ChatGPT Has Colleges in Emergency Mode to Shield Academic Integrity

EdSurge

Jeffrey R. Young

January 24, 2023

Colleges around the country have been holding emergency meetings of their honor code councils or other committees that govern student cheating.

The reason: a whole new kind of cheating that is suddenly possible, thanks to a new AI tool called ChatGPT. The technology, which emerged just a couple of months ago, can answer just about any question you type into it, and can adapt those answers into a different style or tone on command. The result is it generates text that sounds like a person wrote it.

As we explored in an episode of the EdSurge Podcast a couple weeks ago, students around the country at schools and colleges have figured out that they can easily ask ChatGPT to do their homework for them. After all, it’s tailor-made to craft the kinds of essays that instructors ask for.

So professors have been quick to respond.

At Texas State University, for instance, professors across the campus began emailing the honor code council with cries for help.

“So many professors right now are struggling with burnout and disengagement and so many other things already, that even those that embrace paradigm shifts are at minimum sighing—ugh, this is another thing for me to pay attention to,” says Rachel Davenport, a senior lecturer in biology at the university who serves as vice chair of the honor code council.

That’s among the professors open to change, she notes: “The other prevailing mood is terror, thinking ‘This throws everything that I do into chaos. How am I supposed to catch it?’”

On this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we bring you part two of our exploration of what ChatGPT means for teaching. Our focus is on what college honor code councils are doing to respond.

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