Webinar: Building a Culture of Learning Integrity in the Age of AI

Daley Craft (0:04)

We're recording, and I'm letting everybody into the room. Good morning, everyone, thank you so much for joining. We'll get started shortly after ten o'clock, and we appreciate you being here with us. We still have people joining, so we'll give it another moment before we begin. Justin, go ahead and get us started, and then we'll hand it over to Blaire.

Justin Depuydt (5:47)

Hi, everybody. If you don't know me, my name is Justin Depuydt, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Proctorio. If this is your first time joining this webinar series, welcome, it's the second one of its kind, and we invite guests to speak about solutions to the academic integrity challenges we're all facing.

We've been excited to connect with the International Center for Academic Integrity. If you haven't checked out their resources and their website, I highly encourage you to do so. Last time, we had a lot of great questions afterward, so this time we're doing something a little different: our guest will present first, and then we'll open it up for live questions as she goes, rather than waiting until the end.

Today we're excited to have Blaire Wilson, President of the International Center for Academic Integrity and Senior Associate Director of the Honor Council at Emory University.

Blaire Wilson (7:51)

Thanks for having me, Proctorio. I'm looking forward to this conversation, and please send in your questions as we go. I'd love for this to be a conversation about learning integrity, rather than a lecture. I do teach every semester, so I could go the lecture route, but I'd rather hear the questions and challenges you're facing at your own institutions.

I want to share a bit about my background. I've worked in academic integrity spaces since 2013, when I got my start in higher education at a mid-sized public institution. For the last decade, I've been at Emory University, in the College of Arts and Sciences, supporting their Honor Council.

My work with the International Center for Academic Integrity spans about the same amount of time. I've been a member since 2013, and over the years I've increased my involvement with the organization, both because of the meaningful work it does and because I wanted to give back for how it helped me grow as a professional. I joined the conference committee in 2020, stepped onto the Board of Directors in 2022, and have now stepped into the role of President.

For those unfamiliar with ICAI, it's the oldest professional organization promoting academic integrity worldwide. We have more than 400 member institutions, along with many individual members, and we offer a space for anyone interested in the conversation around academic integrity to come together with like-minded people. Our members come from every kind of background, higher education, K-12, trade schools, and other organizations in the education sector, and they all bring ideas to the table.

I'd like to start with a thought exercise. Picture the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and think about how many people might cross it in a day. On average, about 46,000 vehicles cross the bridge daily, and most of those drivers don't think twice about it.

Or think about your grocery store. Have you grown everything you've eaten this week yourself? Most of us pick up avocados, potatoes, bananas, milk, and eggs without a second thought about where they came from or who provided them. Millions of pounds of fresh produce move through grocery stores in the United States every month.

Or think about doctors. We all get sick, and we rely on healthcare professionals, whether for a checkup or a prescription. A general practitioner sees around 84 patients a week, alongside all of their administrative work: filling prescriptions, signing orders, reviewing charts and x-rays.

Education plays the same critical role in how society functions. Every day, we rely on someone, somewhere, having done their job with integrity: the engineers who designed the bridge, the doctors who trained through a credentialing system, the farmers who grew our food. We move through the world trusting that these systems work, the same way I trust that the driver in the other lane will stop at a red light.

Education is what puts confidence behind that trust. It's why it matters, and why we're talking about it right now. So who is responsible for addressing how artificial intelligence is disrupting that balance? The answer is all of us. No matter how we show up at our institutions or companies, we all play a role in ensuring education keeps the value we agree it has.

At my own institution, we promote Copilot, so I generated an image by asking it to show what it would look like if it could picture itself. What it produced was, essentially, a person, which raised the question for me of whether AI is a friend or a foe. The answer depends on who you ask, and what work it's affecting.

AI is reshaping how students learn, create, and demonstrate knowledge, and it's changing how higher education administrators do their work too: how we stay current with fast-evolving techniques, and how we prepare students to use AI responsibly as they move into their careers. When I've posed that question to people on my campus, I've mostly heard anxiety, eye-rolling, and frustration, though some faculty are excited. Some have used AI to cut busy work from their courses and focus students on reflection and application instead. Others have gone back to the blue book, handing out paper because it can't be routed through a learning management system. Faculty are landing on both ends of that spectrum.

Because of this, my office has shifted a lot of its programming from students to faculty, and I'm now advocating for AI-related training to be mandatory for faculty. I've also heard from a librarian who is using this moment to talk about how research is conducted and why librarians remain essential, and from an IT colleague who is now fielding AI questions well outside their usual scope, because faculty don't always know who else to ask.

Unlike the shift to remote learning in 2020, there's no single moment of emergency forcing everyone to act on AI at once, even though many of us feel the urgency individually. I'd say the perception that academic misconduct is rising may have as much to do with our improved ability to detect and flag it as with any real increase.

So who is doing this work at your institution, and how is it organized? I've spent time at both public and private institutions, and worked as a consultant at several others, and I've found there's no single model. I've grouped what I've seen into a few informal categories:

• All-in-one: academic integrity sits inside one disciplinary office, often alongside Title IX and Code of Conduct. Conduct staff are well trained in due process and fairness, but may lack academic-affairs expertise.
• Faculty-focused: faculty largely handle violations themselves and report them to a central office. It works for some schools, but makes it harder to track students with violations across multiple courses.
• Academic integrity administrator: one person, sometimes an elected faculty director, owns the policy. It can be a rotational role, which risks losing specialized knowledge unless it's a dedicated staff position.
• Student-led: students resolve cases themselves, with some level of administrative oversight. It's a strong peer learning opportunity, but requires constantly retraining students as they graduate.

There's no one model that fits every school, it comes down to each institution's own identity and culture. At Emory, we have a hundred-year tradition of a student-led honor code, so overnight moving to a different model would be a radical shift, and that tradition is exactly why we've kept it.

I'd also push you to consider: does your policy address generative AI clearly? Three years into this, it should. Has your institution offered instructor training on detecting AI use? Are your detection tools being carefully vetted, and are the people using them trained to interpret what they find? And finally, do students have a real opportunity to speak back to any accusation made against them, since that due process is fundamental?

Justin Depuydt (36:18)

So, how do we get from where we are to where we need to be? You mentioned that the shift to remote learning during COVID forced fast action, and that this moment feels different. How urgent is this problem, and what's a realistic timeline for an institution starting from zero?

Blaire Wilson (37:17)

It's an emergency for specific people on your campus, even if it doesn't feel that way institution-wide yet. With unlimited resources, I'd roll out a mandatory course for faculty by summer 2026, covering the basics of using AI tools, how they show up in the classroom, and how they can support grading and workload. Since resources are usually limited, the more realistic path is an optional course built through your learning management system, similar to an HR training portal, with micro-courses on topics like detecting AI use, collecting evidence, or using AI in writing assignments.

On timeline, within the next two years institutions should understand the AI literacy level of their campus, and extend training to staff in student-facing and faculty-facing roles, as well as to students themselves, framed around ethics and the value of the degree they're working toward, not just a list of things not to do.

Justin Depuydt (41:50)

What training would you recommend specifically for faculty on detecting AI use, and are there resources ICAI offers as a starting point?

Blaire Wilson (42:15)

ICAI's mission is to promote academic integrity globally, mainly by creating spaces and communities for people who want to learn more. On October 15th, we're hosting our International Day of Action, fifteen hours of live-streamed content on academic integrity and ethics, much of it focused on generative AI. We also host an annual conference, and run communities of practice. Our biggest resource is really our members. We don't sell packaged solutions, but we can connect institutions with a consultant from our network who specializes in AI and academic integrity.

On faculty training specifically, there isn't one set curriculum yet, we're building this as we go. I'd look for programming developed by teaching-and-learning specialists, who are often doing excellent, under-recognized work here. Detection is also tricky because it depends on the assignment: writing is easier to assess for plagiarism, but short-form answers are harder, and free AI tools behave differently than paid ones, which can create an unequal playing field on campus. I'm also seeing real disruption in the sciences, in lab reports, data analysis, and computer programming, where institutions are still figuring out how to maintain confidence in a controlled environment. Some are experimenting with submission histories or keystroke recording as part of the response.

Justin Depuydt (46:49)

I'll add that if you're using a detection tool, it should come with training. Proctorio has an Academy that walks faculty through how to read and use the data effectively, and I'd hope other vendors offer something similar. Is AI changing how we should approach academic integrity, or is it revealing gaps that were already there?

Blaire Wilson (47:46)

I'd say it's largely the latter. Two weeks ago, I saw data presented from a conference in Australia, not yet published, so I won't get into specifics, suggesting overall misconduct rates aren't necessarily rising, it's just showing up differently. Why copy and paste when you can ask ChatGPT for something that reads as original? It's exposing gaps we already had, and pushing faculty back toward the core question of how we actually measure learning, and why we're still giving exams built around rote memorization instead of application. This is really about how we design assessments. I'd also point people back to the earlier ICAI webinar with David Rettinger, which covers a lot of the same ground on rethinking how we measure learning.

Justin Depuydt (50:08)

Quick note on Proctorio's training: it's called Proctorio Academy, and you can take it in smaller chunks. Reach out to your account manager to get access. Blaire, do you have any concrete examples of institutions that have really nailed this for themselves?

Blaire Wilson (51:16)

A colleague recently put together a video series for Harvard University on generative AI and academic integrity. Because every institution is unique, there's no one-size-fits-all solution, but the schools getting ahead are the ones actively using the resources available to them, some are even standing up their own AI centers. I'd also encourage institutions to look for grants aimed at addressing AI challenges, there's real funding available right now for exactly this kind of work.

On high-impact, low-cost steps: start using AI yourself. We've used it to develop images and design work, and to make our documentation more concise, it's also made video editing and animation far more accessible. I'm upfront whenever I use it. I'd also point people to YouTube, there are excellent interviews and explainers freely available. And ultimately, someone needs to own this as their responsibility. Since 2022, staying current on AI has been part of my own professional development every year, because it keeps changing, and I need to stay ahead of it to support my faculty.

For institutions without a dedicated role, find your champions, the people who can take this on, even if it isn't formally their job yet. It might be a single person or a working group. Here at Emory, people joke that I'm the honor council lady, but there are several of us working on AI issues, not just me. Splitting the work across a small group makes it far more manageable.

Justin Depuydt (56:27)

For faculty, administrators, and staff on the call today, what's one thing each group could do this week?

Blaire Wilson (56:42)

For administrators with budget authority: make sure your academic integrity professionals are properly resourced. If your honor code or AI policies are being violated and that office isn't staffed for it, the value of your degree is at stake. For faculty: start using AI if you haven't, get familiar with it, and talk with your students about how they're using it. In my own class, we build our generative AI policy together on the first day, which creates real buy-in. For everyone else: watch a video that pushes your understanding of AI forward, whether on YouTube or through our free International Day of Action session, and connect with your campus communicators about getting the right information in front of the right people.

To close, this is a big topic, and it's touching every part of campus in different ways, often without anyone whose job it is yet to own it. Institutions may need to think about creating that role. And it's worth separating AI literacy from simply talking about AI, we need to focus on teaching people how to use it well, and where the ethical boundaries sit, which will look different at every institution.

Justin Depuydt (1:00:17)

Thank you, Blaire, for your time and your work, and thanks to everyone for attending. If you registered, we'll send the recording, and if you have follow-up questions, you're welcome to write to us or to Blaire's organization. As she said, we're all figuring this out together, and if we can coordinate, we can make real progress.

Blaire Wilson, President of the International Center for Academic Integrity and Senior Associate Director of the Honor Council at Emory University, shares strategies for adapting integrity frameworks to today's evolving academic landscape. Drawing on more than a decade overseeing disciplinary processes, and on developing the curriculum for Emory's student-led Honor Council practicum, Wilson highlights both institutional models and individual actions that drive lasting impact.