Online course provider Coursera is launching a tool to detect whether students used artificial intelligence to complete their work.
The detection tool is part of an entire suite of “academic integrity” features launched Tuesday, as Coursera joins a growing education technology industry. The suite of tools actually uses AI to assist educators in finding fraud, as well as creating assessments and helping with grading.
“Online learning has become a powerful tool for institutions to better prepare students for a rapidly changing world,” Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda said in a press release. “However, universities must ensure it meets the rigorous standards required for academic credit. While Generative AI introduces new risks for student misconduct, it also provides unprecedented opportunities for universities to enhance academic integrity at scale.”
The rollout has not yet been announced, but the new tools come as academia is having to contend with AI on several fronts, both in students using the tools to create content and in universities using the tools to find plagiarism and other forms of fraud in academic works from professors and researchers. Academics using AI to do their own research and write papers is also highly controversial.
Coursera’s AI detection tool does not “use AI to track AI,” according to Inside Higher Ed, but rather uses an AI bot to ask students about how they got their work product. Those questions could prompt more questions, and a report is sent to the instructor.
“It won’t say you cheated or didn’t cheat but will help a professor understand if it looks like you might have cheated,” Maggioncalda told the outlet. That way, some of the controversy behind forcing students to put their papers into a plagiarism tracker that produces a percentage match to other works, leading to an accusation of plagiarism, is mitigated.
Another tool announced in Coursera’s suite is the AI Assessment Generator, which generates “diverse math, text, and multiple-choice assessments tailored to courses and seamlessly integrating them into assignments,” according to the company.
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One feature currently in a pilot program is AI-Assisted Grading, which suggests scores and feedback for an instructor to use based on an analysis of the assignments given. Similarly, there are AI Peer Reviews that “facilitate peer feedback with AI-powered insights, evaluating text-based submissions and generating grades using assignment rubrics,” according to Coursera.
“In a global pilot, 97% of surveyed Coursera Plus learners preferred AI grading over peer grading, citing better feedback quality, increased rigor, and reduced wait times,” the company stated.