The wide availability of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools for learners has ushered in a new era for academic integrity, with established assessment policies and practices needing urgent revision now that students can generate responses to many tasks with just a couple of clicks. This whitepaper, AI, Academic Integrity, and Authentic Assessment: An Ethical Path Forward for Education, provides Anthology’s perspective on best practices to maintain academic integrity, outlining what we believe is the most ethical response to the rise of generative AI, and detailing both the possibilities and limitations of learning technology to support the use of AI in higher education.  

This paper also addresses using anti-plagiarism tools such as SafeAssign versus AI detectors and outlines our view that the best defense against plagiarism is to provide instructors and institutions opportunities to use AI-powered technologies to support authentic assessment. You can accomplish this in Anthology Learn with these best practices:

  • Create tasks that focus on critical thinking, personal perspectives, and self-reflection are much harder for generative AI technologies to produce in a way that appears genuine. Activities might also look to explore subject areas where these tools do not have as much historical data with which to work, such as current and local events, personal experiences, and future predictions.
  • Use the AI Design Assistant to provide suggestions on course structure, test questions, and even grading rubrics when building courses. By streamlining some of these time-consuming tasks, instructors have more time to focus on authentic assessments and other ways to make their courses engaging and beneficial.
  • Peer assessment and group work are also great ways of adding authenticity to tasks. Blackboard Learn comes with all the necessary functionality to facilitate group tasks, collaboration via discussion, and peer assessments, helping instructors to apply the principles of authentic assessments within online and hybrid learning modalities.
  • Personalized assessments allow learners to express their ideas and perspectives and instructors to observe each learner’s writing style, making it easier to spot any AI-generated work that the student may submit later.