I (Joseph Thibault, CEO of Cursive) recently provided background and information to Tyler Kingkade of NBC News for his article published in January 2026.

The article, which dives into the rapidly changing environment for teachers and students in the classroom, especially at the college-level, helps to shine a light on the deteriorating trust between colleges, administrators, teachers, and students.

While my quote sounds serious, I’d like to provide some additional color and explanation.

Joseph Thibault, founder of Cursive, an academic integrity software company, tracked 43 humanizers that had a combined 33.9 million website visits in October.

Thibault, who also publishes a newsletter on cheating called This Isn’t Fine, said he thinks students would be better off ensuring they have a record of their revision history in Google Docs or Microsoft Word than using a humanizer. But ultimately, he believes, the shift that’s coming is moving toward more monitoring of students completing assignments.

“I think we have to ask students, what level of surveillance are you willing to subject yourself to so that we can actually know that you’re learning?” he said. “There is a new agreement that needs to be made.”

Emphasis is mine. “Surveillance” is a loaded word in edtech and education.

However, I’d like to explore it in the sense of its definition to “closely monitor or observe.” In many cases, the active of observing naturally occurs and is used to bolster validity of an assessment. This allows educators to objectively validate that work was done in the desired conditions as an active process (rather than after the fact).

In the context of academic integrity we most often think “proctoring” via a webcam, but there are many methods. These include:

• Going to class(!)
• Taking an exam synchronously with your class
• Taking an examination at a test center on campus
• Taking an examination at a test center like PearsonVue or Prometric
• Presenting to your class
• Giving an oral exam (through Zoom or in class)
• Recording yourself on video or audio
• Accessing your LMS (which creates a significant amount of metadata and log records about your use)
• leveraging 2FA through your phone via Duo or Authenticator apps
• Plagiarism detection / AI detection (to a lesser extent)
• “Authorship” tools that look at linguistics and stylometrics

And many more.¹

If I can expand upon my point in the paper and make a plea to students and teachers everywhere it’s this:

Validating what a student knows is now the question universities and professors face, but it is also a responsibility that is shared with students (this is not a new concept, an honor code is an activation of student behavior). Assessment without validation is worthless to all parties.

Validation, by and large, comes from being able to verify that you know something through an observable assessment: this could be a process, a presentation, performance, or even a test (as long as they are all delivered/observed transparently).

Students play an important role in this new landscape of AI where ubiquitous access provides any answer at any time. Student sentiment toward various “tools’ of surveillance or monitoring directly impact the types of assignments and products that can be assessed.

One extreme: If extreme monitoring is enforced for every assessment performed, e.g. in a face to face or one on one environment with a proctor, then any assessment is ‘secure’ (though assessment validity will vary depending on the method and design).

The other extreme: If there is no monitoring for any assessment then there is no security (and even the best designed assessment is invalid).

The question is for students and teachers together: what is the right balance that will lead to the desired outcome (certifiable learning and skills)?

At Cursive, we’re interested in the medium of writing. We continue to believe that typing biometrics provides a non-invasive, highly-secure method of verifying learning through the process of writing. This provides the convenience of proctoring without cameras while leveraging a time-tested format: writing (which is and remains an essential skill).

1. We’ve published a 30+ guide to different academic integrity tools ↩︎