Survey suggests students do not see use of AI as cheating

These were just a few of the questions debated by delegates from 33 countries that convened in Rome for the recent eighth plenary meeting of the Council of Europe Platform on Ethics, Transparency and Integrity in Education (ETINED), organised in collaboration with CIMEA (the Information Centre on Academic Mobility and Equivalence) at Marconi University.

The meeting is a yearly event for country officials and experts in Europe to analyse the state of play and discuss new trends and practices in the field of ethics, transparency and integrity in education.

The meeting was an opportunity to present and discuss the preliminary results of a survey on the awareness of education fraud by students carried out across the Council of Europe member states and based on the FraudS+ project experience.

Limited knowledge

The first few highlights emerging from the survey show limited knowledge by students of fraudulent phenomena, except for plagiarism, the need for more support, prevention and “protection” on the part of the academic community, and clear awareness of the ambivalent role of technology, and of AI, although its use in higher education is not considered necessarily a form of cheating by most respondents.

The results of the survey, not yet made public, will be presented and discussed next spring at the Council of Europe (CoE) Steering Committee for Education. Human rights, the rule of law and democracy perspectives are the object of the CoE Framework Convention on AI, and of specific work, including meetings and publications, on regulating the use of AI in education.

The societal, psychological and economic impact of education fraud was presented and discussed in the light of recent trends, publications and available evidence, such as information on the theme of diploma mills and fraudulent-qualification-related phenomena reported in a recent CoE ETINED publication and in articles in the press.

Among the new initiatives, the establishment of a Centre for Preventing and Countering Education Fraud in Italy was presented and discussed, with the main aim being data collection and research in the field. This could also be an instrument that could support capacity building and development.

Open data

The meeting was also a forum to reaffirm the importance of open data in education, to support transparency and accountability in the sector, with insights from the joint study of the CoE and the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning on open school data.

The possibility to work in the domain of an Institutional Integrity Labelling Scheme for educational institutions was also analysed, and more general initiatives to build trust within the higher education community were addressed.

Support for an ethical lens on transnational education (TNE) and to build the quality of TNE was also debated in light of the legal framework set by the Lisbon Recognition Convention and by the recent monitoring of its implementation, as well as the latest findings gathered in the quality assurance context.

One of the recurrent topics was the need for a clear understanding and common knowledge of the phenomena of fraud in addition to a shared lexicon. The CoE recommendation on countering education fraud, together with the latest ETINED Glossary of Terms Related to Ethics and Integrity in Education, are signs of important progress.

The conference and the work of ETINED – as part of the CoE Education Strategy “Learners First” for 2030 – are a space for the sharing of information, partnership and collaboration on building ethics, integrity and transparency in education.

Villano Qiriazi is head of the education department at the Council of Europe; Luca Lantero is president of the Lisbon Recognition Convention Committee and Italian representative in the ETINED platform; and Chiara Finocchietti is director of CIMEA-NARIC Italy, the Italian ENIC-NARIC centre.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.