Cheating in online courses using AI

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/us/ai-cheating-online-degrees.html?nl=california-today&regi_id=68355174&segment_id=224471

In this realm (online courses), A.I. cheating is quickly accelerating beyond the copy-and-pasting of chatbot-produced essays and problem sets. A.I. agents have made it possible for students to outsource a semester of work. With simple commands — “log in and complete my quiz” — a student can unleash what is, essentially, an imitation of themselves. Agents can watch lecture videos, take tests, write papers and chat with classmates about reading assignments.

There have always been questions about whether degrees from online programs are of equal value to those earned on campuses. But policymakers and education leaders have spent two decades championing online learning as an equity tool allowing nontraditional college students, like low-income working parents, to study wherever and whenever is convenient for them. Many students say online classes put degrees within reach.

 

Newline University has what is called - Course Hearing: The final evaluation is a live, one-on-one video conference oral exam with a professor.
So just like competence based cresits,
You have to prove your knowledge.

I guess AI Agent is able to impersonate the student. It's a real problem with Avatar impersonationg a student in live sessions.

But in general in AI era, delivery methods need adjustment, and colleges are making changes.
So if someone is cheating, they first of all cheating themselves.

When I took OU classes, we had once a week meeting in person with the instructor and all exams were in person in a learning center. There were also few cheaters, I recall.

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/wwn1VNdAcaw?is=tnWpbzJys5U85S_E

No translation needed.
Soviet popular comedy 1960s.

 

Trying to keep A.I. out of measuring knowledge is futile, just as it was for the World Wide Web, the internet, pocket calculators, slide rules and abaci. Universities are going to have to redefine what it means to be an accomplished learner worthy of a degree and then measure that, knowing that A.I. will be part of the process.

This also means they'll need to test to higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

When I was an MBA student, the big controversy was the Texas Instruments BAII calculator. Because it could calculate financials like Net Present Value and the like, schools were convinced that students would use the calculators as a subsitute for learning. Instead, schools figured out how to test at more complex levels, like USING the information in business decision-making.

Remembering and understanding are rudimentary, yet so much testing is centered on these low levels of learning. OF COURSE A.I. can substitute for that. (Although not always so accurately.)

When I defended my thesis at Leicester, they listened to me explain for about 10 minutes. Then the external examiner (from the University of Limerick) asked a simple question: what's really happening with this phenomenon. I answered him and he said, "Well, write THAT!" That took another year, but I ended up with a superior product. They forced me to go from understanding my subject and research to creating even more new knowledge. And they did it in 15 minutes.

Colleges and universities can do this. But first, they're going to have to get on with understanding the phenomenon of A.I. itself. And that's a tall order for people who don't recognize this as a transformational technology, the first since the World Wide Web.

 

And there may be even more transformational technologies yet to come, beyond AI.

 

Quantum computing would be my guess.

A.I. is changing the ontological framework of society. It is also changing the contexts in which we function--home, work, school, play, etc.

I grew up in the "Information Age." I feel that's coming to an end. No longer will the most valued commodity be information. Now, it will be intelligence and what people do with it.

This should also change the university. No longer will it be valuable merely to learn things, keep them in your head, and then pare them back on a test. Life is "open book," and A.I. will demand that our learning and measurement be that way, too. Beyond that, it will be important what we CREATE, not just what we know. In short, universities will have to create curators instead of scholars and practitioners.

This opens up a couple of cans of worms. First, if millions (billions?) of A.I. bots--in many shapes and purposes--are running about doing what humans until recently did, where will people find purpose and identity? How will they share in the wealth being generated? Will the vast majority of humans stay in the old paradigm of work and earning? (Thus, making a small number of us very wealthy while the rest live in the dregs, servicing the machines owned by the wealthy.) Or will we finally be freed of the concept of "working for a living" entirely? (Perhaps having our worth measured by what we contribute to mankind, not the sweat on our brows.) A pessimist sees the former, while an optimist sees the latter. Dystopian? Utopian? You decide.

This is coming fast. Singularity could be here in years, not decades. I believe robotics has currently huge capacities to enable this, once the computing catches up. I'm not talking about a robot dog who can bark and fetch. I'm talking about a day when just about every artificial creating can pass the Turing Test. What will we be then?

 

Even school are adjusting, while districts promoting digital documents to conserve resources, the schools are actually in effort to combat AI cheating, are increasing the use of paper.
So they are going back to pre digital.
And now some schools are asking students early in the school year to bring multi color printer paper.
Parents will provide or "ask" the district to provide or will add it to their school suply badget.
AI is changing operations in multiple institutions, industries and personal use.

 

I thought this was pretty clever, although it will only catch the most clueless of students.

https://mymodernmet.com/professor-catches-students-using-ai/

 

From the NYT article:

'Edward Gray, who has led online courses for various universities for decades, has another tell: when a student submits “a very polished paper that references all of these resources that were not required.”'
​

Uh oh. I guess I need to stop being an overachiever, or my professors will think I'm using AI.

 

lol, so students doing good work is bad now.

 

I guess that's one of the problems with allowing every individual professor to make up their own criteria for a cheating accusation--rather than bringing everyone together to brainstorm the issue, come up with a strategy for AI in coursework and exams, and develop specific tactics for that strategy that relate to reality. Thinking that turning in a well-written paper after a series of bad ones, complete with em dashes and including "it's not x, but it's x" as it relates to sentence structure, don't by themselves constitute enough reality to accuse someone of academic misconduct.

 

Rich Douglas said,

"When I was an MBA student, the big controversy was the Texas Instruments BAII calculator. Because it could calculate financials like Net Present Value and the like, schools were convinced that students would use the calculators as a subsitute for learning. Instead, schools figured out how to test at more complex levels, like USING the information in business decision-making..."

By the time I was an MBA student, that question had been asked and answered, so the Hewlett-Packard HP 12C calculator was required of all students. And a year after that, laptop PCs were required, too, and to make sure everyone had an acceptable one, everyone was issued the device on the first day of classes, with the price included in the tuition.

 

When it comes to A.I., we all have one of three paths in reaction to it:
1. Adapt. We submit to accommodate this new threat and what it's doing to our old way of doing things. Neville Chamberlain.
2. Rebel. We can fight against it, hoping to beat it back before it eats us up. This is what colleges and universities are doing now. It will fail.
3. Create a new reality, a new context. The ontology of our society is being changed and we need to understand it and move forward. Think Churchill. He was faced with dealing with Germany, and Germany had signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR. The USSR (rightly) feared a German invasion and threats to their oil fields in the Caucuses. So, Churchill did the unthinkable: he allied the UK with the USSR against Germany. As we know, the USSR and the rest of the Allies would become opponents after WWII, but Churchill knew the ontology had been altered permanently by Germany and a new reality existed, a reality which called for new thinking, new approaches. (It worked.)

 

Source: X
https://share.google/5gRVTguuazyHtWBNK

 

However, I think you're hitting on the very crux of the challenge. We can't "go along" with AI. We can't accept our diminished state, we can rebel and hope to hold it off, or we can recognize the new reality and act accordingly.

IMHO, the previous two transformative technologies were the World Wide Web and the personal computer. The latter looked like a toy and the former looked like a curiosity. But both fundamentally changed society.

Take Blockbuster Video. They were set in their paradigm: stores renting videos and charging late fees. When DVDs came along, they replaced VHS tapes and things continued. Then a little company called Netflix came along and eliminated both the stores and the late fees. Blockbuster brushed off the little upstart, even to the point of turning down an opportunity to buy Netflix for a paltry sum ($50M, IIRC). But then high speed internet came along, and that enabled streaming on-demand video. Whoops! Netflix was poised to jump in with both feet. Blockbuster were the proverbial dinosaurs who didn't realize the swamp's temperatures were cooling...until it was too late. This didn't just make Blockbuster (and its 9,000+ stores) disappear, it disappeared an entire industry. The ontology changed and things moved on.

If colleges and universities continue to try to adapt (reducing what they do as AI moves in) or rebel (trying to keep the invading horde from breaching the walls), they will fail. Instead, they need post-conventional thinkers (see Kegan, Cook Grueter, et al) and leaders to re-imagine the university in light of this huge paradigm shift. Or go the way of the dinosaurs. Their choice.