Episode 44: Karen Costa

“I have many conflicted feelings about AI, but talking to kind, curious people seems to help.”

“What does academic integrity mean when there are multi-billion dollar companies with armies of people whose job it is to make cheating irresistible?”

In this deeply personal and reflective episode of The Opposite of Cheating Podcast (44), Karen Costa shares what it means to teach for integrity in asynchronous, online learning environments in the age of GenAI.

With nearly two decades of experience across multiple institutions, Karen highlights the role of relationships, care, and relevance in shaping learning spaces that foster integrity—not through surveillance, but through trust. She opens up about the tension between access and academic integrity, especially for adult learners, neurodivergent students, and working parents—populations whose educational opportunities often depend on online formats.

She discusses how the rise of agentic AI has forced educators to confront not just cheating, but the erosion of attention, motivation, and self-belief. Karen also explores her shifting role as an instructor, her experiments with Google Docs version history, and her creative coping strategies—from AI command centers to faculty self-care.

Most importantly, she challenges institutions and edtech companies to do more than outsource ethical decision-making to underpaid adjuncts.

You can follow Karen on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-costa-380280a7/ and you can learn more about her book at https://www.amazon.com/Educators-Guide-ADHD-Designing-Teaching/dp/1421453509

(Disclaimer: episode quotes and summary were created using Youtube's Transcript and ChatGPT and edited by a human. Any errors are the responsibility of the human).