Academic integrity, a core value and a founding pillar of scholarship
Academic integrity – a core value and a founding pillar of scholarship – is a principle, strategy, and process that is much discussed but not so widely understood. This was the subject of the doctoral research work Alexander Amigud conducted at the Distributed Parallel and Collaborative Systems / Internet Computing & Systems Optimization Research Group at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) in Barcelona, in collaboration with Dr. Thanasis Daradoumis, Dr. Joan Arnedo-Moreno, and Dr. Ana-Elena Guerrero-Roldán.
Traditional approaches to academic integrity
Traditional approaches to academic integrity are generally observational, invasive, and inconvenient. They aim to collect evidence of wrongdoing, measuring how students cheat as opposed to how they learn. They strive to control learning and assessment environments, they undermine the promise of anytime-anyplace learning, they neglect individual differences, they ignore student preferences, and they impose limitations on how students should learn. This inevitably hinders the evolution of learning towards a more open state. It affects the accessibility, cost, and convenience of learning for both students and academic providers.
The doctoral research by Alexander Amigud at the UOC’s IN3 research institute
Amigud expresses the view that tests and exams are stressful enough on their own without subjecting students to metal detectors, frisk searches, biometric fingerprinting or video surveillance, or allowing third parties to access students’ personal computers. These strategies should not be part of the learning experience. Instead, we should strive to make learning enjoyable, convenient and accessible, and to preserve students’ privacy wherever possible. With this in mind, an idea arose for a computer-based academic integrity framework, one that would validate identity and the authorship of students’ work through behaviour analysis (aided by machine learning). This was the first project of its kind to target contract cheating, providing concurrent identity and authorship assurance in a convenient and non-invasive fashion. It fills the gap where plagiarism detection tools fall short.
This technology is ahead of its time and misunderstood – feared for its potential to replace humans in performing some of the assessment and validation tasks and for a potential to make attribution errors. These concerns are warranted, particularly now that commercial providers have realized the technology’s commercial potential and are starting to adopt their strategy to expand product offerings. This technology was not designed to be a ‘gotcha!’ tool, but a way to simplify the logistics of assessment activities. The OpenProctor project (http://openproctor.org) is an open collaboration and is seeking higher education institutions to join as a community and develop evidence-based practices, algorithms, and policies.
The UOC has provided a great platform and support for developing these ideas and for opening a new chapter in academic integrity research and open learning. Although the vision for this technology was that it would enter academia through open channels rather than commercial channels, this new approach to academic integrity brings a paradigm shift, transforming the notion of integrity from being student-centred to a commitment present at every level of the organizational structure. Research, publishing, teaching, and administration require as much integrity as a homework assignment does. The completion of this thesis was just a beginning; the research and innovation work shall continue.