Episode 62: Zooming In on Academic Integrity with Eric Gibbs
Three Pillars of Academic Integrity discussed in this episode.
Good course design
Good teaching, mentoring, coaching
Deterrence Technology
Six Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity discussed in this episode.
Honesty, Trust, Fairness, Respect, Responsibility, and Courage
Resources
Eric’s email: ericcgibbs@gmail.com
International Center for Academic Integrity
Transcript
Melissa Milner 0:09
Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. I'm your host Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious, and very easily inspired. In this third season, I explore my interests as the main focus of the episodes. If you have listened to seasons one and two, first of all, thank you. Second of all, this season will be a little different. It will still be centered around interesting topics and their connections to education. I'll continue to have interview episodes, maybe a top 10 episode here and there since they are very popular. But also some episodes will be just me sharing about a topic. Similar to my podcasting with students episodes from season two. New episodes come out every other week. If you enjoyed the podcast, please share it with anyone you think would benefit from listening. It really helps the podcast grow. Thank you for supporting The Teacher As...
Melissa Milner 1:05
In this episode, I am chatting with Eric Gibbs. And we're really going to talk about encouraging conversations about originality. So Eric, welcome to The Teacher As... Can you tell the listeners a little bit about you?
Eric Gibbs 1:18
Absolutely. Melissa, thank you for having me. So I've spent really the last 20 years in education technology. My first true exposure to the EdTech industry was a little startup in the Bay Area called Aplia. It was led then by Stanford economist, now Nobel laureate Paul Romer. I say that it was kind of my first startup, I had a failed startup about two years prior to that, that allowed me to meet my my wife. So failed startup, perfect, perfect, in make in meeting my wife. But really at Aplia, it allowed me to to meet what became my mentor, that provided really a successful 14 year journey that we were able to work together, in three companies. So you know, since then, that experience, the guidance and mentorship really provided me with kind of that knowledge and skills of where I am today.
Melissa Milner 2:16
Who was this mentor? And what did it lead you to?
Eric Gibbs 2:20
So at the time, it's Sally Elliott, and Sally was the CEO at Aplia. She moved on to Thomson Learning. Prior to that, I guess I should set the stage, who is Sally Elliott. So Sally was in the publishing industry, for years prior to that. Kind of decided to get out of the traditional publishing side and get into ed tech. And so you know, her mentorship was was one that, you know, I really value at the time. Now, looking back, you did, it's kind of one of those things, you don't really realize what you have until it's until it's gone. 14 years later, you look back and go, Wow, that was such a remarkable ride. And so I've kind of modeled my team today, as well as kind of my experiences and skills in what she kind of guided and passed along in those 14 years.
Melissa Milner 3:14
Excellent. So do you own a company now? Is it an app?
Eric Gibbs 3:18
So Ouriginal is an academic integrity tool. What it spent really the last 20 years in the plagiarism prevention space. So Ouriginal came out of what became Urkund and Plag Scan, a Swedish company and a German company. And what I do is I actually manage the America's operation. So I'm president of the America's operation for them. And what we do is, your listeners might be familiar with kind of the terminology, plagiarism detection, and hopefully we'll kind of lean into that word and what it means. But really, it's it's a tool that supports school districts, high schools, colleges, universities, corporations, in their academic integrity initiatives.
Melissa Milner 4:05
Wow. So let's get into that word, plagiarism detection.
Eric Gibbs 4:09
Yeah. So this is one that's... so my background is I've spent time in ed tech. I spent eight years with a company called Turnitin, so your listeners might be familiar with with that tool. I've spent now two, almost two and a half years here at Ouriginal. And the word plagiarism detection. That's what everybody talks about. plagiarize there, there's no such thing so I'm here to set this over the kind of the record straight. There's no such thing as a plagiarism detection tool. Well, what I mean by that is most individuals think of, of a student submitting a paper magically through a learning management system or directly to a website. It then providing the student or learner with a percentage score of what most individuals think is a plagiarize score. And then the individual evaluator then evaluates them on that score. So I'm here to set the record straight that there is no plagiarism detection tool out there. What the tool is, is it's a text similarity detection. Big difference. It might be a couple of words, but what we do is we actually at Ouriginal, we take the tool, or we take that individual written assignment, we compare it against a vast amount of content. So, 20 years of archived internet, scholarly journals, and academic publications. So from textbooks all the way to scholarly journals, such as Discovery Education, it could be a scholarly journal from a large database provider, and then 20 years worth of student material. We compare that against the individual student's submission, and then we provide a similarity score. And that's all it is a similarity score of content that was provided and matched in the individual learner's submission. With that said, that then is up to the individual evaluator to make a comparison of did the individual submitter copy and paste? Or did they prob maybe just miss cited? Or did the individual... did the individual potentially having a mis... misconduct if they're a researcher in that in that individual artifact? So that's where the misnomer is, there is a and that's that's what the tool has been utilized for, for 20 years, there's just been a misunderstanding of what the tool does, from the trainings and implementations as well as kind of the overall understanding from from the general community. There are and hopefully, Melissa we'll talk about kind of the teaching and learning perspective, so that that's the other, you know, the other the other misnomer is, this is just the plagiarism police. It's not, you know, we the the tool is not meant to be punitive, it's meant to be a teaching and learning component, specifically for the individual student. It's actually the business model is that the school would purchase this for the instructor. So we don't actually sell directly to the student we don't sell to the we don't actually pay, you know, the procurement is not through the individual instructor, it's at the school or district level. And then what we do is we integrate with Google Classroom, we would integrate with a Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, or even Brightspace, for example. So, in Ontario, the entire, for example, the entire province uses Brightspace. So we just integrate, and then all of the actual province has access to that tool within that district school board.
Melissa Milner 8:01
Where where's your passion within this? Is it in the teaching side of it? Or just, you know, trying to create a better tech tool for teachers? Where do you lie in your actual passion around this?
Eric Gibbs 8:14
Yeah, so So my passion I would say is on the EdTech side. It's it's really trying to create business models that are scalable, so that's first and foremost. Kind of creating teams, those teams, you know, to bring it together something that's in the education space. So that's something that you know, on the education side really drives me. Being able to kind of turn the knob turn that turn that dial, that's something extremely scalable. On on where the passion for specifically Ouriginal, so by did assist the the management team in launching the you the at the time, it was the North American operation. So when it was Urkund, and the product was Urkund, and I launched the North...with our our Swedish organization, launched the North American operation in October of 2019, which was Ouriginally Incorporated. That then expanded into the North American Lab Tam operations. And Ouriginal then was launched with the acquisition of PlagScan, which as I indicated, was a German operation in September of 2020. The two companies then merged Urkund and PlagScan of 2020 to become Ouriginal.
Melissa Milner 9:37
I see I see that makes more sense. Thank you. Thanks for explaining it all. So you know, you have probably K through 12 educators listening right now. What are the reasons that they might use your software, and how do you recommend it being used as far as like you said not punitive, but more encouraging conversations about originality?
Eric Gibbs 10:03
Yeah. So I mean, I guess, you know, the question that we that we always are asked is, why do you need a plagiarism prevention tool at the time. The tool is moved into more of an academic integrity tool. And there are some differences and additional tools and services that make it an academic integrity tool. But I think it's probably important to talk about kind of the magnitude of the issue that one would need one, one being an instructor, a district, or a high school that would need a tool like Ouriginal. So the most well known study was from the late Dr. Donald McCabe and the International Center for Academic Integrity. And specifically to high schools, he actually study or he actually surveyed students. So, these are actually students that filled out survey so they weren't actually forced, they actually self selected and there was so there was no bias. And they actually were asked three specific questions. So sample size was roughly 70,000 high school students from this the fall of 2002, to spring of 2015. So wide variety, he, as you can imagine a of of technological advances between over 15, right, so as you will, but Dr. McCabe's surveyed 70,000 high school students within the US, so it was constrained in the US. And that actually demonstrated that about 64% of students admitted to cheating on a test.
Melissa Milner 11:38
Okay.
Eric Gibbs 11:38
So, Ouriginal couldn't help that type of, you know, that type of tool 58% admitted to plagiarism, which we could actually then assist, which we'll talk about briefly. And then 95% said they participate, you know, the student participate in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism, or copying homework. So this, again, was in 2002, to 15. Without most some of the digital resources, I think we can say that we would expect, especially coming out of the pandemic, we're still going through it, we would expect to see those numbers increase. But again, International Center for Academic Integrity is currently getting ready to re... to actually revise this study and actually circulate this in higher ed, then they will come back to K 12. But what we actually can do at Ouriginal is we can use this in a non punitive form. So we talked about kind of that 58% admitted to plagiarism. So how do you actually deter that right? What you can do is, let's say use the use case in Google Classroom. Prior to submitting an assignment, that written assignment, you can enable this and as a formative use case. So allow the student to be able to actually see after the submittal see that similarity report, see where the citations in quotes, maybe it was just a missed citation, to be able to use it as a deterrent model. So there's going to be some students that will completely plagiarize and, and and cheat. And the International Center for Academic Integrity will say 20% of all students will have that you can kind of bucket that into 20% of students are going to cheat and plagiarize, 20% are never going to, and 60% is what we actually would say or the International Center would say, you want to kind of try to keep the guardrails on. So from our our stance, what we want to be able to do is to use it as it as a teaching and learning tool. So here's how you do that. You provide them with the similarity report. You provide them with the ability to turn on quotes and see where it's properly cited or misproperly cited. And then our goal is to say technology is not going to solve the issue for schools, instructors or in the individual students. The other thing is within an academic integrity policy, the one thing that I will say is it every academic integrity policy needs to be modernized. And what I mean by that is to use a tool like Ouriginal, it's not going to address and be the overall deterrence. You need good course design. You need the coaching and monitoring, mentoring and then that that in just-in-time type of tutoring, and then you also need the deterrent, which is a small percentage of this overall academic integrity component.
Melissa Milner 14:36
Right.
Eric Gibbs 14:36
Those three pillars will truly move the dial in in being able to support a school's academic integrity initiative. Most schools when we engage with them, they don't... they're not expecting us to come in and have that conversation on the on the good course design, the kind of the teaching and mentoring, coaching and then the technology being the smaller component. So that's a big kind of change, if you will, with regards to our, our professional development. That's, that's typically not the conversation you want, you want to have when you're purchasing technology. But if we're optimizing the overall solution, those three pillars have to stand upon their own for the academic integrity policy, or the academic integrity to truly be optimized. With with regards to the kind of the the kickoff, and how we would actually implement, we have our training, the trainers, or the implementations typically are a model of us coming in and how and providing the kind of the professional development, a train the trainer type of model. What we found is we can come in and actually provide those those trainings. It's not as is beneficial as us coming in, and giving those versus training the individual faculty and instructors at the individual schools to be able then to be champions for us. I think that's where you start giving getting better, better acceptance of the tool. And the other thing that we do is we try to bring in more recent research based approach. That research based approach is again, coming in with more resources from the International Center for Academic Integrity, based upon kind of best practices. And I'll talk a little bit about kind of those best practices that they that they provide that that's a part of our overall implementation, because again, all we are is an efficiency tool for the individual instructor. Now, it's a very heavy lift efficiency tool, from the technology of what we're providing. But it's it's the efficiency tool that the instructor is utilizing, to be able to actually, you know, get insights on on the data that the students are submitting.
Melissa Milner 17:07
This is fascinating I do, I just want to say I love the idea of the students being able to look at the report. And I would imagine a good majority of those students probably didn't even realize that they hadn't cited or they hadn't, you know, it's a nice, instead of being punitive that there, they can look at that and catch it. That's, that's great.
Eric Gibbs 17:32
What I would, I would what I would encourage your listeners to do, if you want to, you know, one of the things that I think you have to empathize with it with with individual students. You also have to empathize with individual instructors. So instructors are being required to do more for less, right. And less is actually not only dollars, but also you know, on time.
Melissa Milner 17:55
Right.
Eric Gibbs 17:56
But I would encourage individuals to go out on Twitter, and actually put in plagiarism detection, or look at the individual students that are waiting for their, you know, after you've after you've searched for a plagiarism detection or submission of plagiarism report. Look at what the students are saying. They're sitting there waiting for the report, and then they're scared to death to get that 64 or 75% score back. Because again, they're thinking that 75% means plagiarized. And that's that score does not mean plagiarize. That's the there's such a misunderstanding. Now, granted, maybe they shouldn't have submitted the paper at 11:43 when the due date was 11:45. I think we can all agree that student behavior is quite predictable. But with that said, it's it's a change in behavior, a change of understanding of what the individual tools do, both from the instructor side and the student side. And that's part of our our kind of mission here at Ouriginal is to make sure that we modernize the approach, not only with the technology, but with that those three pillars that we discussed earlier.
Melissa Milner 19:08
Yes. Could you repeat the pillars again?
Eric Gibbs 19:10
Absolutely. So again, the small pillar, but still important is that technology, it's the deterrence factor. It's the coaching, mentoring and teaching that is core for the individual instructor. And then it's the good course design. That's where you you want to you want to try to engage that individual and student with not just writing a paper that's pretty easy to write. We want to really elicit that those critical thinking skills, that's going to make it a little bit more difficult than going straight to Wikipedia, and potentially copying and pasting, but also not also being able to actually utilize something that's not specifically from the internet. Let's use a scholarly journal or academic publication that's going to require some good citations and scholarly scholarly referencing.
Melissa Milner 20:00
So you mentioned the academic integrity that there were like tenets for that.
Eric Gibbs 20:06
Yeah. So, you know, the the International Center for Academic Integrity is a great resource, I think, you know, today, what you start to see is individuals, you know, if you start looking for academic integrity resources, there can be some really, there can be some kind of foxes in the hen house, I'll say out there, and they want they want to vote, they want you to believe that their academic integrity resources, but but not so much. And so, you know, I'd suggest that, you know, your listeners utilize the International Center, as, excuse me, the International Center for Academic Integrity's resources, and they can go to simply just academicintegrity.org. That's a great resource. And, you know, maybe I'll even reference their six fundamental values. Those are core values that really, you know, kind of build upon foundational build upon values and foundations for academic integrity. And those are honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. And, you know, those are really, you know, the values that represent everything that's core to protecting not only academic integrity, but also intellectual property. You know, that, and that's something else that, you know, is core in that, in that academic integrity, conversation.
Melissa Milner 21:30
Oh, that's very interesting, huh, just sounds like values. Like literally just values.
Eric Gibbs 21:37
You would think it would be something that's, that's very, very common and elementary. But but if you think about embracing those, those six values, fundamental values, it is something that, you know, you're you can get your students' commitment into kind of really talking about. And, you know, again, if you're having to have the conversation about academic integrity, I'm a big, big proponent of keeping it simple, right? So if you can have those six common values represent everything that's core to the academic integrity, that's something that that students can really kind of understand and be actually buy into.
Melissa Milner 22:15
Yes. And I will have these in the transcript on the episode page, because I know those were, we're talking quickly, but those will be on the episode page. What would you say? Are you know, your top tips for staying away from that punitive... or have you already mentioned them?
Eric Gibbs 22:38
No, no, I think I mean, I think it's a good conversation. I think that, you know, academic integrity sees no boundaries, right? Plagiarism sees no boundaries.
Melissa Milner 22:49
Yeah.
Eric Gibbs 22:50
Um, it's, it's something that you have to embrace. And I think that, as I said, at the International Center for Academic Integrity, while it's based here in the US it the partnerships are worldwide. There's a European Network for Academic Integrity. So ENAI, that's another organization, a LabTam organization. This is something that that it, it's a growing threat that we see. And so it's not just and in education, it's not just a US or European or a South American issue. It's really now we're talking about kind of a formative versus summative model here. And if Germany, for example, if I was to talk about a formative use case of Teaching and Learning with plagiarism prevention, you know, I would be frowned upon. It's definitely punitive there, you have to be able to use this and not show this, you know, the similarity reports. So it's very different in different regions. And to be quite honest, Melissa, the way that plagiarism prevention tools were created back in early 2000, if they were created in a summative model. So you would submit the paper students would never see the actual similarity report.
Melissa Milner 24:13
Right.
Eric Gibbs 24:13
It wasn't until the mid 2000s, that the model changed. And so you started seeing kind of an uproar not only at the students, but you also started to see that what value is there if we can actually make this a good pedagogical sound application? And so then you basically turn turn the technology upside down and say, How can we actually involve the student? So the way you involve the student is is by allowing them to see the the similarity report.
Melissa Milner 24:43
Absolutely. It seems like common sense but yeah.
Eric Gibbs 24:47
So what what does the instructor see? They can see effort. So within Google Classroom, you could then see three different drafts or three different iterations of the original similarity report, or within Canvas or Brightspace, within that learning management system, you're able then to see that the student submitted on Tuesday for a Friday at 11:30 deadline. They submitted and had a 70% similarity score. On Thursday, they resubmitted. So not only are we looking at individual individual similarity scores, we're also then able to overlay that with effort, right? Because you're then able to see the individual is exhibiting that. You can you can ask them, Well, why, you know, why did you actually go back in and change that? And then you can also have a conversation of, "Wow, you had 100% similarity?" What, what, what, what, what happened here, you know, and it's, it's a teaching and learning moment. It's, it shouldn't be punitive. And so we're starting to see, and this is a little bit of a tangent here, but applicable, we're starting to see academic integrity policies evolve to where if it's a one and done type of scenario, where if you get caught plagiarizing, should you be kicked out of a university? Or should you be kicked, you know, expelled from school? Probably not. I mean, that 10 years ago, that was out the 100%. And, and in some instance, institutions, that still is the case. But we're starting to see that evolve into a more of a teaching and learning moment saying, let's put this into perspective. If you plagiarize forget to miss cite the site sometimes. You know, that's, that's one thing. If it's 100%, plagiarized from, from Wikipedia, that's another. If two individuals colluded and are using the exact same paper, that's a more serious case. So I think there's a scale, but the academic integrity policies have not changed. And they don't, they don't take into a case...account these individual cases. So I think, you know, we're, there's some revision of academic integrity policies. And in doing that, the best part about this, Melissa is the student is being put in the middle of these academic integrity policies. At some higher education institutions and I'm hopeful that in some high schools, they are actually being involved in the policies, which can only benefit the individual school and the individual stakeholders,
Melissa Milner 27:28
Right. It's so amazing, because I know, you know, thinking back when I was in high school, and I worked very hard, like to put things in my own words, and you know, that whole thing, but I just think it would have really been helpful to know that I was going to get to see, okay, am I really like, I think I'm putting in my own words, and to see this originality score, and to see the pieces that I could make even more my own thoughts. And then I also wonder, if I were a student, there are students who, it's hard, this work is hard, and they're thinking, you know, I'm just gonna, I'll do most of it, but I'm going to copy and paste this part. And but if they like, once you go through that with the students, once they get the point that, you know, the teacher's going to know, number one, and number two, you know, maybe they can reach out and say, I don't know how to do this. It might... like knowing that there's going to be accountability for the plagiarism might force them to say, I don't want to get in trouble. But I know this report's coming out. And I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to put it in my own words,. I don't how you know how to come up with my own thesis. I hope it would help.
Eric Gibbs 28:45
Oh, you bring up such a great, great point. And this is something that's not always talked about, you always, you always talk about. And then when I say you, the institutions and the districts and the high schools always talk about what you can't do, right in the in the academic integrity policies. But if you again, put the individual in the middle and the individual learner, you start talking about kind of what is academic integrity, what you know, what are the principles and you just talked to hit, you just spoke about something that is core. So that's kind of finding, you know, finding the the student's own voice and this goes right into originality, right? This is this is core to plagiarism and to why you actually do not plagiarize. Which is a big part of the academic integrity. So, you know, you're talking about specific personality style and points of view, unique to each individual writer. And that's something that you can teach in, you know, traditional and untraditional ways and... I was just amazed by one of your previous podcasts from an early earlier this year that was highlighting I think it was if my memory serves me right as a 15 year old high schooler who was just passionate about writing and how she found her voice earlier. And she could easily listen to transformer voice based upon music. It was just amazing that you see some individuals that can just, you know, transform and immediately understand kind of these eager, eager minds that they possess, they can transform and understand their voice and originality. And then there's some individuals that just this is just an impossible task.
Melissa Milner 30:29
Yeah.
Eric Gibbs 30:30
Incorporating this in the writing process... and again, that whole process of originality is such a core component of the academic integrity process. And, you know, we have a three series, I'll give you another resource that's really, really good. On our Ouriginal blog, we have a set of writings on originality, that's really good. And it kind of talks about this. And, again, there's a difference between your own voice and originality, but they kind of go hand in hand on on individual components.
Melissa Milner 31:03
Very cool. We're probably going to wrap up soon. It first I am, I'm going to skip some of the normal questions I do, because this is a different kind of interview. But is there anything else you were hoping to mention?
Eric Gibbs 31:16
Yeah, you know, I always I always talk a little bit about kind of those, those, we talked a little bit about the six principles. I'm going to circle back and look real quickly, just because, you know, parents, teachers, professors, administrators, I do reference those six fundamental values, I'm going to repeat them again, because I think they are extremely important. So that honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. And I think the reason why I kind of reiterate these, we have to remember that our students sitting in our homes, high schools, college, graduate schools, someday those individuals are going to be part of the global workforce. And so I'm really hopeful that those six fundamental values can be put into practice early in the in their education, because that's really going to inform and ensure that we're better off as a global economy. So I think that's really important for us to get this right the first time around, because it really is going to be dependent, you know, in the global workforce tomorrow.
Melissa Milner 32:19
Absolutely.
Eric Gibbs 32:21
Yes, so if individuals would like to learn more about originally specifically, I think, you know, it reference on the the originality series, feel free to look at the blog at ouriginal. com, that's ouriginal.com. And I'd love to hear feedback. You know, I think for me, Melissa, the biggest thing for me is just to hear feedback, good, bad or indifferent. I always like to say that most individuals dislike plagiarism prevention tools, half... the other half, kind of tolerate them. But I'd love to be able to hear you know that feedback, feel free to send an email to me, eric.gibbs@original.com, or reach out to LinkedIn. I'd love love to connect.
Melissa Milner 33:04
That's fantastic. I just had a brainstorm like it just came into my head. I think it would be really cool...like at the beginning of the year, again, I'm like elementary and thinking elementary here. But no, you could do this in middle school, high school is... tell the kids, you're going to go ahead, and you're going to, you know, pick a topic, and I want you to cut and paste and create a paper, I want you to do that. Because then we're going to use this software. Right? And they can so it's, you know that first time, and then they can introduce that the software will show that they you know, weren't using their original... that the similarities, right will show up. And it's at a no risk type of thing. But it introduces... Yep, we are going to be looking at your work, you will be looking... every time you write a paper, you will be looking to see where your similarities are. But at least you can like make the students know that that's going to be happening at low risk.
Eric Gibbs 34:08
I think that's a great idea. And again, the more you reinforce this, the better off it it will be you know as as students start getting into more writing intensive courses in in, in secondary.
Melissa Milner 34:20
Yes. And I mean, and then it of course it goes to if they want to have a podcast, they can't be, you know, lifting other people's work to in their podcasts or their, you know, their YouTube videos and you're just... learning that you need to come up with your own content.
Eric Gibbs 34:40
Exactly. Exactly.
Melissa Milner 34:43
All right. So what's your favorite movie and why?
Eric Gibbs 34:46
It is always an always will. It has always been Mary Poppins. I've been enamored by Mary Poppins since a kid and even to this day, still watch it as a grown grown adult.
Melissa Milner 35:01
Why do you think that is?
Eric Gibbs 35:03
The magic that happens to see the kids still? You know, I think the storyline is just amazing. It's it's one of those that brings in cartoons. It's it's kind of the realism versus versus the cartoons and in a fictional world. It's it's something that, you know, I think looking back at brings you back to my childhood. And you know, every time I look at Julie Andrews, it's always Mary Poppins.
Melissa Milner 35:35
I know, right?
Eric Gibbs 35:37
Absolutely.
Melissa Milner 35:38
Oh, that's such a wonderful pick. I love that. So thank you so much, Eric. And I'm sure people will be definitely checking all of the resources out including the blog posts, which are really helpful. And thanks for taking the time out to talk to me.
Eric Gibbs 35:55
Thank you very much, Melissa. And again, thank you for your listener's time.
Melissa Milner 35:59
For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.