A couple of years ago, I was listening to a sermon and realized the preacher was quoting and summarizing extensively from a book I had recently read. He acted like the thoughts were all his own and never once mentioned the book or its author. Afterward people praised the powerful sermon, but I was thinking, “What a fraud!”
When we share ideas, sayings, or stories that we didn’t come up with, basic decency requires us to give credit to whoever did. If we swipe content from others or from technology to make ourselves look original and clever, we’ll fool some people, but in the long run, our social credibility will crumble.
In academic settings like speech competition, the process of giving credit is more formal than in social situations but just as important.
- When you give honest credit for other people’s ideas and work, it’s called citing sources and maintaining academic integrity.
- If you don’t tell the audience where you got the words and ideas you use, it’s called plagiarism.
Deterring plagiarism is a big reason that NCFCA has always required competitors to submit scripts for platform and interpretation speeches, but script submission is only part of the picture when it comes to encouraging academic integrity.
A Short History of Scripts in NCFCA
Until a few years ago, families had to arrive the night before each tournament so competitors could turn in paper copies of their scripts.
As a competitor, you had to wait in one line for interps and another for platforms. At the front, you held your breath while a tournament volunteer flipped through your script, checking for the required combinations of bolding, italicizing, underlining, quoting, parentheses, spacing, highlighting, and ink color. They even checked word-count percentages. I’m certain those motivated moms and dads were not trying to meet a quota for finding errors, but sometimes it sure felt like it.
Adjoining hallways smelled like hot ink, and the tripping hazards were real as printers plugged into every available outlet churned out new script pages—or jammed, as printers are prone to do when they sense stress. The whole process was a nerve-racking way to use reams of paper and gallons of ink, but it came pretty close to ensuring competitors were citing sources.
Now scripts are submitted electronically. Drag, drop, done. We generally don’t review them unless a question comes up about a potential rule violation, but we still require them for several reasons.
- One reason is that part of the competitive challenge in scripted events is sticking to a script.
- We also remain committed to promoting academic integrity, which involves citing sources. Requiring sources to be identified in submitted scripts provides a layer of helpful accountability.
- Lastly, scripts serve as quiet workhorses to help tournaments run smoothly. When a rule question comes up, the ability to look at the script is crucial. If the script is set up in a way that is easy to check (like the examples we provide on our website), issues are often resolved without competitors even realizing there was a question.
One of the major challenges under our current electronic script submission system is that the burden for evaluating citations within tournaments has shifted almost entirely to judges who must try to catch source citations in the delivery of fast-paced speeches. With eight speeches in most rooms and five ballot categories to evaluate, the challenge is literally multiplied, and it can feel like citation tally marks are the only way to evaluate how well competitors honor sources.
Grace and Wisdom on Ballots
Even if we figured out a great new way to pre-screen scripts, we would still need to guard against the fallacy of equating the number and fluency of citations with the level of personal or even academic integrity of a speaker. The manner of handling source credits is merely a factor in the overall performance of each student.
The ability to smoothly incorporate and cite research in a piece of writing takes advanced skill, usually gained late in high school. However, that high degree of academic skill can now be faked. The very process of synthesizing and citing multiple sources can be plagiarized as large-language artificial intelligence (AI) tools can write speeches, complete with citations in any format the user chooses, and they can do it in moments. This means fluent citations are no longer the reliable indicator of academic integrity they used to be.
We may not like these developments, but when competitors are honest enough to cite the use of AI in a speech, it should not be an automatic rank killer for them. When we sit in the judge’s chair, we need to put aside personal prejudices regarding research tools and keep an open mind. It would certainly help for the competitor to offer some explanation regarding their use of AI in the speech, but judges need to remember that they may be hearing another speech in the same room that was written with just as much or more help from AI without us ever knowing it.
On the other end of the spectrum, source credits can be poorly delivered by unskilled students who do not mean to deceive, mislead, or even take a shortcut. It is not a mark of poor integrity when they use fewer sources and more simplistic ways of giving credit, such as a “blanket citation” for a single source at the beginning of their speech.
We need to infuse our feedback with grace toward the students who are crafting their own speeches and can only manage cumbersome or blanket citations. Their lack of skill should not earn high scores in the ballot rubric, but they should not receive comments that call their integrity into question. Mentioning that we would like to have known which parts of the speech came from the blanket-cited book on birds and which parts came from their own backyard observations is more meaningful than saying they need to “strive for better academic integrity by using more citations.”
Integrity is a heart issue. Honest citations might reflect a heart attitude of willingness to honor the work and thought of others, but they might also reflect nothing more than willingness to cooperate with the rules of a given situation. I’m sure the preacher I mentioned above cited sources properly in his seminary papers, but that didn’t mean his heart was committed to integrity. In other words, citations are crucial, but we cannot trust them as a decisive measure of personal character.
Embracing the Challenge
We’re in a situation that feels like a new predicament, but the fundamentals are still the same. AI is here to stay, but so is the NCFCA mission. We are still working to challenge and equip ambassadors for Christ to communicate truth with integrity and grace. We are simply facing new challenges and new ways to exercise grace.
Our Director of Programming, Anne Marie Gray, conducted an Interview on AI this summer with two professors from the University of Northwestern. In it, she made the encouraging observation that we can choose to view engagement with AI as an opportunity to rely on the Lord for wisdom. “This is how He’s designed us,” she said. “He’s made us to encounter things and say, ‘Okay, Lord, what does this mean? How do we do this well before you?’”
Our students are entering a world in which they will have to deal with AI. Therefore, adults need to commit to learning with them about how it works and how it can assist in research without doing all of the thinking students should do for themselves. A great start would be grabbing a notebook and a big bowl of popcorn to watch Mrs. Gray’s Interview on AI.
The New Front Line for Accountability
More than ever, maintaining academic integrity in our league needs to start well before students arrive at a tournament.
We need the people who know each competitor best to hold them accountable. When I taught writing, someone could have removed all of the names from papers and I still would have been able to tell which paper belonged to each student. I knew their voices, capabilities, and the quirks of their writing styles. I caught instances of plagiarism when sections of text didn’t sound like the student. Coaches, parents, and even fellow competitors, you can do this too! We need to tune in to the unique human voices in our homes, clubs, and schools.
Beyond listening deeply for the personality of each voice, let’s develop the habit of asking questions about speeches. This is especially important when something sounds beyond a student’s normal vocabulary, knowledge base, or current academic capabilities. What can they tell you about the writing process? What evidence can they provide for their research? If they cite a source, can they answer any questions about what else they read in the article by that source? If they use a new word, can they define it? Can they tell you about any facts or ideas they wish they could have included that wouldn’t fit?
There will never be a perfect method for evaluating academic integrity in the fast-paced environment of NCFCA tournaments, but we can hold the line on developing authentic human communicators if we are willing to work as a constructive community to learn new ways of thinking and adapt to new realities. God is still on His throne. He is never fooled or befuddled. Artificial Intelligence is no mystery to Him, and He cares far more about the hearts and minds of our competitors than we possibly can. He promises that “. . .there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known” (Luke 12:2 NASB).
Let’s pray for His help and roll up our sleeves for some new learning as we encourage one another to think with wisdom and grace about issues of integrity.
Disclaimer: The information in this (or any other) blog article is intended for explanatory purposes and to promote good conversation and competition in our league. Blog articles are not intended to interpret, augment, or supersede our League Policies or Competition Event Rules.
