn't considered cheating, but now there's so many questions I think on both sides for students and instructors and.

And it makes it difficult.

I think it's just that that is gonna continue, right, like.

You mentioned Microsoft Word I I mean.

All those tools are going to have built-in AI assisted types of things, and then to the extent they can be used and how they can be used.

I mean, those are all difficult questions that it's just a moving target. It's essentially the truth, you know.

Yeah. And now even there are tons of AI tools that will.

You can put articles in. It will summarize not only the entire article, but every single paragraph.

If you want to.

And you can actually interact with the tool and ask it questions about that riding. It's not just a summary, right? Like you're right. You're like, like, what does it say about this? And I mean, it's amazing.

Yeah, it it really pulls it out and and some of that you think oh, that's efficiency, right, you're you're not spending your time perusing and doing all this?

But also you miss out on that whole analysis yourself as a student. Like if you aren't doing that. And so if you're not practicing your analysis.

How do you get better at it? It's like, yeah, I think a lot of these questions it it's brought a lot of.

Disruption to how we approach everything that we're doing in the classroom, whether that's an online classroom or in person, whatever we're doing for teaching and learning.

It's a brand new day, you know, and so.

Totally agree.

Thinking through that, we're going to talk about a few tools that may be helpful in.

Detecting AI? Uh. But then let's let's kind of chat about maybe some positive ways that AI can be used in the classroom as well, just because it it's so easy to go, Oh my gosh, these are all our barriers and.

Stop there, but.

But we don't have to, right? We don't have to. We have a lot of options and and there are a lot of different approaches that we've seen and.

So.

Looking at the classroom, looking at AI, it doesn't have to be a mountain you climb alone.

I agree.

So we've we've looked at a lot of AI detection software and I know in the early days there were so many reports of inaccurate detection or biased detection, especially what are your thoughts on the use of AI detection software in general?

Yeah. So first, what I'll do, I think to do this question justice, I would describe our experience in this last year without any kind of detection tool. OK, right. So so we we did not have any kind of AI text detector.

For this previous year, and I guess to be.

Pretty transparent with everyone. When Chat GPT came such so widely adopted at one of our offices, my offices mission was to understand what other institutions were doing, what other academic integrity offices were doing, what other Provost office were doing to to support faculty in.

What we found pretty quickly was that the vast majority of SEC schools were using the tool called turn it in, and I can get in to turn it in and and.

MHM.

This.

Blackboard ultra. This will be something you could literally toggle on and off for every assessment or assignment that you create, which hopefully will be a very.

Big benefit to every factory member here.

Great.

But this last year, we didn't have this tool and we found really quickly fielding calls from faculty that were concerned or emails from fact they were concerned that they were reading a a text.

I would boil it down to like 4 beams associated with like AI generated text. One was that the citations were either lacking significantly or they were inaccurate.

That the work that was submitted by the student didn't really answer the question presented to them.

And that's probably a lack of.

Prompting the tool effectively and so generic answers not really hitting the point or the work that they submitted previously did not match up or align at all with the end product that they submitted for this assignment.

Right.

And then the other thing that we saw a lot was students would literally copy and paste answers and not realize that it was essentially giving it away, that they were using chat, GPT. I remember 111 case where we had a student.

They had to talk about their personality. So what is your personality and essentially the response is like I'm a computer. I don't have a personality. And that was the submitted answer. So there's there's a broad range of how difficult it could be, but I would say that typically that's what we're seeing is those kind of themes.

Ohh no.

And I think that regardless of if you have a detection tool or not.

Those themes most likely should be present. If you're really considering it.

Right.

Academic dishonesty, you know.

We did work really hard to figure out if we should have some kind of AI detection tool and very thankful that we're going to be able to adopt it, adopt turning and going into the fall, turn in is it coming? It's been around for years and years. They actually had an artificial intelligence unit before ChatGPT opened up. They've been working on stuff for like 2 years.

Most of the schools that I talked to have.

Actually just done a lot of work to tell faculty or teach faculty that this is a tool, that it's not an end all be all.

Right.

They're.

They like to they they're trying to turn it in, is essentially trying to.

Pull away from this detection that the term detection and call it a visibility tool.

So if you hopefully what they're, I mean what they say in terms of their in-house testing and this is also BeenVerified in 3rd party journal articles, they're picking up or making visible about 75% of the AI text, that's that's actually just put into a paper.

And their false positive rate is less than 1%. So we want to think about that as a tool and not the end all be all just like a you know honestly it's just like a plagiarism tool, like safe assign. You know, you could get a safe assign report that's flagged 30 or 40% and it might not have any plagiarism in it.

Right.

Yeah.

And so we should probably view.

These reports that are going to be generated by this visibility tool as a way to at least save some time.

Alert us to look at and evaluate the work rather than just trust a number, and so in the end, what I think is that if you have a tool like this, which is, I would say a leader in the space highly adopted across all SEC institutions and by far the most accurate one of the most accurate tools out there.

Yeah.

That this at the end of the day would serve as a huge deterrent.

Students, knowing that this is even there and save faculty a ton of time in evaluating work. You know, I I talked to one faculty member who had a 25 page paper written by a graduate student. They felt like had completely regenerated or repaired, phrased their paper, and they spent they said 8 to 12 hours making 41 different comments on the paper.

Related to why they felt like this was AI generated before they reported this, you know.

That is dedication.

Ohh man and it was like Harvard. She was a graduate student. No, I mean graduate.

Well, and turn it in has been available to.

Graduate students for a while, right?

It has, it hasn't been.

Institutionally integrated so.

OK.

The relationship we have a turn in now is this is a campus wide license, so undergraduate and graduate students, and if faculty want to use it.

They're not going to have to go to like the Turnitin website and add a class and be able to run those papers through their tool. It's actually going to be something that's all going to be embedded in the new Blackboard Ultra.

So it's it's gonna be like at the fingertips instead of four or five humps. And it's gonna be ohh man. I hope it is. And the other thing.

Alright, which is so helpful.

Outside of AI.

Action.

It's just a much more effective plagiarism detection tool. It's.

It's a. It's gonna have like when you go in to turn it in.

And you look at a report.

There's gonna be highlighted passages that may or may not be plagiarized, and when you, I mean when you put the cursor over that highlighted passage, it's going to have a pop up window that shows you the.

Original source which is nice.

I mean, you're going to be able to interact with the tool in a way that you just never have.

Before and so the the the standard value is much more.

And.

Funny enough, Turnin says that the plagiarism detection hasn't decreased at all since.

Open AI or Chibita or any kind of artificial intelligence has been introduced so they're plagiarism detection. Alerts are just as high before as after, so that's still a thing, right? And that was that made-up like half of all that can make dishonesty cases so.

Yeah.

Right. And and this is not just a a tool that instructors can use after students have submitted, students can submit their work right prior to turning it in to check their own work.

This is correct for plagiarism.

For the AI detection, that's they're not going to get a report related to what was generated by AI, but for the plagiarism section, yes, absolutely. And I've.

Hopefully we'll have some stuff that comes out in July and August that kind of talks about different ways that faculty can use. This tool. I had a graduate student.

That had come from an institution that was widely attended in school, and she said professors would start their discussion about plagiarism is like, hey, until this is under 10% or 15% plagiarism detection, don't even submit your paper. Like look at what's flag repair phrase it put it in quotes. Figure it out. Why is this?

Going, you know, and I don't think that's like a I mean, I love that whole world that that you have technology, that there's there is an anxiety related to writing, right? Like when you're taking someone else's ideas and thoughts and rewriting them into your own, I mean.

We could just, you know, pull up the old text, look at the new text, and decide. We cited it right and and so.

Yeah, hopefully students using that proactively decreases that.

Well, because it's very easy to miss a citation.

Very easy to miss a citation and not just like doing it incorrectly in format, but also just going oh I forgot to put that guy's name in and you know, completely entirely by accident and that way this is kind of just like that built in. Don't.

Forget you know.

Or it you know, like if you're writing a long paper.

And you put something in your in text citations and you forget to put it.

In.

References. You should be able to pick that up now you know, or vice versa. Let's say your reference list has citations that you in editing took out as part of your in text work, and that's going to get caught and it's going to figure it out. This is just going to clean things up. It's just using technology in a way that's transparent.

Yes.

That improves the overall outcome and you know there's a there's a significant value added for not just instructors but but students too. It's hard to see people go through this kind of thing when technology like this exists.

Yeah, it it really.

Is especially when it's an easy fix.

And.

You can encourage your students to use turn it in to, you know, check their citations, make sure everything looks really good before they turn things in. Just as an added precaution.

And then.

Once they do.

You know, you've got turn it in on your.

Side as an.

Instructor not only looking at plagiarism, but also looking at.

The visibility of AI right?

Sure. Yeah.

But.

And that might not be bad. It depends on the instructions approach, right? Maybe the having some AI generated text is OK and it's just visible to the reader right now we don't have. We don't operate in a world where that's widely available, so we're always guessing when when I'm even reading articles on the web right now, I don't even know if it's.

Written by a computer or person half the time, and it feels weird where this tool just let us know. Hopefully most the time when it's generated by a computer or not.

Yeah, it's, I mean in doing that.

On your own, as you've seen, and I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with instructors who go.

I I just don't know. I don't know if this is AI. It feels.

Like it might be but.

I'm not sure and it's hard to hedge your uncertainty on an academic dishonesty report, right?

And and because then trust is lost between instructor and student because you've reported them.

You know, may or may not.

Have.

Used AI in their in their coursework without permission and so I I think this.

Kind of helps overcome a little bit of that, a little bit of the uncertainty and helps build trust again like you were talking about, you know when people just aren't sure what to do then.

Then what do you trust in? Where is the foundation for that? Where are the parameters and every classroom these parameters to go? Hey, this is how we're approaching this.

Yeah, I would say a lot.

A lot of things you said there have hit home on things that I've mentioned before, so one my best advice to you of a faculty.

In terms of trying to maintain some kind of relationship, if they have to report a.

Student.

Is to set up expectations early on in the semester and explain that the faculty at EU of A have created this policy that mandates they report anything they suspect. Is it as as academic dishonesty, so.

You know.

At the end of the day, you're protected as a fact member if you're just following the policy and the rules and reporting what you suspect. I realize over the last year and over the next two to three or five years.

That Gray area of whether or not this AI generated text or AI generated content when the student didn't have permission is difficult. I agree with you that that tool, when if we're looking at a turned in report that says 80% of this content was generated.

By the computer and you can say these citations don't match up. This citation doesn't even exist. This doesn't hit the article or the OR the assessments question. This is way different than what a student submitted beforehand. That builds a lot of suspicion and and and and requires then a student and a fax number well.

In fact, remember to report something, right? But that tool.

Frank.

Does legitimize that concern in a way that you just didn't have going into this fall?

Hopefully saves a lot of time.

And creates less suspicion or or weirdness with the student but.

At the end of the day, if you at least have that first conversation where you're like, I don't want to report anybody, I want everybody to do their own work. I want to be transparent.

About the tools that.

Are permitted here, but I have to report something if I think it's a violation, like if if that's there at the beginning and then this tool is used, it's probably easier than reacting.

On the back end, when it just feels like I'm reading a computers paragraph or essay, you know? And so, yeah, I agree that hopefully it is a tool that.

Yes.

That protects that relationship, and I realize as an instructor how important that is.

You're not just the director of academic initiatives and integrity you teach classes.

I do, yeah.

My both my parents were teachers, so I I mean, I was raised in a teacher's household and.

I do think that.

There's a lot of that. I mean, that's honestly part of part of why you teach is just to get to know students and help people and help them learn, right?

I mean that's the value or the reward.

And so.

Reporting a case to a centralized office where you don't know that person or that system well.

That doesn't sound like a fun part of the job.

There's a lot of anxiety related to it, all right, and that's that's the emails and the calls we field every day.

Yes, I've never had a conversation with an instructor who was excited to report a student for academic integrity, right. They're always reluctant to do so. And so I think.

I think just bringing that sense.

Of.

Yes, here's, you know, like it's not just me.

This program is also showing that this work is AI generated. I have to do. This takes a little pressure off there too.

The.

And in terms of, you know, you kind of talked about communicating expectations, but what other approaches does the university recommend to instructors to make this kind of a more positive experience? You know, in terms of academic integrity?

So students are students aren't getting blindsided. They know what to expect from their instructors. They've got some kind of.

You know, expectations set.

What else can instructors do? I guess to help students navigate this, and also maybe to set themselves as instructors up for success.

OK.

One of the things that, at least if we're talking specifically about artificial intelligence kind of goes under the umbrella of just like setting up and communicating expectations and setting up and establishing a culture. This isn't part of the academic integrity policy, but we did create. I worked with the.

The Academic Integrity Code Committee that that also makes recommendations to the faculty Senate. I worked with academic integrity monitors and the chairs of both of our all university academic integrity boards.

Got input from all those folks to create what I would call syllabus guidance for faculty in terms of.

What they would want to permit or not related to Gen. AI, so if you went to our website, you went to the faculty page. There's at the at the very top of that says faculty resources. It's a big red button.

It clicks on a whole page that we've created that has a ton of resources, but one of those tabs or accordions is essentially those that syllabus guidance and there's really three options that we kind of crafted broadly for faculty to consider. One would be just the language related to like.

AI is not permitted in any way. OK? The next one is it's it's restricted use so they'll. So basically it's the approach that I'll permit AI on certain things. And this is my expectations and that paragraph really prompts faculty to consider how they want it to be used.

And then the third option is just like you can use AI and this is how you should use it and this is how you should cite it. And one of the links that's embedded in that that statement actually links to what our University of Arkansas Library came up with in terms of like a citation guide for.

For AI texts or images so.

The library is always on top of it.

Ohh my gosh, they helped so much legitimize what we were trying to get out there.

They they work so hard to do this and I'm so thankful for it. And you know I don't.

This is such a new tool that it does feel weird to sit there and look at the APA and MLA guidance related to how to site AI text, right? That's like, Oh my gosh, what do I do? But it's a great default if you don't have a different way that you want students to do it.

So sure, I've heard a ton of different approaches to how students are expected to site work related to AI techs, like just include all your prompts or say at the bottom or the top. This was created in some way with AI.

But.

If you don't have that, at least when it's like the hey, everything's permitted, or it's permitted at certain times, you have the libraries guidance citation guide right there.

And so.

Taking a look at that language and considering putting it in your syllabus, we're starting to get cases that have been reported by faculty that are using that language.

And those that are not. And since our board and our academic integrity monitors worked really hard to develop that language, they're like, why isn't it in there now? That doesn't mean that it automatically doesn't work out in the fact member's favor, but it's almost like in our little world.

Kind of like a hope and an expectation that faculty are adopting that language in some way, or adopting it, or or at least addressing it somehow with their their assignments, instructions or the syllabus and.

So.

Man, that would be where I would start. When you're talking about it, if you just looked at those excerpts and then just it doesn't, you don't have to copy and paste it, but at least it establishes just like a baseline of, OK, this is how I should maybe think about this. And a lot of that language we, you know, I took from benchmarking other schools and so.

We a lot of those other schools and Provost OPS came out with the same kind of like 3 pronged approach.

Because.

Everybody at first wanted artificial intelligence language and all these economic integrity policies, and I was like y'all have always been permitted or or been in charge of what students get to use as far as a resource, right. There's really no update there that needs to happen because you got to say it's OK to use it.

Alright.

But then it became so embedded in all the tools that we're.

Using.

And there were there were things like drain relief. Yeah. And there were things like Grammarly that, you know, made it more confusing that that. So this guidance seemed warranted. And so that was kind of our first start. The other thing is is whenever you.

It's hard not to use it.

If in fact we were plans to use turn it in on our website, we're going to.

Have.

According related to that as well, and there's a syllabus statement related to turn.

Then.

That we would also encourage, and so putting that in your syllabus statement, if you're going to.

Use that tool.

And using turn it in for all your students instead of justice like this detection tool. If you read a paper that you become suspicious of would be considered probably a best practice and a hope for us that the fact you're using it widely and that that's in their syllabus and it's transparently being used.

Right.

Yeah, those would be at least starter starting points.

No, I think I think that's one of the best things that you can ever do communicate and communicate expectations, communicate the procedures for things that happen. You know, in, in your classroom, whatever kind of course you have, whether it is in person or online or you know whether that's asynchronous or synchronous. However you are teaching.

If you don't tell students how you know you're running your class, how the class operates.

How can they be expected to follow that?

And so I think that's the foundation of pretty much everything, whether it's academic integrity with and AI or or something else, whether it's, you know, your assignment instructions, whether if you have problems submitting your assignment, who do you turn to, you know.

There are so many different things that happen in the forest or that you need students to do, and you've got to tell them how to do it. You've got to tell them what to expect from you.

Because that's that's the way you build success. That's the way you build that rapport and and so it it really helps.

But Speaking of different classes, we really focus on online courses here at Global campus and so of course.

We look at.

How does AI affect specifically online courses? How is it used differently than in person courses?

I think this is a little outside of my lane.

I you know on one end is an instructor for graduate and then the graduate course and then the the university respective classes I've taught.

There's AI built into all the tools on Ultra now. Yeah, where you can literally like create rubrics and stuff using AI, yeah.

Yeah, well, the instructors can. The the API is limited on the student side, but yes, the instructor side. You can create rubrics, you can create modules, you can create test or assignments.

OK. Yeah. Sorry.

Uh, and images as well, although.

Those, those are still a little bit scary looking.

Yeah, but I mean that's it's everywhere, right? If you're teaching a course that has an online aspect as an instructor, you're going to be using it. If you even if you don't know.

Right.

You know, I like randomly. You actually helped me with this. It was my rubric for that graduate course where they had a portfolio and you said, oh, just go to this part and generate this rubric related to a portfolio project to the end of my class. And it created a great template for a rubric that I got to tweak.

Of.

Yeah.

But it saved.

Me. Probably an hour, you know? Yes. And I was like, wow, this is crazy, that this is just now part of the, like, how this system and this thing works, you know?

Right.

I would say you know.

What I know about academic integrity in terms of research is that.

When students feel like they have a relationship with their instructor.

And they can see the meaning behind what they're being.

Asked to learn.

The chances of them.

Committing academic dishonesty go down significantly.

And so I think that applies to in person and online courses.

I think online instructors and this is where I feel like I'm getting a little outside my lane, but I did teach online classes.

You did.

I feel like you have to be a little more intentional about creating those environments where you can build a relationship with the student because you're not seeing them in class in a brick and mortar Class 2 times a week and you don't get.

To have those conversations after class.

Unless you make that an intentional time, so are you setting up office hours, or are you doing discussion board posts to ask them about them? And are you applying to those discussion posts? Are you providing real feedback related to all the work that they're submitting? Are they understanding why we're having them? Do whatever we're asking them to do as it applies to the work they'll be doing in the private sector?

Public sector layer.

All those things apply in both, but I think you just got to do a little more honestly as an online instructor to say like, hey, this really matters, you really matter. To me. This isn't just an online course, you're going to cruise through, we're going to do work, but this is going to make you better at whatever you decide to do later, I think.

That essentially.

That enhances academic integrity in my opinion, and it's something that online instructors I know here do really well and hopefully that continues because.

It's it's just gotta be part of the fundamental values in your course, right?

Yeah. And you hit the nail on the head with that one because that is a conversation we've not only had on.

The podcast before.

But also we have all the time.

With our instructors that.

Online education is inherently different because you have to be way more intentional with how you are building relationships.

And how you are building those opportunities for students to interact not only with one another, but with you, with the content, because you don't get those after class conversations or or you don't get that random question in the middle of your lecture that you know maybe side.

MHM.

Is a little bit from what you're talking about, but is is really important to the overall understanding of your content.

And so you have to be very intentional with.

Not only what you're giving students in terms of material and resources, but also how you're allowing them to interact with that with you with each other.

It's very important to set those expectations for yourself as an instructor when you're online, because a lot of times you kind of see online as, oh, you know, that's a more distant thing. But it's it's not.

You just have to be intentional about it.

And so I think that's absolutely true for academic integrity and it's one of the reasons we, you know, we advocate that.

Instructors are seen as much as possible in their courses. We call it instructor presence if it's an actual thing that we talk about a lot.

That's cool.

And so and so having your presence your face, when the students can see your face, that really helps, because then you're not just, you know.

A A robot typing with them from their computer. You're suddenly a human being.

And and it does it, it's harder to.

I think to be academically dishonest or any kind of dishonest with someone that you see as a human, as a person, than it is to just submit it to the screen, right? The screen doesn't matter but but people do.

Yeah.

And so having those relationships and building them are absolutely key in online instruction.

We had a former academic integrity minor, retired now associate Dean of College of Engineering. His name was Doctor Norm Dennis, and he taught online.

Engineering courses and.

There was one time I remember talking to I don't know if it's a group of faculty and where he was there. It was just the academic integrity matters. But I was like.

I just read all this research that says, you know, if you develop a relationship with a student that there's there's a much a decreased likelihood. And like before I finished this sentence, he was like, I teach online courses, and I meet with every single student individually. And I talk to them and I learn about them and they know me and I know them.

And he was.

I mean, he went off for two minutes about how intentionally he is to do that, you know? And he he had a military background. So honor codes and things were a big deal to him.

Yeah.

And.

That just kind of solidified in my.

Head like OK.

From a practical standpoint, it totally makes sense. But then if this is like practice by faculty too, they know this, you know.

Yeah, and.

You know, in in our asynchronous online courses you can't require asynchronous meeting, so you can't say Wednesdays we're meeting at 1:00 PM, but you don't have that in asynchronous. But you do have office hours and you can require students within a certain time frame to attend those. And usually you should have something.

Specific to talk with them about whether that's an assignment or a concept, whatever it is in your course that you would.

Like to talk about?

You can always do that. You can also host meetings where they are not required, but where you say, hey, I'm going to go over this concept or this assignment in more detail on this meeting recorded in case students can't come post it in your course. But then.

Always had that opportunity for students. Give students that opportunity to see your face, to talk with them, to get to know them, and especially kind of those one-on-one times because.

Then you can ask them, you know like that that starts the foundation of a relationship that you can ask.

About in a in an e-mail in the you know on a comment and an assignment you can say oh hey, did you try this thing out that you were talking about on this assignment and then you can do that more than once in in the semester so.

It's not impossible to build those relationships. It's you just have to be intentional to do it.

And.

I honestly think that's the crux of it.

Of.

Anything to do with the success in offline education or really even in person? It's just, you know, it's just a little bit.

Yeah.

The relationship building is a little bit different in person.

I think the other thing you battle not battle, but just the dynamic and online instruction that's probably different is you have people with a lot of real life experience more, you know like non traditional students that are working in the industry or had worked in industry or their graduate level students that have had some level, you know and so.

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

Particularly in my world, a lot of times I've seen some level of.

Of use of AI in these kind of courses, where it's kind of expected or permitted in their workplace and not necessarily permitted like this is an educational institution. We're focused on the process of learning, right. It's not a just end result thing. And that's a really hard thing to grasp when you're coming from a corporate or private sector.

Hmm.

Yes.

Right.

That's just like end result. Get it done. Move to the next and so.

So it almost screams the need to have that conversation more on the front end related to AI, because it's just it's just spreading like wildfire so quickly in that private sector.

That then coming into an environment where it's going to be somehow restricted or not permitted at all might be pretty novel to to people that haven't been in the higher Ed for very long or just restarting their their student career or something.

Yes.

And that's absolutely true for most of our asynchronous online courses. Our our global campus programs, we have a lot of those non traditional students, those people who are in industry and I've even had.

An instructor I wanna say last week or maybe week before you had that exact conversation with me about a student who had been in industry and that had been their expectation. And that instructor did not set expectations about not using a on the front end. So it wasn't, you know, like it was a conversation they had to have that with the student after the fact.

Yeah.

But it was still just very interesting to see those different perspectives because, like you said, education is about the process of learning.

But when you're in your job, it's about production. It's about efficiency.

And here we're not focused on that type of efficiency. It's a little bit different.

So. So that's exactly it. And I feel like.

AI has complicated. I think that that process of learning because it's like, OK what what should they be learning? First of all and what are the important things that they do learn?

If AI is one of the tools they're going to be expected to use once they get to that, you know, private sector or whatever, they're moving on to post degree.

Yeah.

How can we?

Teach them to learn the things they need to learn without AI, while also leveraging AI to help themselves learn to teach themselves more to enhance what they know rather than replace learning altogether.

Yeah, I agree. I think you gotta be able, I mean.

It's up to each instructor, and I think one thing you know that I always have to end up saying and it's it's it's important for me to mention this or clarify this like instructors according to the academic integrity policy, you do not have to.

Outlaw everything for it to be a violation. Right? You. Yeah, like, ideally you're saying students you can use this tool and this is how you can use it. And this is the only tool you can use, right? That's that would be best case scenario, but if.

The newest chatGPT comes out tomorrow and you didn't put in your syllabus. You can't use the newest version of chatGPT and the student uses it. That could still be considering that can make integrity violation. There's no way we can have this ongoing list of all the resources that are not authorized. You know what I mean? The student needs to get permission from you to be able to use it.

Right.

And so I think.

Faculty should.

To know that and then.

I want them to feel supportive, to be able to call us if they ever have a situation where they're not sure. Consults are always welcome, but I don't want people to feel like they have to have this ongoing updated list every day. Of all the things that aren't allowed. Because that's impossible. Honestly, that's impossible, you know, and.

You can keep up with it.

So.

For sure. Like I would say, best practice, explain what they can use, be really transparent about that. Have a conversation about that. That's great.

But.

That is not mandated by the policy, right? It's just it's.

Faith.

It's AI has basically forced us to try to be more intentional about that because it's it is embedded in so many things.

And thinking that AI can supplement learning, but we can still keep academic integrity would be ideal, right? Like.

That that it can be part of the educational environment, but that academic integrity can still be preserved is essentially what I think everybody wants. And so.

Hopefully turned in adds to that. You know that not necessarily. Every time you see any blue on your screen because it's highlighted by some.

Detection tool, right?

That that, that's automatically we got them, but it's that this is visible now.

It's visible it's something we can.

Look at to check and see. Is this an actual violation and I think any tool like that.

You're going to have some things that pop up that maybe, you know, it's a common phrase or something like that. That's not actually plagiarism or or maybe not even actually AI. But like you said, for the most part when you get.

Those.

Higher numbers #1 but.

Also, when you look at it, you can you should be able to tell.

Absolutely. It's it's great that we are having tools we can, you know we talked about earlier, we can feel a little more secure and how we're approaching AI in general. Also it's great to know that.

When we're turning more and more to AI or or detection software.

You know, however, that looks visibility software as we want.

Sure.

It's great to know that we are still considering the human element of these pieces. The human analysis of the work of these tools, the most important piece because we're still dealing with humans.

And.

While these are great.

Tools. They are not the know all end.

All be all.

I totally agree, yeah.

So.

AI and academic integrity.

Have come head to head now and and.

We've got a.

Lot of great tools coming to the university for instructors to use. Chris Bryson has given us also a lot to think about in terms of how we're approaching communicating about AI in our classroom to give our students the best.

The best case scenario, the best chance they have to be successful in our classes.

Any parting words of advice?

I think the biggest thing that I would say that we haven't touched on yet and I bet everybody's still listening.

Knows this, but that students students really appreciate when faculty make this a point.

We did a this was on our campus and it.

Think we streamed it, but I don't know.

But we did a panel of students that talked about how academic disaster occurs with technology.

And we did this in the fall because everybody's kind of nervous about how much people are. Students are using ChatGPT and all this stuff. And so we did a panel of students that are do a one credit internship with our class.

Or with our with our office.

And I remember just being blown away at how much they talked about, how they appreciated when, if it's like, one guy said.

Man, if I go on to Blackboard and their syllabus is is the only thing that's up and it's not well done. I know it's going to be a bad class and I'm probably going to drop that class and try and add a better one.

He there was another student that said I'll never be offended by an instructor that asked me to present what I wrote about in my paper because.

Sometimes students might not be able to do that if they're using the AI to generate all that content.

And how often they mentioned if instructors put some kind of parameters in place, how much they appreciate that and when those parameters are not in place, how much more pressure and uncomfortable feelings they have to try and get that same advantage and that.

Whenever an instructor is talking about this stuff or put or going the extra amount to put those parameters in place, they feel like a level of ease in the sense that they know most students are going to have to abide by those rules, or there's a real risk there.

Right.

And that that helps them when they apply to Graduate School and their Gpas are compared to the other students. And so when it's a focal point made by the instructor.

Are saying thank.

You, you know and.

So it's a thankless job to make this a focal point.

But so many people appreciate it.

And so I don't, I just want faculty to feel that that level of appreciation somehow. And so by adopting a tool like turn it in and going in and using the syllabus statement and identifying how it can.

Be cited and.

Using a you know.

Or a response monitor to do that first writing sample or doing Proctor you or anything like that. I mean, it does feel kind of weird, but at the same time, like if we don't do anything, it also feels weird, right? And it and a lot of the students that care about this stuff that are trying to do their own work appreciate that.

Effort from instructors so much, and so I hear from those students, and that their voices aren't as loud sometimes as the head.

Mines.

But.

They're out there and.

We appreciate anything and wanna be here to help faculty do those kind of things.

Sometimes the the loudest voices are not the voices of the many right.

And so that that's really great to know. And I think that's that's just confirmation that the things we do as instructors to communicate and set our students up for success are felt by students as as they're trying to succeed as well.

Uh.

Well, thank you so much Chris, for joining us today. Yeah, I really appreciate that. And thanks everyone for joining us here on the Pedagogy toolkit. Don't forget to subscribe.

Thank you. This was fun.