Rethinking Assessment in an Artificial Intelligence-Induced ‘Post-Plagiarism’ Era in South African Higher Education

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-521-8_15How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Artificial intelligence; academic integrity; post-plagiarism; assessment; higher education

Abstract

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, is changing teaching, learning, and assessment and is presenting opportunities and challenges. Ongoing discussions on students increasingly using generative AI tools to complete assessment tasks and teachers, on the other hand, using these tools to detect use or misuse, necessitate further research. In this paper, I explore assessment in the ‘post-plagiarism’ era, which means transcending the traditional definitions of plagiarism and emphasising academic integrity. The analysis is done in the context of AI use within the South African higher education sector. Guided by Anne Edwards’[1, 2] relational agency theory and Sarah Elaine Eaton’s [3, 4] ‘post-plagiarism’ blueprint, it explores an inclusive, student-centred, and trust-based approach to integrating AI into assessment. Eaton’s blueprint suggests that hybrid human-AI writing will become the norm; that AI enhances, rather than threatens, human creativity; that language barriers will diminish; that attribution and acknowledging sources remain paramount; and that the historical definitions of plagiarism may become obsolete. This paper employs a qualitative approach and relies on emerging secondary data on artificial intelligence in teaching, learning, assessment, and academic integrity. It highlights the need to rethink and redesign assessments to prioritise learning processes and critical thinking, involve students in co-creating academic integrity policies, and integrate AI into teaching, learning and assessment for inclusivity. Edwards’ relational agency is important to highlight the collaboration of diverse experts, recognising each other’s expertise and roles, having a shared understanding of the problem, and using common knowledge for shared purposes.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tshepho Mokwele
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/29
TI  - Rethinking Assessment in an Artificial Intelligence-Induced ‘Post-Plagiarism’ Era in South African Higher Education
BT  - Proceedings of The Focus Conference (TFC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 226
EP  - 246
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-521-8_15
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-521-8_15
ID  - Mokwele2025
ER  -