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GenAI & AI Virtual Symposium 2023
* graphic image generated with artificial intelligence using Canva's "text to image" tool.
About the Symposium
The integrity of the teaching and learning mission of universities is facing an unprecedented challenge in the current landscape. The surge in companies and individuals willing to undertake academic work on behalf of students, coupled with the launch of generative artificial intelligence providing immediate answers and assignments, requires a reevaluation of traditional teaching, learning, and assessment methods. We can't ignore our societal obligation to ensure that our degrees are accurate representations of a graduate’s knowledge and skills.
This virtual symposium was divided into three parts:
- Outlining the threats and opportunities posed by the contract cheating industry and artificial intelligence;
- Exploring the solutions
- Drafting a best practices document for use by University of California community members in ensuring academic integrity.
The symposium, sponsored and organized by the Academic Integrity Office at UC San Diego, was open to all.
For further details and access to recorded sessions, please refer to the sections below.
April 17 Talks
| TIME | TITLE | DESCRIPTION | SPEAKERS | |
| 10:45 a.m. | Opening | The virtual symposium will be opened with brief remarks |
Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant Dr. Bertram Gallant is the Director of the Academic Integrity Office & Triton Testing Center at UC San Diego. She is an international expert on academic integrity, her latest book is Cheating Academic Integrity: Lessons from 30 Years of Research. |
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| 11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. | The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Academic Integrity | Tools like ChatGPT are in the news as they can be misused by students to complete assessed work on their behalf. But how much of a risk do they pose to academic integrity and are there ways to work with these tools, instead of against them? |
Dr. Thomas Lancaster Dr. Lancaster is a computer scientist with Imperial College London, UK, best known for his research into academic integrity, contract cheating and plagiarism. |
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| 3:00 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. | The Scale of Contract Cheating | As few as 0.1% of students are caught engaging in contract cheating, yet self-report surveys tend to indicate that more than 3% of students do it, but self-report surveys tend to underestimate bad behavior. This presentation will examine the prevalence, incidence, and rates of contract cheating, the sources of information from which these can be estimated, and the limitations of our these sources of knowledge. |
Dr. Guy Curtis Dr. Curtis is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Western Australia, best known for his writings that apply psychological theories to understanding academic integrity. Guy co-edited the first scholarly book on Contract Cheating in Higher Education and is the section editor on contract cheating for the forthcoming Handbook of Academic Integrity. |
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April 18 Talks
| TIME | TITLE | DESCRIPTION | SPEAKERS | |
| 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. | Rethinking Writing for Assessment in the Era of Artificial Intelligence | The rise of AI text generators is an opportunity for soul-searching about writing's relation to learning in college. Are there situations where it makes sense to encourage use of text generators or situations where we should move away from writing to another form of assessment? How can we better communicate the value of the writing process when we do assign it? And how might we talk with students about AI text identification software to encourage transparency? |
Dr. Anna Mills Anna Mills teaches writing at College of Marin and previously taught at City College of San Francisco for 17 years. Her resource collection “AI Text Generators and Teaching Writing: Starting Points for Inquiry” is featured in the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse, and her textbook, How Arguments Work: A Guide to Writing and Analyzing Texts in College has been used at over 45 colleges. See Dr. Mills' latest Chronicle for Higher Education article on the impact of GPT4 on student writing. |
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| 2:00 – 3:15 p.m. | Preventing Cheating through Assessment Design | For better or for worse, assessment has a powerful influence on what students do. This presentation explores how we can use that influence for good, to reduce rates of cheating while satisfying fundamental human needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence. |
Dr. Phillip (Phill) Dawson Dr. Dawson is the Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University and leads CRADLE’s work on cheating, academic integrity and assessment security. His two latest books are Defending Assessment Security in a Digital World(Routledge, 2021) and Re-imagining University Assessment in a Digital World (Springer, 2020). |
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April 19 Talks
| TIME | TITLE | DESCRIPTION | SPEAKERS | |
| 2:00 – 3:15 p.m. |
Detecting Contract Cheating: Human or Machine (recordinging only available upon request) |
As long as we have been aware of contract cheating, we have relied on academic insight as the primary means to detect it. This talk asks, and hopefully answers, the question- have we been heading down the wrong road? This talk also will cover successful and scalable approaches to detecting contract cheating, and what happens once we find contract cheating. |
Kane Murdoch Kane is Head of Complaints, Appeals and Misconduct at Macquarie University. At Macquarie he is responsible the handling of complaints, appeals and disciplinary processes, and continues his work on the detection of contract cheating and better ways to handle misconduct. From 2017 to 2022 Kane was Senior Adviser, and subsequently Head of the Student Conduct and Integrity Unit at UNSW. He is recognized as a leading authority on the detection of contract cheating and handling of serious misconduct in higher education. |
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Also on April 19th, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m., is UC San Diego's 13th Annual Integrity Awards Ceremony. If you are on campus, join us for this in-person celebration of the Integrity Champions who help promote and support a culture of integrity at UC San Diego!
April 20 Talks
| TIME | TITLE | DESCRIPTION | SPEAKERS | |
| 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. | Student Panel: What They Think About Artificial Intelligence & Their Learning |
In this session, students will share their thoughts about how artificial intelligence is going to impact academic integrity, learning and student success.
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Avaneesh Narla (Moderator) Avaneesh is a Ph.D. candidate in the UC San Diego Physics department. Avaneesh has been deeply committed to teaching since high school and has been a UCSD Instructor and is also a Graduate Teaching Consultant for the Engaged Teaching Hub. |
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Erik Wieboldt (Panelist) Erik is a Neurobiology and Critical Gender Studies Major in his second year of his BS. Erik plans on pursuing a combined BS/MS in Neuro and then to go to medical school. |
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Kharylle Rosario (Panelist) Kharylle is a Junior majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology. She plans to earn a PhD one day to do research in pharmaceutical and drug development. |
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Nathaniel Mackler (Panelist) Nathaniel is a senior undergraduate studying Cogs ML in the Cognitive Science department. He is looking to work in the data science field after graduation (#opentowork) |
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Sukham Sidhu (Panelist) Sukham is a Junior majoring in Economics and minoring in Data Science. Sukham is the Associated Students VP for Student Advocacy and planning on attending law school. |
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| 2:00 – 3:30 p.m. | Responding to Cheating Panel: Best 21st Century Practices |
Join this session to hear a panel of experts talk about the right responses to cheating in the 21st Century. Courtney Cullen will introduce the audience to the concept of non-punitive accountability and the benefits of taking an educational/developmental approach in response to cheating. Kane Murdoch and Sharon Dzik will then each talk about different types of non-punitive accountability practicse: Courageous Conversations and Restorative Justice.
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Courtney Cullen is the Senior Coordinator in the Office of Academic Honesty and Student Appeals. She is working towards a Ph.D. in Higher Education at UGA. She also serves as the Chair for the Southeast Consortium of the International Center for Academic Integrity and as lead editor for Integrity Matters. |
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Kane Murdoch is Head of Complaints, Appeals and Misconduct at Macquarie University. |
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| Sharon Dzik is the Director of the Office for Community Standards at the University of Minnesota. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Social Science with an emphasis in College Student Development. Ms. Dzik has experience in Restorative Justice practices in the community and through the Office for Community Standards. |  |
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April 21 Best Practices Workgroup (UC Community members only)
| TIME | TITLE | DESCRIPTION | |||
| 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. | Working Group |
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