College Transition Programs

I’m the Chair of the Academic Integrity and AI Committee at Berkeley. So… People sometimes find it weird when I talk about academic integrity. I almost never talk about… ↳ AI detectors ↳ Process trackers ↳ Mandatory disclosures I don’t use them and don’t find them particularly interesting. I’m far more likely to talk about… ► Using process-folios and process-clusters for more holistic assessment ► Using alt assessment to decrease the incentive to cheat ► A discussion-first approach, when we suspect that a student may have used a tool inappropriately or in a way that sacrificed their voice ► Transparency Statements that encourage metacognition and process-thinking ► Building a class culture that prizes transparency and the productive struggle that often comes with learning I’m not naive enough to think that any of this AI proofs my courses (if such a thing were even possible). But I do think these approaches are more sustainable. ——— Image: the cover of “The Opposite of Cheating” (Oklahoma University Press, 2025), by Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant and David Rettinger. It’s the best book on academic integrity and AI I’ve read.

Great to see University of Virginia's innovative student advising redesign featured in Inside Higher Ed by Joshua Bay – congrats Christa Acampora and team! 👏 🚧 THE OPPORTUNITY: For many research universities, there's disconnect between amazing classes and the advice students get about them. Data from the SERU (Student Experience at a Research University) survey revealed a sobering reality at UVA: while students praised their courses, satisfaction with pre-major advising lagged significantly behind peer institutions. This gap highlighted that the traditional and often inconsistent faculty-only advising model was no longer meeting the complex needs of today’s undergraduates. 💫 THE SOLUTION: To bridge this divide, UVA launched a transformative model that moves advising from a peripheral office into the heart of the classroom. By hiring dedicated professional "Advising Fellows" and integrating them directly into the first-year Engagements / FYE curriculum, the university has turned advising into a form of teaching. These specialists provide consistent, expert guidance within a small-cohort setting, ensuring every new student has a primary point of contact from day one. 🔮 TAKING THIS FORWARD: UVA’s success—seeing satisfaction jump from 55% to 84%—demonstrates that professionalizing advising and embedding it into the FYE curriculum is a scalable path for large institutions. For institutional leaders, the takeaway is clear: advising should not be a transactional afterthought, but a core component of the academic mission. I wonder how folk will then explore ways to further link academic advising with career exploration and professional development? #HigherEd #StudentSuccess #AcademicAdvising #UVA #StudentExperience

Many educators are worried about cheating, especially with AI, but haven’t stopped to ask why or how this is possible. Here’s how to respond to academic integrity in the age of AI. Students have always cheated–long before cell phones and AI. So let’s stop blaming technology for every ill in society, including academic integrity. Instead, it’s more constructive to reflect on the current system to look for ways forward. ✅ Reframe “cheating” not as a moral depravity–a character flaw– but as “cutting corners.” When have you cut corners to complete your work? ✅ Cheating happens by design: when our assignments expect every student to have the same answer at the same time ✅ Cheating happens by incentive: when students don’t see how an assignment matters, or when overwhelmed or underprepared to complete the task. ✅ AI renders most traditional assessments obsolete and ineffective. The only way to assess students is with authentic assignments. ✅ Leverage intrinsic motivation to design successful assessments Instead of asking if AI causes students to cheat more, let’s ask why they would cheat in the first place and how we can avoid dishonesty through our classroom culture and even how we design our assignments. In my latest white paper, I share excerpts from my book about how to do this in the classroom, and my online course, Uncheatable Assessments. Both are how-to guides for educators, grounded in my classroom experience and research, and provide practical advice and examples to help you restore inquiry, wonder, purpose and joy—and, yes, integrity—back to the classroom. The future of learning is authentic. Let’s find a new way forward. #education #assessment #AI #artificialintelligence #teachingandlearning #PBL #projectbasedlearning #portraitofagraduate

Academic integrity isn’t broken because students cheat. It's broken because we blame students. Every semester, we commission students to act with integrity— › Don’t cheat › Don’t plagiarize › Don’t use AI But integrity isn’t just a student behavior. It’s a system-wide obligation. ⟶ The Latin root is integritas — wholeness, coherence, alignment. ⟶ And if we care about integrity, then we need to look at everything in the system. That means: ⟶ 🏛️ The institution has a duty to support good teaching — not just punish misconduct. ⟶ 👩🏫 Faculty have a duty to respond to student feedback in all forms — not just enforce compliance. ⟶ 📝 The work itself must be worth doing — not just a hoop to jump through. ⟶ 👨🎓 Only then can we expect students to engage with honesty, effort, and trust. If a student “cheats,” we treat it like a personal failure. But what if it’s a signal? 📉 In most industries, if your users reject your product, you improve the product. 🎓 In education, we double down on what’s not working by adding coercion (e.g., surveillance) — as if the only possible failure is the user. Here’s the hard truth: 🧱 We’ve built courses where assignments are stale, assessments feel irrelevant, and the power dynamics discourage honesty. 🧱 We’ve built institutions that reward publication over pedagogy and compliance over curiosity. 🧱 We’ve defined integrity as rule-following — when it should have been value-alignment. We can’t keep demanding integrity from students while designing systems that fracture it at every turn. True integrity starts at the top and flows downward: Institution → Faculty → Work → Students If it breaks at the bottom, it likely broke somewhere higher up the chain. — ✨ What’s one thing you’re doing to support true academic integrity from your position?

Academic Misconduct in Dental Schools: Is it just a warning sign—or a predictor of future professional misconduct? From simply passing a note during a didactic exam, to unauthorized use of generative AI, to clinical misconduct… Are we doing enough in dental schools to produce future generations of dentists with ethical values? In dental education, academic integrity is more than a rule. It’s a foundation for ethical patient care. And when that foundation cracks early—so does trust in the profession. ⸻ What does academic misconduct look like? ❌ Cheating – Using unauthorized materials during exams or assignments ❌ Plagiarism – Presenting someone else’s work as your own ❌ Fabrication – Falsifying data or sources ❌ Falsification – Providing false information for academic advantage ⸻ And now, a new layer: AI misuse ⚠️ AI-generated content – Submitting work created by AI tools without disclosure ⚠️ Automated shortcuts – Using AI to bypass learning, simulate answers, or complete clinical reflections ⚠️ Unclear policies – When AI use is not defined, misuse fills the gap AI can enhance learning—but without transparency and integrity, it becomes a tool for deception. ⸻ What are the consequences? ⚠️ Disciplinary action – From warnings to dismissal ⚠️ Transcript notations – That may follow you into job interviews ⚠️ Career risks – Integrity violations can derail licensure and trust ⸻ Why does this matter? ✔️ Trust – Degrees must be earned, not taken ✔️ Patient safety – Poor integrity leads to poor care ✔️ Equity – A fair system only works when everyone plays fair ✔️ AI literacy – Ethical use of technology is now a professional competency ⸻ How do we prevent misconduct? • Educate early and often – Definitions, boundaries, and consequences must be clear • Promote ethical culture – Respect and integrity must be modeled and reinforced • Address AI directly – Define its place in education, and enforce it • Support struggling students – Misconduct often masks academic anxiety ⸻ Academic integrity isn’t just about grades. It’s about who we become before we enter the clinic. Let’s lead the next generation by holding the highest standards— Not just for knowledge, but for character. What strategies has your school used to guide ethical AI use? #DentalEducation #AcademicIntegrity #AIInEducation #ProfessionalEthics #StudentSuccess #FutureDentists #HigherEdLeadership #IntegrityMatters #DentalStudents #EthicalLeadership #ResponsibleAI

I would like to share a second AI in Ed SoTL article entitled, “Redesigning Assessment for the Generative AI Era: A Framework for Educators” by Khlaif, et al. (2025) (https://lnkd.in/eAeV6BxJ ). Khlaif and colleagues offer a timely and practical rethinking of assessment practices grounded in educational integrity, learner agency, and AI fluency. Their work proposes a multidimensional framework designed to ensure that assessment continues to reflect meaningful learning even when AI is involved at every stage. The authors argue that generative AI has fundamentally disrupted assessment by: - Making traditional recall tasks obsolete - Complicating academic integrity enforcement - Blurring lines between student work and AI contribution - Expanding students’ access to instant feedback and explanations Rather than focusing on catching misuse, Khlaif et al. advocate for: - Authentic, process-driven assessments - Metacognitive reflection on tool use - Evaluation of student + AI co-production - Assessment of higher-order thinking, not output alone Four Key Dimensions 1) Pedagogical Dimension. Assessment must align with active learning, inquiry, critical thinking, and student-centered design. 2) Ethical Dimension. Includes transparency, academic honesty, consent, bias awareness, and AI literacy. 3) Technological Dimension. Focuses on tool selection, AI capability analysis, and appropriate use boundaries. 4) Assessment Dimension. Calls for redesigned methods including: - performance-based tasks - iterative submissions - reflective writing - multimodal evidence - collaborative problem-solving - AI-augmented portfolios Educators are urged to: - Require students to document how they used AI - Compare drafts with and without AI assistance - Integrate oral defense, peer review, and process documentation - Blend human judgment with AI-supported analytics - Incentivize learning, not just product creation Rather than equating AI use with cheating, the authors propose a new definition: Integrity means honestly representing the relationship between human and AI contributions. This shift reframes assessment in terms of transparency, reflection, and ethical agency. Khlaif et al. make a compelling case that assessment, not content, is where AI will make the biggest impact on learning systems. If assessment fails to evolve: - learning outcomes become artificial - grades become meaningless - student agency weakens - equity gaps worsen If redesigned with AI in mind: - creativity expands - students build meta-AI literacy - authentic learning becomes visible - assessment becomes more human, not less Reference Khlaif, Z. N., Alkouk, W. A., Salama, N., & Abu Eideh, B. (2025). Redesigning assessments for AI-enhanced learning: A framework for educators in the generative AI era. Education Sciences, 15(2), 174.

What happens when students gain hands-on experience at the start of the degree rather than at the end? Not as an internship or a capstone, but as something built into their first year experience: early, and for credit? This spring, Podium Education ran a pilot with hundreds of first- and second-year students in their new Career Discovery Experience. Students engaged in high-impact experiences designed to help them explore career paths firsthand: ✔️ applied, skill-based experiences tied to real-world work ✔️ conversations with industry professionals, and  ✔️ guided reflection within the academic experience. They rotated through a series of industries tied to core career competencies—across areas like messaging, data, innovation, and project execution—while learning how those skills show up across industries. Even mid-program, a few patterns started to emerge: 67% are identifying what kinds of work interest them (or don’t) 93% report a stronger connection between college and career One student shared: “You’ll discover something new about yourself, or gain a fresh perspective on your future plans.” It’s early, but for me, one thing is clear: This is career exploration gold.💰 Keep an eye on Podium Education—they’ll be sharing more as early career experiences continue to take shape and scale. Aled Owens Lindsey Rosenbluth Caitlyn Canterbury

"The opposite of cheating is learning." That one line from Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant and David Rettinger centers the entire academic integrity conversation. A new Cambridge Element published this month by Bertram Gallant, Professor Mary Davis, and Zeenath Reza Khan, PhD traces academic integrity from the printing press through COVID-era remote exams to GenAI, asking the same question at every stop: did we adapt our pedagogy, or just add another layer of surveillance? The fictional 2045 scenario in the book is the one I keep thinking about. A university where the Academic Integrity Unit has four sub-divisions: Prevention, Detection, Case Management, and Assessment Security. Students navigate coursework with AI assistants that do most of the work. The institution? Still running on credit hours, lectures, and out-of-class assignments. The core argument is clean: institutions that respond to GenAI by doubling down on detection choose surveillance over learning. The more durable response is to redesign assessments, teach AI literacy as a core competency, and treat integrity as a developmental skill rather than a rule to enforce. The authors are direct about something educators often sidestep: we cannot control the external forces pushing AI into our classrooms, but we do have agency in how we respond. The choice is always detect or design, diminish or enrich, and that framing holds across every institutional context. I first connected with Tricia at the Washington Canvas Conference in 2023, which is what led me to ask her to keynote Clover Park Technical College's 2024 AI Institute. Two months ago, I had the privilege of joining her podcast. This new Element is exactly the scholarship the field needs. There is a link in the first comment to the original source, the Spotify summary, and the YouTube summary. Thanks to Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant from UC San Diego, Professor Mary Davis from Oxford Brookes University, and Zeenath Reza Khan, PhD from the University of Wollongong in Dubai for their work. #HigherEd #AIinEducation #AcademicIntegrity Slide Deck created with NotebookLM by Ronald Lethcoe

As more students use AI tools for writing, research, tutoring and project work, many universities are asking: what constitutes academic integrity in an AI‑enabled era? It’s no longer simply “did you cheat?” but “how did you engage with AI?” We must shift the conversation: from banning AI toward guiding its ethical use, designing tasks that require human judgement, and teaching students to collaborate with AI responsibly. Higher education has the opportunity to lead: modelling balanced policy, open discussion, training for faculty and students alike. Our challenge is to become not only consumers of AI but critical educators of it.

ASCEND Podcast - Season 3 - Episode 17 In episode 17, Eric Kirby, Ph.D., J.D. and I visited with Dr. Amber Williams from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville about their "New Vol Experience." In this episode, we examine how the New Vol Experience at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville is redefining first-year student transition through a comprehensive, multi-phase onboarding model. From online orientation and academic advising to the six-week Big Orange Welcome and first-year coursework, the program is intentionally designed to help students build confidence, connection, and belonging from day one through their first semester. We discuss how extending orientation well beyond move-in week (through more than 600 coordinated events and sustained campus partnerships) has led to remarkable student outcomes, including stronger preparedness, greater resource awareness, and immediate peer connection. This conversation highlights why walking alongside students, rather than simply welcoming them, is emerging as a powerful strategy for student success. You can find this episode of the ASCEND Podcast on your preferred listening platform. Apple - https://lnkd.in/g9FnskmZ Spotify - https://lnkd.in/gdx9WvWJ Website - https://lnkd.in/g_BF2ZSR Or, if you prefer reading about retention and student success strategies, pick up one of our "ASCEND to Higher Retention Rates" books on Amazon.com: Vol 1: https://a.co/d/3mtXiZJ Vol 2: https://a.co/d/8JmOdtx Vol 3: https://a.co/d/gi1uPDh