This past Spring Jason Michael Perry and I talked about AI, writing, school, detection, and technology on Thoughts on Tech & Things in the WYPR studios here in Baltimore. It was a great conversation helping to describe the differences between close monitoring and after-the-fact detection, what Cursive does, and how we are working with schools, faculty, and students to blaze a new trail for authenticity through the writing process. Check it out on wherever you listen to podcasts:

Last week, over 1,300 registrations from 141 countries signed up for my discussion with Amy Tessitore, Moodle's Global Head of Services, about AI Agents in the LMS. 100s attended live and the recording is available to everyone: Watch the Recording The discussion and webinar focused on a wide range of how we're all thinking about AI usage and adoption. Here are a few things that stick out for me a week after:

"...how essays are not dead in the age of AI and how is enabling increased integrity and transparency in students' writing." At ASU+GSV this past April we had the pleasure of chatting with Dustin Ramsdell AKA The Higher Ed Geek which was recorded and recently published as a podcast. "I think there's a big opportunity to center the assurance of learning to the student rather then in the course..." And if you're interested how we might center tools for the student please check out our Browser Extension, available now.

Moodle, the largest Learning Management System by users and sites, is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, May 5 at 12:00 PM EST focused on AI Agents. Agents and cheating tools in the LMS have been a hot topic here, on our Substack, and elsewhere. I’m excited to join the Moodle HQ team to for a webinar about Agents, AI, and the world’s largest LMS in a next week:

Hoo boy. We’ve been at work day and night and are releasing our best version of Cursive TypeID yet. This release has something for everyone: improvements for teachers, improvements for students, improvements for writers, and improvements for email security. No matter why or how you’re using Cursive TypeID, upgrade today to support, protect, and showcase your authorship. Learn more at…

Cursive 2.1.5 - Release Notes I’m so excited to announce the release of Cursive 2.1.5 for Moodle LMS. This release is almost 100% based on requested features from our community members, a testament to their goals, use cases, and vision/commitment to transparency in writing. Our team had a lot of fun designing, building, testing, and using these features, which are now live for all Cursive users (upgrade your site today).

Students sit in rows, pencils sharpened, erasers at the ready, desktops and tables cleared. A volunteer student hands stacks of paper notebooks to each student sitting at one end. The student dutifully takes one, and passes the rest down the row, each student repeating the exercise until it reaches the other end of the room and every student has a sheaf of paper wrapped in a light blue cover.

Hear me write.

If you're curious what things look like in Moodle without having to login or type... That ☝️ and more are available. Want to learn more? Connect with Cursive

Cursive TypeID - your writing is one of a kind

Cursive TypeID - your writing is one of a kind

Meet Einstein, the most recent ragebait driven tool to “auto-complete” your learning. Something so salacious the creators already took it down amid significant backlash/pubicity across the web. Here’s how it was advertised before the page was taken down / served a 404… This is essentially OpenClaw (of “moltbook” fame), with a new name, a wrapper, a $40/mo price tag, and a specific set of instructions/skill you can give it to be an “Auto-School Agent”.

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. Read the full article at NBCNews.com…

Join our webinar on November 19th to learn about Moodle's AI Feedback Question Type and empower students with instant feedback!

How do you disrupt contract cheating? Together, with action, one at a time. Click to read This isn't fine, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

Cursive's for Moodle provides process tracking and authorship verification for writing in forums, quizzes, and online assignments. Works where you want it, fully transparent, and non-invasive.

A few notes on analytics: Authorship: this is our ML model ensuring the same student is the author. An initial sample is required from students for this to work. Effort: this is calculated as "verbosity" (total typing activity) divided by the character count in the final submission. For writing without AI or pastes this is 100% or higher (in some cases, much higher).*

Cursive 2.0 introduces new features to our existing Authorship and Analytics plugin for Moodle Free to install, free features to use locally (no API connection required) Replay revision history (free process tracking) Complete transparency (free student-facing notifications) Assignment-by-assignment deployment (free use it only where you want) Download it at Learn more at

We're off to a hot start with pilots and customers using Cursive: 1,000+ Students Authenticated K12, college, and university sites around the world (Australia, North America, South America, and Asia) are using Cursive to verify student authorship. 5,000+ Assignments Verified From discussion posts to online assignments and essays on quizzes: a variety of writing assignment-types were verified to confirm student outcomes and provide near real-time feedback to evaluators and students without the need for AI detection software.

Our efforts to provide academic integrity tools at the lowest cost possible continues and we're proud to announce the update of our API-based plagiarism and AI detection plugin for Moodle has been upgraded to support Moodle 5.0. Download it here: This plugin brings the power of Originality AI to Moodle through the core Moodle Plagiarism API for forums, quizzes, and online text. For bundles with the Cursive plugin for Moodle (one low price) please contact us.

30 minutes with the University of Tulsa's David Rettinger covers our CEO's progression from "integrity-curious" to founding Cursive in order to address a major gap in academic integrity: individual authorship verification. This session covers: contract cheating assessment validity academic integrity authorship typing biometrics essay mill research and much more... Check out David and co-author Dr. Tricia Bertram-Gallant's book, The Opposite of Cheating and get a copy today (a must read for anyone interested in Academic Integrity).

Cursive, from a field of many, was selected as a finalist for the Alumni Track of 10th Annual Pitch Dingman Competition. From the event announcement: Pitch Dingman Competition, the University of Maryland’s signature annual venture competition, showcases the university’s most talented student and alumni entrepreneurs by providing the opportunity to compete for seed funding and exclusive access to venture development resources.

Register Join Joseph Thibault and Anissa Sorokin for a short discussion of their new paper which discusses the history and potential of typing biometrics in learning and writing. The authors will discuss the ramifications, insights, and future research potential of enabling biometric data analysis in non-lab settings. Cursive CEO and Founder, Joseph Thibault, and collaborator, Anissa Sorokin authored "Biometric Key Logging in Authentic Learning Environments: Introducing the 'Cursive' Standard and Collection Tools" which was recently published in the Journal of Writing Analytics (

As an organizational psychologist, Adam Grant believes that great minds don't think alike; they challenge each other to think differently. In Re:Thinking with Adam Grant, he has lively discussions and...

“Over the last 15 years, as a scaled higher ed program administrator, I searched for a solution to the intractable problem of tying submitted writing to the enrolled student and I’m excited and proud to work with Open LMS to introduce our solution to its client base,” said Joseph Thibault, Cursive Founder and CEO. “Cursive provides institutions a fundamentally different approach to after-the-fact detection tools to raise the bar for academic integrity.

For a long time, asking students to write in Moodle was a risky endeavor. A lot has changed over the last decade though and Moodle's become a fine place for student writing to happen. This is a product of improvements to: Moodle session times (which can be customized) Moodle's customer TinyMCE Autosave feature (which periodically saves student writing to the database; the default TinyMCE Autosave leverages the browser instead, a less secure method).

Click me

You might assume that tech-savvy people are the most open to using AI, but research suggests it's actually those who are least familiar with it.

I've got a new column in "Dirty Word" (a nod to the out of date terminology -- elearning -- describing most learning that happens today). This periodical (a digital magazine with a physical option) is a wonderful collection of tips, commentary, reflections, and news all gussied up with professional graphic design. You can subscribe here: For this first installation, I reflected on the…

We had the honor of participating in the first ENAI "Startup Fair" with some friends, competitors, and colleagues. It was a fun event coordinated by the European Network for Academic Integrity which featured some of the newest and most progressive academic integrity tools on the market. The full event playlist is available here: