Plagiarism, Academic Integrity and the 2024 School Year

In the United States, summer is winding down, and schools are preparing to open for the 2024 school year. This is a hectic time for administrators, teachers and anyone involved in education.

However, academic integrity is one of the topics in that discussion.

Right now, academia is reeling from a one-two-three punch with academic integrity. First, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many schools to use remote learning, resulting in a spike in academic integrity cases.

Then, in November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT to the public, granting everyone free and open access to a generative AI system that could, among other things, complete assignments. By January 2023, one study found that 89% of students had used ChatGPT for schoolwork in some capacity.

Then, in late 2023 and early 2024, we saw a series of plagiarism allegations being made against high-level black university officials. These attacks primarily targeted those involved with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs or perceived to have benefited from them.

As such, the atmosphere is taut as the 2024 school year kicks off. That said, there are five things that schools can and should focus on to navigate the incoming storm.

1: Preventing AI Cheating

First, with AI widely available to students, schools must determine how to minimize AI cheating.

To be clear, the issue isn’t just limited to essays or other written assignments. Students can use AI to answer test questions, generate art or do work for almost any assignment.

Though AI detection can help identify some cases, any strategy against AI must be more robust. For example, creating AI-resistant assignments, doing more work in the classroom, and allowing AI for some assignments can all be effective strategies.

The goal isn’t to find a magic bullet or a simple solution. It’s to combine approaches that discourage and deter unethical AI use. Detection, while important, is the last line of defense.

2: Teaching AI

The second but related question is if and how you will teach students about generative AI.

The reason for this is simple: AI isn’t going away. Even if your school completely bans the use of AI under all circumstances, you still have to teach the students about the policy and explain its reasons.

Most schools seem to be taking a slightly more nuanced approach. They teach about technology and even use it for some assignments. While this focus is very much on what human students are capable of, there’s at least some education into what AI is and what it can and can not do.

Simply put, ignoring AI is not a viable solution. Schools must address AI, at least in some way.

3: How Will You Prove AI Cheating?

Based on the best information I’ve seen, AI detectors appear to be improving. However, they are still imperfect, and that creates a problem.

With a traditional plagiarism check, a human can evaluate the findings and determine whether the checker was right or wrong. However, an AI detection tool does not allow such a human check.

As such, there needs to be a second line of defense that can help instructors weed out false positives and negatives. This can take many forms, including the ones mentioned in the first point. However, there has to be something here.

Blindly relying on an AI detector that can not be human-verified is a recipe for conflict. Figuring out how you will supplement those tools is crucial.

4: Handling Academic Integrity Issues Among Faculty and Staff

Stepping away from AI, the scandals from the early months of the year highlighted a simple problem: Schools are ill-equipped to handle integrity allegations filed against their own.

The allegations blindsided Harvard and other Ivy League schools. Whether they had policies in place, the schools could not effectively respond to the allegation. In particular, they couldn’t respond fast enough to get ahead of them.

The simple truth is that plagiarism allegations are part of the current political climate. Schools are being politicized, perhaps more than ever, and schools need to prepare for that reality before it becomes a crisis.

Once allegations become headlines, it’s too late to work on a strategy for dealing with them.

5: Bringing it All Together

Educators often treat academic integrity as if it exists in a vacuum. Their goal is to find cheaters and punish them. However, for students, that’s not how it works.

Every aspect of students’ education plays into academic integrity. What resources do struggling students have? What kinds of assignments are teachers giving students? Do students find the subject matter engaging? Do students feel that they have a voice in the school?

Everything from registration to graduation should be designed with academic integrity in mind. While some students will always cheat, every student who can be prevented is one whose academic career is improved, if not outright saved.

This is why schools need to think about academic integrity holistically. Their goal is to educate, not punish.

Bottom Line

I wrote a similar article in May 2024 to start the summer off. Without reviewing that article before writing this one, I hit many of the same points. That shows that things have remained relatively static over the past few months.

However, I hope schools have worked on these issues since May. Realistically, now is probably too late for the 2024 school year.

Still, these are things to watch and refine as the school year ramps up. Students are entering a very uncertain environment and will look to their instructors for guidance. For instructors, having good answers to student questions is a top priority.

AI isn’t going to kill academia or even academic integrity. However, it will cause changes.

The goal is to make those changes consciously and deliberately rather than being forced into them by panic.

The only way to do that is to think about the issues beforehand.