3 Ways to Leverage an LMS to Promote the Proper Use of AI Tools Among Students

Artificial intelligence has been around for some time. However, discussions surrounding this technology have peaked since the beginning of 2023, propelled by the arrival of powerful AI solutions such as chatbots, virtual assistants, and image generators.

In the field of education, AI is gaining momentum among students who now have easy access to tools that can help them with their assignments. One of the most popular at the moment is ChatGPT.

While some agree that tools like ChatGPT can become a great resource for students to complement their learning, others fear that it could lead to unethical behavior. Educators fear that students can take advantage of AI to cheat on exams or elude course assignments.

How should educators approach the use of AI and how can you leverage your learning management system (LMS) to promote its appropriate usage? This article discusses the current use of technologies like ChatGPT among students and highlights three essential strategies educators must follow to outsmart AI-driven cheating.

How Are Students Using ChatGPT

Almost everyone who uses technology regularly engages with AI in some way, even if they aren’t aware of it. A vast number of popular applications and platforms, from streaming services to email platforms, use artificial intelligence to enhance their products.

ChatGPT works as an interactive chatbot where anyone can write any kind of prompt and get a machine-generated answer. The problem for teachers is that students can use this tool to get answers to questions related to a particular subject or topic. “Solve this math problem”, “write a Python code that can solve this problem”, or “write an essay about this subject” are some tasks that students can put to the chatbot. Its answers are surprisingly human-like, making it difficult to determine whether the content came from a human or a machine.

Educators from all levels of teaching have raised their concerns about the risk of students using AI, prompting some schools to even block access to these tools. The use of AI for school work poses a challenge for teachers, as it’s not easy to monitor its use by students, especially in remote or online education.

Making AI an Ally in Your Teaching

Managing your online education programs within an LMS gives you some advantages to outsmart AI. Here are three ways you can use your LMS to prevent or deter your students cheating:

1. Educate Yourself First

In a 2023 survey, 54% of college students stated that their teachers haven’t openly discussed the rules and limitations of using solutions like ChatGPT. Although it might sound like avoiding or even banning these technologies is the best solution, it’s only a temporary measure. Instead, educators should take the initiative to understand how these tools work, so they can educate students on the appropriate use of AI for their school work.

ChatGPT has many benefits that any type of education can leverage, from higher education and K12 to corporate training. The tool has access to vast amounts of information, making it a valuable learning resource to get answers fast. For example, it can help students resolve doubts when teachers aren’t available or provide extra support to complement their learning.

However, with great power comes great responsibility. Educators should advise students to use AI as a supplement to their learning or as their educational assistant, but not as a way to skip doing assignments themselves or cheat on evaluations.

Make it clear from the beginning what your rules are for using AI. You can add AI guidelines to your LMS as part of the instructions students receive when getting their welcome message at the beginning of a course. Particularly in Open LMS, these messages can be set up by using our Personalized Learning Designer (PLD) tool.

LEARN MORE ABOUT PLD | ‘5 Ways Open LMS’s Personalized Learning Designer (PLD) Enhances Online Education’

2. Creating Dynamic Evaluations

If AI can complete an assignment by itself, then maybe it’s time to change the way we design assignments. With an LMS, teachers can set up formative assessments that require students to apply and explain what they’ve learned in class. This approach will force them to avoid depending on AI tools to complete their school work.

What’s great about an LMS is that it provides educators with a dynamic range of tools to implement interactive assessments. Teachers can incorporate interactive elements into their online courses such as:

• Discussion forums where students have to explain their work
• Group projects that require collaborative efforts AI cannot replicate
• Peer reviews where students have to give feedback about their classmates’ work
• Interactive videos that include quizzes or drag-and-drop exercises AI cannot read

These activities also serve to assess students' understanding of a course, as well as to ensure that they’re actively engaging with the material, rather than just relying on their ability to find answers using AI tools.

YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN READING | ‘5 Tools You Can Use to Create Interactive Content In Your LMS’

3. Use AI-Detection Tools

Sometimes, the solution to a problem lies within the problem itself. Just as tools like ChatGPT have emerged lately, so are technologies that can detect if text was generated  by a machine or not. AI content detection tools can help mitigate some of the challenges to academic integrity. They can be incorporated into an LMS to analyze students’ written assignments and spot any cheating or plagiarism.

As an example, Open LMS has recently added Copyleaks Plagiarism Detector to its portfolio of integrations. Copyleaks is an advanced plagiarism detector of AI-generated content, including ChatGPT. It also can determine multiple forms of paraphrasing, image-based text plagiarism, and attempts to deceive detection software.

It’s important to highlight that even if AI content detectors are a great resource for checking the originality of content, they shouldn’t be your only consulting source, as they’re prone to both false positives and false negatives.

Embracing AI in Education

Whether we like it or not, artificial intelligence is here to stay. AI-powered technology will continue to emerge, becoming smarter and more accessible over time. Open LMS is aware of the impact of AI in the entire education industry—we’re constantly evolving to help educational institutions and corporates make the most of these powerful tools to provide top-notch eLearning experiences.