Academic Surveillance in Higher Education

Ian Linkletter (BCIT) on Academic Surveillance in Higher Education

The presentation spoke about many topics related to “academic surveillance” in higher education. Before seeing this presentation I had never thought about how schools and their software are constantly suspicious of students. Reflecting on this now I realize this adds an extra layer of stress on top of the already difficult assignments and tests.

Linkletter speaks about the AI detectors and their inconsistency, leading to many false positives and negatives. As a bilingual speaker with english as my second language I found it absurd that the AI detector is more likely to assign my work as AI simply because my speaking patterns are different than the status quo. I hadn’t previously thought about the ethical issues surrounding AI detectors in depth but Linkletter brings up amazing points. While some AI detectors can be 99% effective that 1% can still lead to millions of students getting falsely accused with possibly severe consequences. I find it unbelievable that institutions that offer higher education are using these tools knowing the issues surrounding them.

The next age of this surveillance technology is writing monitoring. These new programs track almost every part of the writing process, suppressing creativity and heightining anxiety. Upon reflection I have noticed an increase in my academic anxiety recently as school’s increasingly try to sniff out cheaters through brutal methods. As an honest student I fear writing too professionally will sound like AI even though I am simply writing at this level because it is for a university assignment.