In a digital landscape where artificial intelligence can craft essays, solve equations, and even engage in sophisticated academic discourse, the challenge of maintaining student integrity has never been greater. As AI tools become more adept at mimicking human thought, educators face the daunting task of distinguishing between genuine student work and AI-assisted submissions.
The paragraph above was generated by ChatGPT. But without being told, would you have guessed that AI was in use?
For many, separating student work from AI-generated writing has become increasingly difficult as commonly used programs like ChatGPT continue to improve. But according to Dr. Halloran, Head of the Honor Council, certain steps are taken to detect AI usage and maintain students’ integrity.
“If a student turned in something that was AI or plagiarized, probably their teacher caught it on Turnitin or some other source, and then they sent it to me,” explained Halloran. After she receives the work, she runs it through several other AI checkers to ensure the legitimacy of the accusation.
While a single checker may be untrustworthy, Halloran believes using several provides a reliable report. Some programs report the probability that the work contains AI, while others provide a percentage of how much AI has been used.
“So you could get different numbers because they’re reporting different things,” Halloran said. “If something like that was happening, I would check paragraph by paragraph, and usually I find out that it’s one or two paragraphs that are the offending thing, and the rest might have been handwritten.”
Apart from AI checkers, certain word usage and writing styles often signify AI usage. “Very often, the two biggest indicators are made up citations and made up quotations.”
But despite AI becoming more advanced, Halloran states that the overall number of cases that face the Honor Council hasn’t increased. “Do I see an increase in the percent of Honor Code breakages that are AI, yes. Am I seeing an increase in Honor Code breakages overall? No.”
“What’s happening is that a student gets desperate or maybe even a little bit lazy. We’ve all had those days when we’re rushed to the last minute and didn’t get around to it,” said Halloran. “They take shortcuts. And what’s changing is the nature of the shortcuts in some cases, but I think almost no student in this school sits down and says, ‘I think I will cheat today.’ ”
The heart of the Honor Code still hasn’t changed: turning in unoriginal work results in an Honor Code violation no matter the source.
“What has changed is that, in some cases, students don’t realize that they’re using AI. When Microsoft first came out with Cortana, a lot of kids didn’t realize that it was AI and it would give you AI generated information,” said Halloran.
While Cortana, Microsoft’s “personal productivity assistant,” was deprecated in 2023, it was previously integrated into the Windows search bar, providing easily-accessible answers from Microsoft Edge. With the search bar located right at the bottom of the computer screen, Cortana was a convenient source of information that might not have been as easily recognizable as AI. “And so part of the thing that has changed is the lengths we have to go to to educate students that if it’s not yours, it’s still not your work.”
Overall, the Honor Council serves to remind students of the importance of academic honesty and personal integrity, values that are more important than ever. “You need to have a culture where people are trusting one another,” said Halloran. “We, as teachers and students, all have to be careful it’s not a mindset of, ‘Oh, can we cheat better than you can catch us?’ Nobody wants to play that game. I mean, our teachers want to get the best out of the kids.”
As technology continues to develop, Halloran foresees the possibility of AI causing changes to the Honor Code or Council. However, she’s optimistic that these changes will be for the better. “There’s certainly lots of creative uses for AI, as long as you’re citing it,” said Halloran. “I think as we all get more used to it as a tool, we’ll be able to be more responsible, and that should actually make things easier on our council.”
For the time being, Halloran encourages students to stick to their own ideas rather than face the consequences of an Honor Code violation, but she also understands that mistakes happen.
“Making one mistake does not define you. We treat coming before the Honor Council once as a learning process,” said Halloran. “That’s one reason we’re so super careful about how confidential we are—because mistakes shouldn’t define anybody, especially a teenager.”
