AI software potentially influencing students to plagiarize
From Sparknotes, to Quizlet and now text-generating AI like Simplified and ChatGPT—- students use this software to help with ideas for essays and research papers for course work.
And over the years, educators have depended on sites like turnitin.com and Chegg to filter out plagiarists who use AI to do a little more than find some inspiration.
CPO of Turnitin Annie Chechitelli said it’s important for educators to discourage plagiarism early on.
“It's really up to the teacher and the educational institution to determine if something is cheating,” she said. “So Turnitin doesn't do that. So, we provide information to help guide the instructors to have thoughtful conversations. For instance, they see a high percentage of ChatGPT being used---and they haven't sanctioned it. Or it wasn't part of the assignment. That's the time when there needs to be a conversation with and between the educator and the student around how they came up with these ideas and potential misconduct.”
The technology is so much faster, that college instructors might have a harder time deciphering what is the student’s work and what is AI. According to Digitaltrends.com, an entire class at Texas A&M University–Commerce was accused of plagiarism and had their diplomas temporarily denied after a professor incorrectly used ChatGPT to test whether the students used AI to generate their final assignments.
While scary to think about, Chechitelli said there are many positives to using AI for students and instructors.
“It’s evolving. And it’s not always a bad thing,” she said. “A lot of teachers and professors are using ChatGPT already in really innovative ways. Whether it be helping students learn how to edit and they learn how to write by editing. Or perhaps getting started or brainstorming or using it as a research assistant. These are not bad things. I think as a group, as a community an education community. We’re going to learn in the next few months to years how to incorporate this type of powerful technology.”
