AI, academic integrity and all-inclusive education

To make sure that everyone gets the best from artificial intelligence in education, we need to take stock and think critically about how to uphold academic integrity and its key values such as honesty, trust and fairness.

That’s according to Elva Casey, Registrar of Hibernia College, who believes everyone involved in education needs to pay attention to the technology and reflect on what it can and cannot do.

“There is no question that AI will shape the education sector in the coming years and it is already having an immediate impact on teachers, transforming classrooms and assessments, the potential is brilliant,” she says.
“Now we need to pause and really do the research to consider how best to engage with artificial intelligence as a teaching and learning community, because this is the future.”

Navigating the new world of AI in education

Hibernia College, which offers a broad suite of degree programmes in education for primary and post-primary teachers, is taking a measured and engaged approach to AI, notes Casey.

This includes setting up a community of practice that includes educators of today and the teachers of tomorrow.

“We need to understand how AI can benefit all teachers and learners,” she says. “And I think the only wrong approach to AI is to try to ignore it or to assume that we know enough about it at any one point. That’s why we’ve taken a community-of-practice approach where we are all learning along the way, and we are including students in those conversations. We are not letting the fact that we don’t know everything stop us from engaging, we all keep moving and understanding more.”

Like many, Casey and her colleagues needed to adjust quickly to ChatGPT and other generative AI tools when they first burst onto public consciousness late in 2022.

“I had only taken up the post of Registrar in Hibernia College a few months before they became available,” she recalls.

As an institution, Hibernia College has delivered a mix of online and in-person, flexible and accessible learning for more than two decades. According to Casey, this experience and expertise was an advantage when flexing to the arrival of generative AI.

“We already had a mature and well-developed online structure within our programmes and they had many interactive elements,” she explains. “So we started looking at ways where AI could help to optimise course content. That space felt quite comfortable to us, we were not starting from zero.”

Assessment, too, quickly came under scrutiny, adds Casey.

“Some of the first conversations around this new technology focused on the boundaries around assessment, exams, literacy, and we had to figure out what guards we needed to put in place. There was a high level of concern and anxiety in academia.”

Some forms of assessment are more vulnerable to a breach of integrity through AI, she notes, so Hibernia College carried out a review of each of its programmes to evaluate the assessment. This has reshaped thinking, says Casey.

“Like many other institutions, we have moved away from the traditional essays and we have started to build assessments more around specific course content, or something that the student has done, such as a placement, where the student needs to describe their experiences in a particular school or setting,” she says. “We look for these more reflective elements and link them back to a specific module or learning outcome. It’s a different type of question and answer.”

A boost for another AI

An unexpected benefit of this new normal has been a greater emphasis on academic integrity, according to Casey, who welcomes the development.

“That was a really positive side, because up to then, academic integrity was a bit sidelined in academia,” she says.

“Of course, institutions have long had policies and procedures to protect academic integrity and guard against plagiarism and cheating and unfairness, but these tended to focus on investigating cases and dealing with the consequences. The difference now is that academic integrity as an area of academic study itself has come to the fore, where you have people seeking out the scholars who are studying it, and more support for conferences and publications. That change has been quite unexpected, and quite big.”

In practice, when she is speaking to students at Hibernia College, Casey helps them to think about generative AI and academic integrity in a more personalised way.

“I ask them to imagine they have a sister or brother who has completed the programme they are on and who has done really well, they got a first class honour. Then I ask them to think about scenarios and whether each of them is OK,” she explains.

“Is it OK to ask that person for advice? Of course. If you’re struggling with some part of the course, is it okay to ask that person questions? Yes. Is it okay to let them look at your exam question or assignment and give you some suggestions? Perhaps. Is it okay for you to get them to write down the answer to the question? No. That personalises it for the students, it makes the ethics and impact of the technology more relatable.”

Keep the connection

While AI has opened up these and many other conversations in education, Casey has some concerns about its potential impact on the relationship that ideally needs to build between teachers and students.

“It felt like teachers moved quickly on the potential for the technology to do some of the heavy lifting in the classroom, particularly to make content more engaging for students,” she says.

“AI technology can do that, but I would feel a little anxiety when I hear people saying AI is great for helping students who might have challenges around language, for instance. And that the teachers no longer need to worry about that side of things if they have, say international students in the classroom, because AI can quickly make the content accessible for them.”

Casey cautions that outsourcing too much to AI in education could erode the all-important connection between students and teachers. She is well aware of those bonds, having been a primary-school teacher for 12 years at a school in south Dublin, where she enjoyed building trust and learning about the students in her classroom.

“The relationship between teacher and student is critical,” she says. “In the classroom you really get to know your students and what works for them, and this can be a pure joy, especially with the younger primary school students who are so open to learning.”
What she sees today is that teachers are embracing AI to develop and personalise content for students, but she argues that using the technology to broker that design may also create a distance between teacher and learner that might unfairly impact some.

“It is easy for teachers to rely on the technology, and this can remove them from an important part of that connection with students. My concern is particularly around the impact on the more vulnerable students,” she says.

Community of practice

Buy-in from teachers, learners and assessors is important for more systemic understanding about how AI can impact education, according to Casey, and Hibernia College has built up community of practice, where educators and students in the college share and discuss their thoughts and insights around AI technology.

The College has also identified a number of academic integrity champions who raise awareness of the issues around both types of AI, technology and integrity.

This has all fed into a new and more nuanced process for dealing with cases where academic integrity has been breached. The focus is now on learning why it happened rather than on penalties, and on wrapping the findings into new ways of assessing.

“We have built up a lot of shared expertise and are learning from people’s experiences,” she says. “That buy-in from the wider community is hugely important. People are constantly up-skilling and processes are improving, tutors can work collaboratively with students and get them onto the right pathways.”

Hibernia College is also researching attitudes to AI, polling people in the institute itself and in the schools where teachers work on placement.

“We want to see how teachers and pupils feel about it, are they anxious about admitting to using it,” explains Casey. “It’s important that we debate and understand the nuances of how people feel about the technology in order to develop best practices for it.”

She has been engaging more with the Learnovate community too, engaging with events and participating in a panel debate about the impact of AI on teaching, learning and assessment.

“It’s really helpful to get the wider perspectives on AI that the Learnovate network brings,” she says. “It’s lovely to have the chance to find out from others about the opportunities and practises. There’s so much to learn.”

Learning journey

Casey’s curiosity and eagerness to learn is probably unsurprising, given her own background. She describes herself as having an “unusual journey” into her current role, and it takes in many areas of expertise.

Starting with a history degree, she went on to do a Masters in European and Public Administration in The Netherlands, and a placement in Brussels during her Masters resulted in her working as a press officer with the European Commission.

“Part of the work in the press office was to do outreach with primary schools, getting the young pupils to think about how European Institutions play a role in day-to-day life,” she recalls. “I loved working in the schools, and that led me to become a primary school teacher in Dublin. It was such a fulfilling job, I loved it. You get so much back from children in the classroom.”

Casey took time out with plans to write a children’s book, and applied for a part-time role as a school-placement tutor with Hibernia College.

“I thought that would help me keep a hand in education, so I went for the interview and they called me back to interview for permanent faculty with the College,” she says.
She went on to become director of school placement and then Registrar at Hibernia College, while also studying for a doctorate in Trinity College Dublin.

What drives her now is an obligation to ensure that teachers are entering the education system with an understanding of the need to engage with AI, but to do so in a way that helps everyone.

“I think we are all on a journey here, and we need to step back and think about the needs and diversity of people in a classroom, whether in person or online, and to cater for everyone,” she says.

Attention and caution

Casey’s advice to everyone in the education sector now is to pay attention to AI, to work together on it and to avoid rash or unconsidered moves.

“I think the worst thing people could do is to disengage from AI and the impact it can have on teaching, learning and assessment,” she says.

“It is here to stay, teachers and their students are using it and will use it into the future, and we need to understand the challenges and opportunities that it brings. To do that, we need a collaborative approach, to get buy-in and input from everyone you possibly can in your learning community and further afield. We need to do the research, consider the path ahead and proceed with caution.”