Episode 35: Innovative Approaches to Advancing Academic Integrity feat. Eric Gibbs – President, Americas, Ouriginal

More than 60 percent of university students freely admit to cheating in some form. Definitions of “cheating” range from getting someone else to do your work, using unauthorized resources, or copying sentences without citing sources. In today’s age of limitless access to information, how can institutions of higher education empower students to think critically and creatively? How can a learner-oriented, remedial approach to academic integrity improve over the punitive, potentially career-ending plagiarism policies of the past?

Eric Gibbs, President, Americas of Ouriginal, joins podcast host Kiran Kodithala on this episode of Illuminate Higher Education to talk about how Ourginal’s text analysis capabilities help reduce instances of potential plagiarism while improving the overall student experience. Eric is a first-generation college graduate with over 20 years of experience in K-12, higher education, and corporate markets.

He is passionate about working with startups and the opportunities they provide to work on every piece of a business, from marketing to operations and customer service. Building on his experience in startups and in higher education technology, Eric is excited to help institutions modernize their approach to academic integrity.

For a brief overview of their conversation, read the Q&A below. Then, listen to the full episode for a closer look at how colleges are addressing academic integrity and cheating today.

Q: How does Ouriginal work?

The biggest misnomer in the market is the idea of “plagiarism detection.'' Plagiarism is stealing or passing off ideas or words as one’s own without crediting a source. With our system, students submit a learning artifact like a research paper through their learning management system and Ouriginal compares it against a vast amount of content. Our libraries include 20 years’ worth of archived internet sources, scholarly journals, and academic publications that we have procured from publishers and other database repositories, along with all the content other students have submitted over the years.

Each piece of content has a “fingerprint” that Ouriginal’s algorithms try to match across all of the other sources and identify patterns or areas of concern, including missing citations. At the same time, Ouriginal reduces “false positives” by eliminating simple coincidences, such as two individuals with the same name, to increase efficiency for evaluators.

 Q: Why is this type of technology important?

The best-known study for academic integrity was conducted in the fall of 2002 and spring of 2015 by Dr. Donald McCabe, one of the founders of the International Center for Academic Integrity. We learned how significant cheating was during those years, and as we have transitioned to a global and digital economy, the problem is growing. Academic file sharing sites make it easy for students who are already stressed and pressed for time to take the easy way out.

Platforms like Ouriginal can be a deterrent, but the fact that cheating is so common raises several more questions. Is it an issue of one’s moral or ethical compass? Does it mean our educational programs are mismatched with the real needs of students? Are our academic integrity policies counterproductive? If text analysis algorithms can be used to support the learning journey by red-flagging areas of concern and returning an assignment to a student for revisions, perhaps we can do better at fostering real creativity and originality before a student is stuck with a black mark for plagiarism on their record for something as small as a missing citation.

Q: What are some of your predictions about the future of these technologies in education?

As far as text analysis technologies like Ouriginal go, we will keep optimizing over time. We will have to keep up with the digital sharing economy, academic file-sharing platforms, and other developments to keep our tools ahead of the game. AI and machine learning will help. For example, we are looking at deploying our tools in corporate spaces and legal and regulatory areas. Could our technology be used to evaluate countless legal and regulatory documents to search for patterns and recurring ideas? It is possible, so long as we can gain our clients’ trust and remain the best platform in the marketplace.

Listen to the full podcast episode for all the details.

After you listen, connect with Eric Gibbs on LinkedIn or Twitter @IPValidation. Learn more about Ouriginal by visiting Ouriginal.com and following @Ouriginal_O on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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This episode is brought to you by N2N’s Illuminate App, the iPaaS for Higher Education.

About N2N Services

Founded in 2010, N2N is committed to serving educational institutions and helping them figure out how to serve their students, faculty, and staff using the most innovative technologies and solutions available in the marketplace. Over the last decade, N2N has served over 300 academic institutions and enabled their student success journeys.

N2N Services Inc. is a leader in enterprise application integration and strategic advisory services for higher education, At N2N, we are committed to providing the highest quality solutions and collaboratively building student-centric solutions.

Learn more at https://illuminateapp.com/web/higher-education/.

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