This month, we’re excited to spotlight Dr. Greer Murphy, Director of the Academic Integrity Office at UC Santa Cruz. Greer recently joined us for the webinar Redesigning Assessments in the Age of AI: Practical Strategies for Faculty, where they shared thoughtful, real-world strategies for navigating the evolving landscape of academic assessment. Their insights into how faculty can rethink assignments and evaluation in light of generative AI sparked rich discussion. We’re pleased to dedicate more space to highlighting their important work.
Move Fast-Ish, Don’t Break Things: On Responsive, Responsible Uses of Academic Integrity and Artificial Intelligence
By Greer Murphy, EdD / Director, Academic Integrity Office, UC Santa Cruz
As a former writing program administrator turned integrity professional, I’ve spent the better part of my career thinking about how students learn, and how we as individuals– and institutions– can evaluate learning accurately and appropriately. I write to share some of the high-level ideas about academic integrity and artificial intelligence that have been rattling around in my brain since that fateful day in Fall 2022 when ChatGPT was made widely available to the world. Very much developed in synchronous and asynchronous dialogue with others (whose work I’ll reference wherever I can), here are three beliefs I hold about working with the “two AIs” that seem to have gotten more true with time, rather than less.
Working with academic integrity and artificial intelligence is everyone’s responsibility. Just as every higher educational space where writing happens teaches writing (a controversial claim, perhaps, but one I sincerely believe in), every course that seeks to assess students’ learning in an authentic, authenticated way teaches integrity. Anyone preparing students for a world shaped by technology must contend with artificial intelligence.
I don’t want to suggest that every course must feature stand-alone assignments about academic integrity, or should require students to use artificial intelligence technologies in any particular way– if at all. I do want to suggest we should go beyond proscriptive syllabus warnings to communicate our prescriptive expectations. Talk loudly, talk often–not just about what we believe in practicing integrity or using artificial intelligence, but why, and how we hope students will proactively follow in our ethical footsteps. Too much research to concisely cite (see this book) shows that when students trust instructors and understand the “why” behind their expectations, they stay more motivated, engaged, and confident. Motivation, engagement, and self-efficacy, in turn, help students resist the temptation to take shortcuts, whether or not shortcuts involve potential misuse of artificial intelligence or of any other tool.
Working with academic integrity and artificial intelligence requires systems thinking. For many of us, creating environments where students can #excelwithintegrity while experimenting with ethical use of artificial intelligence means rethinking assessment strategies that may have served us up to now. Authentic assessment and other creative approaches to grading will help (I suggest starting with Susan Blum’s work on ungrading), but on their own are not sufficient. There may never have been such a thing as a truly cheat-proof assignment, and as experts like Phill Dawson contend, any rules we implement knowing we cannot fully enforce them could end up hurting assessment validity. In the end, a “Swiss cheese” approach to assessment—where strategies deliberately layer from assignment to assignment within a course, and from course to course within a major or degree program–—may be the best we can do.
And even if we can’t do our best right away, most of us can at least begin to experiment with doing better. In this context, better might mean letting go of the idea that every exam must be closely monitored or that every writing task needs more than check/check plus/check minus grading (if it needs grading at all). It could mean working with colleagues to adopt department-wide, tiered policies on academic integrity, artificial intelligence, or both. It could mean implementing major-specific exit tests that are more closely invigilated so other exams can be less surveilled (I think of it as proctoring deeply rather than widely), or allocating time and meaningful resources to professional development for all instructors in a given area (e.g., general education) to restructure assessments.
Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Investing in academic integrity and artificial intelligence may have to mean spending less in other areas. But if either AI matters as much as we say it does, we should allocate accordingly. After all, budgets might just be our truest expressions of actual rather than espoused value (for two quick discussions, see this column, which pre-dates artificial intelligence, or pp. 92-94 of this book). In addition, we who teach in and manage academic programs in higher education know individuals and institutions must find ways to work together. For the sake of our students, our approaches cannot be either/or–we must make them both/and.
Working with academic integrity and artificial intelligence requires courage–and connection. None of the work we do in higher education is for the faint of heart. And if we are to successfully navigate the challenges of academic integrity and artificial intelligence, we need to keep having courageous conversations–with ourselves and our students. And to acknowledge that the costs and the labor of doing so (material and emotional) can be very, very real.
Next, I think we should acknowledge not only our labor, but our values. It’s not lost on me that courage remains one of the International Center for Academic Integrity’s Fundamental Values, alongside trust, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and respect. (I have colleagues who refer to compassion as an unofficial seventh value; I don’t disagree, but that’s another story for another blog). For many of us, there could be additional core values that also resonate, whether these come from universities, professional organizations, civic/religious groups, or other sources of solidarity and support.
Finally, although it’s hard–although most of us are seemingly, somehow, always busy–collaborate. If you’re not familiar with preponderance of evidence as a decision-making standard (I wasn’t before I started this work) and have never met with your campus’ conduct office (I hadn’t until I started this work), make a plan to change that. Integrity folks, I’m looking at you, too–there’s no reason we can’t reach out to academic departments, allied units (like libraries), or even student groups more regularly. Connect with your teaching and learning center, or reach out beyond your institution to groups like ICAI and POD. If your campus has the funding, consider joining initiatives like AAC&U’s Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum.
And even if it doesn’t, there is much excellent wisdom being shared for almost free across spaces like LinkedIn, podcasts, and other professional networks. (If you don’t follow the writing of Derek Newton, Ethan Mollick, Anna Mills, Laura Dumin, and Kane Murdoch, to name a very few, now is the time to start. Tricia Bertram Gallant and David Rettinger’s The Opposite of Cheating, which I reviewed in manuscript form and which features an accompanying website and perspectives library, is nothing short of game-changing). We may not be obligated to complete the work, as Pirkei Avot reminds us, but neither are we free to abandon it. So let’s get busy, friends. Let’s roll up our collective sleeves. Let’s start talking to– and importantly, across–disciplinary, professional, and institutional difference.
As I was reminded in a recent webinar (thank you, AAC&U), academic integrity and artificial intelligence are not so much discrete problems to solve as they are ongoing tensions to navigate. Like it or not, even (especially?) on days when the feeling is very much not, working with the two AIs is everyone’s new normal. The more we can all let go of the idea that we’ll ever be fully “done”, the more I hope you’ll agree with me that the best—the only—way out is through. And the best—the only— way through is together.
Here we go.
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Bio statement: Greer Murphy, Ed.D., is Director of the Academic Integrity Office at UC Santa Cruz, and serves as Vice President of Strategy and Membership at the International Center for Academic Integrity. A passionate advocate for feminist/ethnographic/applied approaches to scientific inquiry, Murphy’s research includes academic integrity and faculty development; multilingual writers and writing program administration; and policy process as it supports institutional development and change. Her work has appeared in the Journal of College & Character, Workplace, Journal of Academic Ethics, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, as well as several edited collections. She holds degrees in education, applied linguistics, and political science. Outside the university setting, you are likeliest to find her watching movies, hiking, or practicing some form of martial arts.
