Survey: 30% of College Students Used ChatGPT on Assignments
Plus, cheating cases "more than double" at top U.K. universities. Plus, International Quick Bites from India, India, India, Zimbabwe and Wales.
Issue 190
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Survey: Nearly One in Three College Students Used Generative AI on Written Coursework
Based on the survey itself, it’s probably actually worse than that.
The survey is from intelligent.com - which I don’t know. But they say they surveyed 1,000 American college students and found:
30% of college students have used ChatGPT on written homework
Of this group, close to 60% use it on more than half of their assignments
3 in 4 ChatGPT users believe it is cheating but use it anyway
I say it’s probably actually worse than the 30% because that number is based on the finding that just 46% knew of ChatGPT and, of those, a whopping 64% said they’d used it “to help them complete a written assignment.”
So, when you figure that this survey came out a month ago and that the whole world knows about ChatGPT now, the real number, as awareness grows, is probably closer to the 64% mark. Moreover, ChatGPT is just one AI text generation tool. Either way, the 30% tab probably skews low.
Of course, using automated text generators does not mean cheating. Though, the survey also says:
Twenty-eight percent of survey respondents also believe that their professors are ‘probably’ (23%) or ‘definitely’ (5%) not aware that they have used the tool on their assignments.
And that jumps to around 83% if you include the ones who said their professors were “probably” aware they’d used ChatGPT on an assignment. What that really means is that more than 80% of students who said they’d used ChatGPT on an assignment did not cite it or disclose it. That’s not good.
I’ll end with these two findings from the survey:
Three-quarters of students who have used ChatGPT for homework say it is ‘somewhat’ (46%) or ‘definitely’ (29%) cheating. These numbers increase when including students who say they are familiar with ChatGPT but haven’t used it themselves. With this group included, 80% say it is ‘somewhat’ (48%) or ‘definitely’ (32%) cheating.
Yikes. It’s an odd thing to note that so many students consider using text generators to be cheating when it feels as though a surprising number of professors do not.
And:
When asked how popular they believe the use of the tool is among other students, 76% say its use is ‘somewhat’ (50%) or ‘very’ (26%) popular.
From the U.K. - University Cheating Doubles After Switch to Online Exams
Reporting from the U.K., which may be behind a paywall, carries this headline:
University cheating doubles after switch to online exams
About which I say, no kidding. And good for the paper for reporting it.
Their headline continues:
Sharp rise in alleged plagiarism and misconduct in wake of pandemic changes comes amid warning AI such as ChatGPT will make situation worse
Again, no kidding.
From their story:
Plagiarism cases at universities have risen on average from 157 in 2019 to 353 last year, according to responses from 21 members of the Russell Group.
I had to look up the Russell Group but it’s an affiliation of the “top” research universities in the U.K. There are 24 members.
From the reporting:
Cases of academic misconduct, which includes collusion, have risen from 201 to 464 over the same period
It cites case surges at University of Glasgow and University of Oxford.
The reporting goes on that:
The university [Oxford] said that its students were asked to sign up to an honour code for open-book and closed-book online exams. The code requires students to confirm that the submitted work is entirely their own.
Good grief.
The story continues about how “very seriously” the Russell Group schools take academic integrity and how an increase in reported cases does not necessarily mean an increase in cheating. Though, come on.
Either way, here are the two notes I feel I make every time, because they are important. One, good for these schools for releasing their numbers, even if they were required to. Two, the cases reported here are only the ones that were caught and resulted in formal inquires. Most incidents of misconduct - somewhere north of 90% - are never caught and precious few of those are ever formalized.
International Quick Bites
In Uttarakhand, a state in India, an official said exam copying and cheating was “an important issue” and that the state’s new “anti-copying law in Uttarakhand will stop cheating in the exams, and releasing exam papers in pen drives." Sure.
Also in India, authorities have widened an investigation into cheating on a teaching certification exam. The inquiry now includes a police officer and her husband.
In Wales, nine firefighter trainees have been “sacked” for cheating on a training exam. Authorities said “the service has resolved to terminate the employment of nine individuals with immediate effect.”
Back in India, faced with administering 3.1 million exams across more than 8,700 exam centers for high school exits, a state has rolled out new procedures and tools and “made foolproof arrangements to ensure that there are no cheating incidents.” These include invoking national security laws, installing TV cameras and creating a special state police task force.
In Zimbabwe, authorities have invalidated the exam results of “almost 5,000” for “allegations of cheating during the 2022 end of year exams.” Students used WhatsApp to share and buy and sell answers. Teachers who participated earned jail terms, the reporting said.