Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
In terms of tutoring and online education, this has always been a part of my adult life. I have been teaching students since college. The first time was in my junior year in college, when I traveled to Taiwan with one of my Chinese instructors to take a class there and get immersed in the culture. There, I got a job teaching English, and I loved it. I also found that writing was a great pleasure, and I wanted to help others, so I started helping students with college papers after that. When I headed Books for Charity, I began a literacy program with successful book drives and donations. With my graduate degree in mental health counseling, I was able to help students across subjects, students of all ages, and even students going through the dissertation process. At some point, I realized I needed to devote myself to writing, and in doing so, I knew that teaching others how to read and write well regardless of what level they were at or what they were working on would continue to bring me great joy. Also, our nation’s education has always been of great interest to me. Thus, even though I hold an executive position as Apex Literary Management’s Vice President, I still tutor students to this day, which also has a dual purpose. I have completed a years-long study about how academic dishonesty is undermining the world’s education system, and tutoring students has helped me stay current in how students are using AI to complete their schoolwork.
Devoting myself to teaching for so many years has helped me understand students’ needs and what they do to get the best grades they can get. Tutoring thousands of students over the years and remaining on the front lines with them has helped me procure a unique knowledge set that helps me understand the problem of academic dishonesty. Armed with this knowledge, I have gathered a growing body of evidence that shows what influence AI has had on academic dishonesty in upper education.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
As a consultant, researcher, and educator, I have developed an intimate knowledge of academic dishonesty. While I was investigating the problem of technology-aided academic dishonesty, where essays are written for student “customers,” I was able to learn how essay mills were growing exponentially and into every program, subject, and language. This helped me understand how students would intermix cheating behaviors with actions that professors would expect their students to follow. For example, I learned through my contact with essay mills that students would write a rough draft, which were often written with little effort and thought, go to the free tutoring sessions that their professors wished them to attend for assignment credit, and then pay essay mill writers to edit their documents, which turns out is a lower per-page price than if an essay mill writer wrote the document from scratch.
Because of the thousands of documents I have read, edited, and wrote, I know how human beings write. When students show for tutoring sessions, tools like Grammarly could only get a person so far. The app is not perfect, and it requires some grammatical judgment to make good decisions for revisions.
When AI came out, suddenly, the documents students provided changed. The grammar was suddenly perfect, but the wording was superfluous and a bit odd. The formatting was often strange as well as citations.
I help colleges now as an author and consultant. My book How College Students Are Cheating and Why Everyone Should Care culminates my years of research into the problem of technology-aided cheating. My consultant practice, based on what has been learned in this book-in-development, stands out because I have procured my information in unique but meaningful ways that give colleges real-time knowledge about the ways students cheat and what colleges can do to prevent it.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
First, I believe that a value I hold, a sense of justice, is responsible for my natural curiosity to investigate and research a hidden problem that is quickly getting out of control. This value, justice, is the reason why I immersed myself fully to gain a knowledge base of this issue and why it’s such a big problem.
Next, I also value excellence. Excellence has driven me to learn every single little detail and ways academic dishonesty has been expressed and carried out. It is a worthwhile but impossible endeavor, trying to keep up with the countless ways students use to cheat, but it has led me to accumulate a valuable body of knowledge that educators can use to understand the problem of cheating in their universities and some real solutions that can work to ensure that student cheating doesn’t grow so large throughout their university that it turns getting a degree from their school into a joke.
Finally, I think my success stems from my ability to see how different areas of life interrelate with everything else. This “panoramic view” assists me in seeing potential problems before they occur. For example, the reason why I began investigating this problem of college cheating was because of a video ad I saw from an American essay mill company. They have since taken down the ad, but I remember a nurse explaining how she simply wants to be a nurse and help people rather than writing the papers her program demanded. She used Ultius to help her with her paper, and she got an A in her class, with an all-knowing smile.
I thought, wow! Nurses are having other people write papers for them! That thought made me feel unsafe because writing assignments and papers help students cultivate the skills they need to do excellent work in the field. Students severely undervalue what they learn by writing any paper or assignment, which includes logical development and developing an eye for detail.
I certainly don’t want my nurse to not notice the difference between one milligram and ten, and I don’t want a nurse taking care of me when that person didn’t care enough about their schoolwork to write their own papers.
After that, I threw myself into my research, and what I learned will alarm people about how widespread the problem of cheating has become.
Let’s now move to the main point of our discussion about AI. Can you explain how AI is disrupting your industry? Is this disruption hurting or helping your bottom line?
AI has affected the writing industry, for certain. I heard from a Google insider that major textbook companies are turning to AI to write textbooks for them, hedging out possible authors. This means less opportunity for people who aspire to become a writer or author, limiting the economic opportunity one would have pursuing a career with their skills.
However, the consequences are more serious in education, and consequently, can affect the bottom line for all industries. Since AI appeared, I know from my daily contact with students that they have flocked to AI as a solution to write their papers for them. This could have possible consequences for a student, including a plagiarism accusation, but the possible consequences for every industry is more serious than that.
With nearly half of the students I help with their schoolwork every day, this next generation of graduates will most likely graduate with less skills than previous graduates who had to do their work without AI. For example, when I was investigating paper mills, there were requests to write essays in nearly every single field and industry, and the essay mills were on an upward trajectory for growth. Now, with many AI writing tools free or low cost, this opens up the possibility to cheat to a wider venue.
In my work with students every day, the amount of AI-written papers I see have increased from 25–50% on any given day. Rarely do I have a day where I don’t receive at least one AI-written paper.
Which specific AI technology has had the most significant impact on your industry?
ChatGPT and similar AI technology that writes in response to prompts is what most people use to write their college papers.
Can you share a pivotal moment when you recognized the profound impact AI would have on your sector?
Well, I saw a rash of papers that had perfect grammar and sentence construction, but there was something odd about the wording and some of the formatting. I mentioned it to my son, John, in school for programming and AI, because I knew that something must be going on. In my years of experience, when I see a major change to college students’ papers, I knew that collectively, students could not have suddenly increased their writing skill. It takes several months at least of working diligently to increase multiple aspects of writing skill, including wording, sentence structure, essay structure, paragraph structure, and all applied with perfect grammar.
That’s when he recommended I check out ChatGPT. I experimented with the writing prompts my students submitted for their assignments, and I was able to reproduce entire sections or whole papers word-for-word. This is when I realized that the world’s education systems could be in trouble.
How are you preparing your workforce for the integration of AI, and what skills do you believe will be most valuable in an AI-enhanced future?
I help prepare the workforce at universities by teaching them how they could integrate AI and have students use it in a limited function in their research. For example, AI can be useful when you’re brainstorming, and it could offer an example of the way you can structure an essay.
However, in my work, I prepare college staff for AI detection, which remains a tremendous challenge for professors, and universities need to keep on top of educating their staff so that a plagiarism accusation does not ruin the academic career of an undeserving student. I believe this is what prevents a lot of professors from making a plagiarism accusation for AI use. However, there are ways to build a plagiarism case for suspected AI use, and my training program ensures that professors have all the skills they need to clearly and with as much accuracy as possible identify AI-written papers.
Even if writing no longer has a valued place in society, the skills one develops through writing a paper for school will always be important, and there is really no other way to develop those skills. We have fields where we rely on the expertise of the professionals where our lives hang in the balance. How many precious moments are wasted when a medical professional checks AI for a patient in heart failure? That skill that helps our professionals develop into knowledgeable experts is being bypassed, regardless of what technological advances are made in the future.
What are the biggest challenges in upskilling your workforce for an AI-centric future?
For my endeavors, it makes sense to continue exploring ways AI can be used in schoolwork, both for its drawbacks and benefits. Colleges cannot ignore the fact that AI tools are already widely used, and students might have to use AI in their future work. I believe a balanced approach is best when dealing with AI in upper education. For example, it would be beneficial for students if their universities incorporated how AI is already used in their industry so students don’t get left behind.
However, on the flip side, it still remains of paramount importance for students to write their own work so they can reap the benefits writing papers and written responses and build critical skills that are needed to be a competent professional. Writing teaches you how to reason and think. There are very few ways to develop these skills, and to supplant that in favor of AI is not acceptable.
What ethical considerations does AI introduce into your industry, and how are you tackling these concerns?
The use of AI creates a myriad of different ethical problems and conflicts. While AI tools hold promise for businesses, the same AI tools undermine the integrity of the educational system.
First, the issue that affects students most is plagiarism. Plagiarism is not only about not crediting an author for their work. Plagiarism can occur when students use a tool, a friend, or an essay service to write papers for them. The essence of this type of plagiarism is based upon dishonesty. A student who uses AI purports that they actually wrote a paper they are handing in, but they did not. In my professional experience, AI writing is appearing everywhere in classrooms and paper submissions. For example, a student shared her classmates’ response posts with me, and there were enough AI-written materials in those posts to cause concern.
The widespread use of AI-writing in schools across the country is cause for concern. It could be too late already. A diploma from a school is not only a representation of higher pay in the future, a career, or how much money went into a person’s education; it also holds the promise of achievement. A diploma from a high school or college should represent the skill level of most of the graduates, at the very least.
With AI, how can schools guarantee the skill level of their graduates? How can schools guarantee that they are producing competent professionals?
I am tackling these concerns through my work with universities as a consultant.
What are your “Five Things You Need To Do If AI Is Disrupting Your Industry”?
1. Learn about all the AI tools students might use to complete their schoolwork. Sometimes, students don’t mean to cheat. Instead, they misunderstand and make mistakes. Many I speak with don’t know that certain AI tools could land them in hot water. Because it’s so new, there is a lot of confusion regarding AI. For example, a lot of students I speak with don’t realize that using AI to correct their grammar, a tool available on Grammarly, might make their papers receive a high AI score if run through an AI detector, either a high percentage of the likelihood that the paper was generated using AI, or all the sentences highlighted as AI-written, or both. Having key personnel as well as professors know these tools well can help them convey exactly what tools and features are acceptable to use in their schoolwork and what are not acceptable to use.
2. Create clearly stated policies for all staff and students to follow regarding AI tools. School policies work best when they are detailed and informed. Using the knowledge gathered from testing all the AI tools (which should also help you learn about the AI detectors as well and what it looks like when AI is used to write papers and other school materials) will help school administrators learn what policies to create and implement that will serve their college community best. Knowing what behaviors will get them into trouble helps establish a sense of justice in the community. I have heard some overweaning, punitive professors and colleges lambast and fail students for making simple errors. By relaying to students expectations, it helps students understand what the school expects of them and allows them to be co-creators in their education process.
3. Explain the reasons for your policies in enough detail that will invite cooperation. Expecting that no one cheats on exams and papers is unrealistic. There will always be some students who strive to do as little as possible to get through their programs, but a vast majority might resist temptation and comply if the school explains to students why it requires that they write their own papers even though they might be required to use AI tools when they graduate. For instance, I notice a lot of students have trouble connecting with the content. It doesn’t happen very often, but some express that they don’t really care about the content they are studying or writing papers. It does little to hear from me all the good that they are getting from writing their papers regardless of the subject. It makes more of an impact if they hear it from college staff, people who have more control how well they do in their academic environment.
4. Establish writing programs that clearly explain to students how to write, step-by-step. I have worked with thousands of students over the years, and the way colleges integrate writing vary widely. Some colleges provide little direction and expect that students will arrive possessing the skills needed to write perfect college papers. Unfortunately, it simply doesn’t happen that way. These students often show up to my sessions scared and confused, but more commonly now, many of them show up with an AI-written paper to see if it could pass a tutor’s eye before submitting it to their professors. A comprehensive college writing program helps discourage the use of AI because often, the level of detail needed for multi-part assignments makes AI writing programs’ flaws stand out. Therefore, even when students use AI, they learn quickly that it will not give them a high grade or a passing grade, and yes, I have seen many students in the last year experience the utter disappointment in AI writing tools as well, or worse, they got caught using it and have to write their entire papers over again in a limited amount of time. If you offer students the easier alternative, following the steps to learn how to write papers instead of suffering the consequences of getting caught, it can dissuade some students from using AI.
5. Don’t buy into the myth that AI-written materials cannot be detected. I have experimented with AI writers and AI detectors, and I have found that it is possible to build a case for AI use. Like all AI tools, AI detection tools have their shortcomings, but overall, they do a great job in detecting AI-written materials. Because of all my experiences, I can recognize the signs of AI-written materials fairly easily and with accuracy. I had been able to do that from the get-go. I know my level of accuracy well because I am not the students’ teacher, so when I had call students out for AI use, most of them admitted it to me. It helps that I encourage their autonomy to make their own decisions, which encourages them to share freely with me.
Every professor and school administrator can also learn these tools as well. For instance, professors can type many variations of their school assignments using AI tools and see what they get. It will help them learn what AI-written papers will look and sound like, and what types of answers it will typically generate for their writing prompts. When school staff sits through my training course, they will also learn how to recognize AI writing easily and how to build a plagiarism case against a student.
What are the most common misconceptions about AI within your industry, and how do you address them?
1. AI documents are flawless.
AI-written work contains built-in flaws and shortcomings, if you know what to look for. AI-written work lacks personality. Every single document written with AI sounds exactly like all the other AI-written work. Details are often lacking as well as citations. The formatting can be a bit strange sometimes, like enumerating the points in the paper. AI writes like AI, not humans, so these weaknesses stand out. It is what tipped me off that students were using programs like ChatGPT in the first place.
2. It is not possible to detect AI-written content.
AI simply doesn’t write like a human, so these differences stand out to me. The thing that makes professors most nervous about leveling a plagiarism accusation to a student is that they buy into the myth that it is simply not possible to detect AI-written material. Most people subscribe to this myth and accept it as fact.
In my book, I address this misconception and show educators how to accurately detect AI-written work. While plagiarism detection services like Turnitin have an AI detector with their program, it’s still an area that gives professors the heebie jeebies because even with using an AI detector, it doesn’t provide the “dead-to-rights” evidence professors feel they need to levy a plagiarism accusation to a student. I have a multi-step process to increase AI-detection accuracy and build a solid case for plagiarism.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
Sometimes, I make up quotes and then paste them onto my monitor. Life can be really challenging at times. For example, I had a really difficult July this year. We got hit with a huge bill, and then the breakers for our HVAC unit and our washing machine melted. I upkeep multiple responsibilities in my life, so experiencing months like this really challenge me. So, for months like these, I made a quote to help me shift my focus and lift my spirits:
Concentrate on what’s going right, and then anything seems possible.
~Kirsten G. Schuder
Off-topic, but I’m curious. As someone steering the ship, what thoughts or concerns often keep you awake at night? How do those thoughts influence your daily decision-making process?
Well, remember the story about the essay mill that started out catering to nurses? When I investigated essay mills, I have to admit, I was getting a bit nervous. I saw paper requests roll in for all programs, including ones where you want a competent, educated, trained professional. These essay mills had expanded into doing math and science homework, taking tests for students, and every other assignment under the sun for many different programs, including aerospace, engineering, medicine, nursing, teaching, military, criminal justice, and law. I certainly don’t want to walk across any recently built bridges, and I am usually not very comfortable with the idea of going to a hospital because cheating has become widespread across those same programs due to AI.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
In this age of AI, I would like to start a movement where human creations are appreciated and heralded. The people who made up AI are talented individuals, but the work AI generates is unoriginal, but sometimes amusing at best. My movement would be the human movement.
How can our readers further follow you online?
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Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!