One of the biggest challenges for colleges in the age of Generative AI (GenAI) is maintaining academic integrity. Concerns have spiraled since ChatGPT exploded, particularly around assessing students and verifying learning. Indian students have embraced GenAI. In a new survey by Deloitte, an overwhelming 93% said they actively use GenAI tools to save time and develop new skills.
The GenAI revolution has come at a time of broader transformation in Indian higher education. Classrooms across India are turning hybrid. The University Grants Commission’s provision of 40% of credits, which institutions can offer through appropriate online courses in any category, has opened up new possibilities. By integrating for-credit online content from global experts, colleges are dynamically upgrading curricula with the latest skills. As students learn online and increasingly engage with AI, maintaining academic integrity will be critical to steer authentic learning and ensure the credibility of online credentials.
Rethink assessments
Several Indian colleges have discouraged or banned the use of ChatGPT. The worry is that, if GenAI can complete their work, students will spend less time learning course content, both online and in physical classrooms. Educators are already struggling to evaluate whether a student’s deliverable was crafted from their own thought process, or generated through AI. The challenge in this era will be to ensure authentic assessment of learning. Do grades represent a student’s skills? Do student outcomes reflect effort and mastery of course material?
Assessments that gauge a student’s thought process would be one way to check this. Traditionally this has been challenging, since live viva exams require significant educator resources. GenAI offers a scalable Socratic approach to detect authenticity through GenAI-powered viva-style exams. Just as an examiner poses questions to a student in the classroom, GenAI can conduct comprehensive verbal exams and generate custom follow-up questions to evaluate comprehension and reasoning.
AI solutions can also strengthen academic integrity across other dimensions. One area is ascertaining if learners are putting in the effort to master course content. By locking grade-bearing activities, institutions can ensure students don’t skip ahead, but progress as they master every one of the modules in the class. AI can enable such self-paced learning that promotes authentic learning habits, with assessments that support mastery goals.
Aids like proctoring and lockdown browsers can help maintain exam integrity by blocking unauthorised resources and detecting unauthorised assistance during high-stakes exams. Setting time and attempt limits can be utilised to control exam attempts, to ensure fairness, discourage trial and error, and limit access to outside resources.
GenAI also gives faculty new tools to scale assessment creation and grading. AI-assisted assessments save time. Think of a customised multiple-choice test created in minutes and integrated into assignments. GenAI can be used create question banks for robust testing. AI-assisted grading will give teachers the cues they need to make informed decisions, with scores suggestions and feedback based on assignment analysis.
Evolving pedagogy
The implications of GenAI go far beyond plagiarism or students cheating. In the future, GenAI will be central to job skills, given the technology’s capability to augment human work. Educators will need to include effective teaching and assessment methods to encourage skills for an AI future. When the World Economic Forum asked companies what skills they would need in the next five years, “teaching workers to exploit AI and big data” came out on top.
Institutions will need to consider how students can be supported for the AI age, while committing to ethical practices and fostering a culture of academic integrity.
GenAI can be used to practice future skills like critical thinking, problem solving and communication. As a learning aid, tools like ChatGPT can tutor students, enabling interactive, tailored learning. With responsible use, the benefits can be enormous. UNESCO’s guidance suggests an approach where the use of GenAI tools should make learning or research more effective than a no-tech or other alternative approach. It cautions, “If not used purposefully to facilitate higher-order thinking or creativity, GenAI tools tend to encourage plagiarism or shallow ‘stochastic parroting’ outputs.”
Evolving pedagogy will need to focus on the development of new assessment methods and strategies that serve a higher purpose, deter misconduct, and verify learning. By fostering an academic environment underpinned by honesty, trust, fairness, and responsibility, colleges can ensure academic integrity runs throughout the learning process. The healthy learning habits developed on campus will continue to serve graduates in the workplace as well.
The writer is the Managing Director-India and APAC, Coursera
