In August 2024, LMC saw its highest number of fraudulent student account registrations ever. In the wake of the pandemic, AI technology has increasing accessibility for laymen. It didn’t take long for students to begin utilizing these tools for academic purposes.
This impact is currently being felt by teachers and faculty across LMC. As generative AI continues to evolve, students adapt to its new uses.
To start off the Fall 2024 semester, Introduction to Gender Studies Professor Claudia Moutray began her online course with 27 students. Teaching both online and hybrid variations of the course, Moutray was excited to begin her instruction.
Within the first few weeks of the semester, Moutray noticed something peculiar about some of her students: strange names, a lack of profile picture, and discussion responses that didn’t seem quite right.
Some responses to “meet and greet” assignments were too brief, and in following student discussions, Moutray found responses from certain students having irrelevant information to contribute; some were even referencing false page numbers.
At the start of the week, Moutray assigned an essay due Friday. By Monday night, she only received five submissions. When she went to grade the essays on Tuesday, she discovered not only that they’d been flagged as AI-generated, but all five papers were identical.
This led Moutray to reach out to her department chair Adrianna Simone, who then prompted Moutray to take the evidence to Admissions. Upon investigation, the accounts were fraudulent.
After the first week, LMC instructors are required to drop “no-show” students, so Moutray dropped several students from her course. While some of the students dropped were legitimate accounts, 13 out of the original 27 students ended up being fake.
“It’s just disheartening,” Moutray elaborated. “You think about the students that didn’t get a chance to get in the class because of the fake accounts, and you know, I don’t want to play detective; I’m tired.”
Throughout her three years of teaching, Moutray didn’t anticipate the use of AI to be so rampant. The beginning of her investigation started over the summer of 2024. Moutray was teaching another online Introduction to Gender Studies course, and noticed that four of the final papers she received were bordering on incoherent.
“The paper was on [the Barbie movie],” said Moutray. “There were scenes that weren’t in Barbie; characters that didn’t even exist.”
She then decided to check the homework from a prior semester with an AI filter, and found that up to 85% was AI-generated.
“It’s disheartening how good these programs can be,” Moutray shared.
Moutray doesn’t want her negative experience with AI to prevent her ability to trust students’ integrity regarding academic honesty. In the past, Moutray has given students the opportunity to defend works that have been flagged as being around 10% AI-generated. It’s been found that some student tools, such as Grammarly, have been falsely-flagged as AI-generated.
“I want to challenge you, but I don’t want you to ever feel lost in the dark,” said Moutray. “I want to be on the side of students at all times.”
The District Wide Distance Education Council (DDEC) gives faculty the tools to help identify fraudulent accounts — also referred to as “bots,” “ghost students,” or “bad actors.”
Once ghost students are reported, it’s up to Admissions to determine the authenticity of their academic records. Specifically, Director of Admissions and Records Rikki Hall has been tasked with this.
“Typically, it’s related to financial aid,” said Hall.
“We don’t really know if they’re all bots, or let’s say, one ringleader that created all these accounts.” Hall said. “I don’t think we have enough data to identify.”
As for preventative measures, ID.me — the same ID verification system used by the DMV — was implemented on Feb. 1 for students above the age of 18 who opt into this program.
“Because the application system is open to anybody, we don’t have specific requirements that universities have; there’s no fee for it, so anybody can apply to our college, and there’s not really a way that we have to check [applicants],” said Hall.
“Right now, we’re just doing the best we can to combat them,” Hall explained.
At this time, Hall encourages both faculty and students to be aware of bad actors, to help identify fraudulent accounts, and protect the integrity of both the LMC system and its participants.
