Academic Integrity Arms Race
Cursive Technology, Inc
Verify authorship, calculate effort, and build transparency through the writing process. Now available on Moodle LMS.
One of the questions during a webinar a few weeks ago was whether we were contributing to an arms race between cheaters and administrators fighting for Academic Integrity.
It's a great question and part of a larger debate around the tactics and strategy for addressing integrity in the classroom/on campus.
This video (we added clips rather than just exporting the audio) has my answer to that question.
In short, my experience is that this race is entirely asymmetrical, with cheaters having the upper hand, specifically when it comes to contract cheating and essay mills, which are undetectable. By focusing on the writing process, we can create a new foundation, providing better data, verifying authorship, and leveraging effort rather than detecting based on the finished product.
On the one hand, administrators need new tools to prevent or detect dishonesty (the current tools only go so far).
On the other, we can change the narrative by focusing on authorship and student ownership of their effort and writing.