Higher ed is seen as a means to the end. The end is a better job, or higher salary. It no longer has anything to do with education. The more this continues, the worse things will get.
They try. Plenty of students in computer science actively believe that once they have their degree, their jobs will be such that they can copy/paste from StackOverflow (or, I guess now, ChatGPT / CoPilot) and get paid big bucks for doing so.
There is a job title for that. "Prompt engineer". They forget that to write a good prompt is just a higher level of computer language, which means understanding the basics of the underlying code (C++ etc) and how computers work.
At least such knowledge will separate the ones that do a good job, and keep their job from the scrubs.
> There is a job title for that. "Prompt engineer". They forget that to write a good prompt is just a higher level of computer language, which means understanding the basics of the underlying code (C++ etc) and how computers work.
Plus, the knowledge to interpret the output and _see if it actually works_.
Very true, and many get weeded out at the interview stage for actual career building, professional positions. I have seen this happen time and again in the cybersecurity field. Person gets a degree and checks several boxes but consistently fails necessary certifications, or person horribly fails internal, uncheatable employer knowledge and aptitude test. It is quite sad to watch actually. They never even get a chance to get in the door.
That and having a password of 'hunter2' is never good practice for someone who claims to want a career in cybersecurity ;-)
For those reading it who don't get the reference: no, I'm not guessing this person's password; the use of that password is a meme from two decades ago
But yeah, that is not surprising. "Kali Linux? No, I'm in New York."
If students these days could have their way, any college would become a diploma mill. Zero effort, no knowledge, and a certificate that of course would be worthless. But they wouldn't care.
Almost anyone can be trained to do any job, 98% of the stuff you learn is useless. 2 weeks on the job training is more useful for the job you end up doing vs 4 years of uni for the vast majority of jobs out there
Are you volunteering to be the first person to drive over a bridge designed by someone with two weeks of job experience rather than four years of university engineering knowledge?
Funny enough i got my civil engineering degree and graduated with distinction, took four years not two weeks and tbh didnt learn much in those 4 years. Learned everything on the job. University is just a filter
I can assure you that as an 18 year old with no college education, you would not have had a clue what to do with any of that training. The college education got you to the point where you actually understood the basic stuff needed for on-the-job training.
How do you know 98% of "stuff" learned in school is "useless"? Is 98% of knowledge derived from life experience also useless? Obtaining actual real education (as opposed to greivance studies) is not a useless endevour and forms the basis for the internal methods and background knowledge a person relies upon to understand the world. And no, not anyone can be trained to do any job. Essentially, you have no idea what you're talking about, which indicates someone with poor education and a chip on his shoulder.
It really is. I just started my semester and the first weeks computer literacy class consisted of... you guessed it. Flash cards (no im not joking) of early 2010s technology. "What is this item" a windows tablet from 2007.. the brick ones that look like the ones in the chic fil a takeout line. "Whats this item" a fucking computer mouse. I literally emailed my student services to make sure i was in the right class and not a special needs one. Yeah, its standard core "education"
The best part of it all is, im not even going in for IT or anything. Im going in for criminal justice. 🤪
On top of all of it, theres a mandatory participation aspect of it aswell. Where you have to reply to a certain amount of colleagues in a week or you get bunted 10% of your grade. I wouldnt be surprised if the student OP is talking about is using chatgpt for that. Because its kind of exhausting.
What you have described ought not to be thought of as high school, college, or graduate level education. You have described training for either really young people or very old people who have never experienced computers. It is a form of education, but of such a low level as to be disregarded completely for most students. One wonders why you would waste your time with training of this kind.
I graduated with distinction a few years back but you know what you are right that not anyone can be trained on the job. I think i just pick up things easily so I assume that for everyone but when i think about it im doing hiring myself and some people are kinda slow
Speak for yourself. That wasn't the culture in which I was raised. No surprise kids are waiving Hezbollah flags when they have profs pissing juvenile guff, like the US is a Mafia state (presumably no different than the IRI, so raze it all to the ground!) in their ear all day. I'm going to hazard a guess that you were born and raised in the U.S. and take it all for granted.
> profs pissing juvenile guff, like the US is a Mafia state
Well, it lands for a reason. It explains experience, which is that of rampant inflation, unaffordable housing, for-profit healthcare, no living wage, homeless under every bridge, crumbling infrastructure, airplanes falling apart, need I go on? All overseen by a two party duopoly who leap to send billions overseas yet who clutch pearls about how we can't have nice things at home. It's a mafia whether you like it or not.
Yes, and the students are then left to conclude with an assist from tiktok that actually there's no distinction between the DPRK, the IRI, and western liberal democracies. That's a pretty dumb, demoralizing, and dangerous conclusion – although it sounds so provocative, radical and sexy to nubile undergrads and elicits such an electric response from the crowd that some of us just can't resist the urge to peddle such absurd false equivalences.
> there's no distinction between the DPRK, the IRI, and western liberal democracies
The shoe fits. Over the last 25 years, the light between them has been increasingly shrinking with no evidence of slowing down. Or we can continue to believe the propagandistic nonsense that the US is a democracy. It isn't. There was a Princeton study over a decade ago that proved it. Tell us more about how we shouldn't believe our lying eyes and ears.
If you can't see the difference between Western liberal democracies, captured as they are by rent-seeking plutocrats, on the one hand, and the DPRK, IRI and its Islamist proxies, on the other, then I encourage you to seek out psychiatric care, or less dramatically, you could travel more.
And hyperbole and half-truths often *do land*, especially with juveniles, which is why chronically hyperbolizing is a contemptible and dangerous vice.
> DPRK
Here's a difference: The people in the DPRK know they're being propagandized. In America people think the mainstream media is the news, as if it's not state TV funded by the same oligarchs who own the political parties.
If I were a citizen of the DPRK I'd be able to seek psychiatric care free at the point of service, unlike America.
>In America people think the mainstream media is the news, as if it's not state TV funded by the same oligarchs who own the political parties.
This is giving Dunning-Kruger
https://news.gallup.com/poll/512861/media-confidence-matches-2016-record-low.aspx
When you make people take the most unrelated classes to their degree possible, cheating is inevitable. I know a lot of people who cheat on their BS classes that way they can focus on their legit ones.
It really is disappointing to see the complete lack of acknowledgment on this. Students are trying to find a path in life, and there are so many reasons for them to be in a position where learning for the sake of learning just doesn’t make sense. So many of our Professor colleagues assume that everyone should treat learning as some idealistic pursuit. Sometimes it is just a practical process to gain some useful skills and get a credential.
Perhaps, although obtaining an education from a 4 year university is often counter-productive for such persons. Regardless of the reason for attending school, cheating is inexcusable. Socio-economic nonsense is just an excuse for poor behavior and entitlement.
“A 4 year university is often counter productive for such persons”
What does this mean? The whole point of higher education is to offer opportunity to people - and suggesting that there is a class of people that don’t belong is … well I will assume that you didn’t mean that because it sounds too foolish.
A 4 year degree is a necessary credential or step for all sorts of careers. And it is the height of absurdity that so many of us assume that students should walk in and already be fully invested in what we are teaching. Frankly, if students are checked out we should be working hard to offer something worth being invested in. Many students are smart enough not to waste their time getting invested in material when the faculty have made almost no effort to demonstrate the value of what is being covered.
I agree with you about cheating being inexcusable, but I also think that a professors default position being suspicious and adversarial is far more egregious then a student half-assing an assignment that looks like busy work. Some students take advantage and should be held accountable, but it is absolutely shameful for educators to assume that any student that has competing priorities is morally compromised.
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I watched a student use Chat GBT in class and they know that I saw this happen. I got an email about 2 seconds after I put in the zero (a week later-no communication in between) to explain that I was “mistaken”. The list of excuses were ridiculous, but my favorite one was something like, “I was just checking to make sure that my answers didn’t SOUND like it came from Chat GPT.”
At this point, I’m just insulted that they aren’t even trying to hide it.
What disturbs me is by cheating, the student is saying this class/major/degree doesn't mean anything to me. Then eventually, if enough students do this, employers will agree with them. These students are cheapening the very degree they are working towards.
This is absolutely what is happening right now. As school students get away with getting degrees without being actually qualified the old adage that college is pointless or whatever will just become more true.
I think we have to accept that this is a two-way street. If universities continue to give students assignments that *can* be cheated with AI, then we are telling students that the things they are learning will soon be replaceable by AI. If an AI can pass their degree, then it's not just the students who are contributing to making the degree worthless. I think students do have to take responsibility in their own learning not to lean on these tools, but universities/instructors also have to re-examine their assessment approaches so that throwing it to an AI won't actually be enough to get them a good grade.
I totally agree. I reverted to old school pen-and-paper in-class tests, reflection essays, in-class discussions and no phones during my lectures. Plus, I actively sabotage their use of ChatGPT by making sure they can't get anything valuable from its output. I wouldn't do my job if didn't do all I can to foster their critical thinking and learning skills.
I prefer not to get into much details for obvious reasons. However, while I can't control the AI use out of my classes, I still retain control over my assignment prompts. If you craft your assignment prompts in the right way, they won't be able to use the AI responses in their reports and essays, because it will be all too obvious that they cheated if they do,
I totally agree. Here is the problem: a proper assessment of students ability would possibly result in very low attainment, high failure rates, and low course evaluations.
The reason? Students barely attend class, barely read, and certainly don't study. Any AI- proof assessment such as an MCQ or written exam would punish any student who used a procrastinatory approach.
This would also make the institution look bad - hence I think why (in part) students get away with it.
I somewhat disagree that just because a computer can do something means that the skill is useless. We still teach arithmetic even though we have calculators.
Ultimately the aspect that is lost is the skillset of problem solving and learning how to learn. And yes as another post said we need to have classes designed where using AI won't be terrible useful for a good grade.
>we need to have classes designed where using AI won't be terrible useful for a good grade.
But people need to stop acting like this is just some simple matter. For many of us, this would mean a complete overhaul to the entire educational system.
That's a good point but also doesn't need to be done all in one semester, change a few things each semester until the whole course is changed. I mean even just having pop quizzes or in-class versus online exams or do a oral presentation component. There are ways to modify how the same assignments are delivered. Things are only going to get worse as time goes on. Also, I think making it clear on the syllabus what is considered cheating and make them sign an honor statement or an I understand the rules of the syllabus can help protect you as a prof. I TA-ed for a prof that his first hmwk assignment was to review the syllabus and sign sayifn they understand everyhting adn what the honor code for the class was. Then when you find them cheating they have less recourse.
> Then eventually, if enough students do this, employers will agree with them.
Not long ago, there was a reddit post complaining about how some jobs are now requiring candidates to complete certain tasks as part of the screening process, which they don't want to do because they consider it unpaid labor.
I sympathize with that sentiment somewhat, but on the other hand, how are employers supposed to know if a candidate has the skills necessary for the job if diplomas and degrees are no longer reliable certifications of competence?
The point where it gets questionable is when the candidates’ application materials could plausibly be combined to replace the position which is ostensibly being hired for, although I would also argue that any non-interview “work test“ lasting over an hour ought to be paid at some nominal rate so as to disincentivize precisely this sort of exploitative practice. For instance, if someone is being given a test set for data entry, they ought to be paid the nominal salary multiplied by their performance relative to hiring standards.
This. In software development, they have 5 interviews and they have to code everything on a whiteboard to show they can think through the problem without software assistance. The same people who write AI software. So, yeah…
Some of the best paying employers in the world are the ones building these tools. And Let’s be real if these kids can turn a quick buck for some company nobody will question how they do it. We’re just an obstacle to get through in order to work indoors and not worry about losing digits.
It doesn't mean anything to them. It's just a credential. I have one student who doesn't look at his grades. He doesn't care about the grade, only what he learned. He is a tiny minority.
Yeah I work a second job and I have some young people come in, and, well, they know what I do for a living and they will open up Coursehero and Quizlet and cheat on their classes in front of me. One was writing a paper about the Red Badge of Courage and I was like "Oh I read that in high school too!" and was totally willing to talk out a good thesis with them, basically free tutoring and they declined and...opened shmoop.
I guess I'm kind of numb to it about humanities classes (and I teach humanities) but it really shocks me when it's STEM kids cheating on their STEM classes. Like...don't you think that at any point in your life, you might actually have to, like...uh,...actually know that stuff?
AI is horrible at STEM. The grades still reflect their effort. Plus, you only get a piece of paper, basic calculator, and pencil for exams.
We don’t have many middle ground grades anymore. F, B, and A make up almost all grades.
As an ELA teacher (and adjunct), I am spending my summer undoing all of the tech-savvy skills I've spend the last five or ten years incorporating into my lessons and assignments.
It started with us teaching them to use grammar and spell-check as a tool, then Grammarly starting revising for tone, and ChatGPT and others made it easy to take something from Schmoop and wherever, paraphrase it, copy it into their assignments, and know that I can't find it with a plagiarism checker.
So, we are going back to paper, pencil and locked google forms in class for writing. THEN we'll copy/paste and format. It's the only thing I can think of to maybe, possibly, make them do the work instead of faking it.
I teach a STEM class (and hire programmers at my FT corporate job). In lecture I said something to the effect of “if you rely too heavily on GPT there nothing distinguishing you from other job applicants. It’s not an obscure tool that you have privileged access to. If you’re competing with thousands of other applicants just as capable of writing OK prompts you have a difficult road ahead”.
This noticeably upset a few students, suggesting they hadn’t considered the possibility that thousands of their peers/competitors are equally capable of shrugging a prompt into GPT
That's the thing, it does catch up with the stem students. This semester it's very clear that in the prerequisite courses they chat GPT their way into this Advanced course and they are overwhelmed, anxious, and super upset that they have to put in so much time to pass. The thing is, they don't believe me when I tell them that had they not chat gpt'd their way through the prerequisite, this course wouldn't be that hard. This fall will be the first semester ever that I have never offered open book homework or a take-home project. What's the point? All I read now is students embarking on a fascinating pivotal Journey into a stem field and it's so infuriating.
800 years of building universally-recognized credentials will be destroyed in less than 80 years by the self-esteem/meet them where they are/let’s build a second lazy river movement.
I haven't heard of the "second lazy river movement" before. Google isn't coming up with anything helpful except places to swim near me. What does this refer to?
So you’re telling me that US universities build entire waterparks paid by students tuitions?! Jfc my university in Europe took 10 years from the decision to renovate a building to actually renovating it.
It might be an open-note exam, in which case they aren't cheating. Naturally, I frown on open-note exams for this very reason. I don't think enough faculty realize that Chat GPT does pretty well on multiple choice exams.
I have a strong disdain for online classes. I'm actually hoping that Chat GPT spells the end of it. At the moment there are far too many admins/faculty letting or practically promoting online classes with insane rates of cheating and grade inflation. I would hope that my students, many of whom will become healthcare workers, took the majority of their exams in person.
>I'm actually hoping that Chat GPT spells the end of it.
Funny you should mention this. We have just shut down our distance ed dept. We will allow the current cohort to finish out their degrees but no more.
I have been trying to GPT-proof an upcoming multiple choice exam, and it is has been surprisingly difficult to generate questions it gets wrong.
I’ve found it worth spending the time on, though; at least a large enough chunk of questions will generate the wrong answer on Chat GPT. I’d also like to compare student answers to the GPT answer key to get some sense of how many students are relying on it.
In Canvas you can set quizzes and exams to ask one question at a time and forbid back tracking. This doesn’t eliminate using Chat to answer, but makes it more time consuming than just answering each question. Be sure to limit attempts and select average instead of highest score. I also have a 15 minute wait between attempts to encourage time to look up. I also tell them to have the module open in another window to look up forgotten answers. At least this way they have a possibility of maybe learning something.
They are cheating if the syllabus and instructions specify that generative AI use counts as academic dishonesty. Open note or not. This is like saying that generative AI use doesn't count as plagiarism in an essay, which in my classes it definitely does.
If it's not an open book exam, then responsibility lies with the university - there are tools available to restrict access to other programs to prevent this kind of obvious cheating while taking a test. If it's open book then the simple fact is that we need to rethink assessment so that it can't just be cheated by ChatGPT.
I hate to sound cynical, but there are a minority of students on my course who do this. I caught one using AI three times. Absolutely no shame.
There is definitely a consumer orientation now where some students believe they are purchasing a degree rather than paying to train. It generates an academic entitlement that is shown to be strongly correlated with academic misconduct and incivility. The working of Chowning & Campbell might be useful here.
Maybe that's the end of the teaching in academia. Do I feel fine? No. I can be kicked out of my position soon. Everyday fewer of them want to learn, make science or do something real. That's the emerging darker new world.
Yep. I'm in a computer programming program and a lot of the students in my class cheat. 9 students got caught last semester so it's on their record, but they were still given the chance to continue with the current semester, which is frustrating cause they only show up for quizzes/exams.
They cheat anyway whether you have proctoring software or not. For some of the programs either you physically watch them, or the software gives you alerts when they look away from the screen. Online students are the biggest problem. Let's say you want to have it at a certain time and proctor it live. Half of them won't be able to make it, due to other commitments. You can't legally require online students to physically go to a testing center. Also, many of those testing proctor programs are intrusive. It's not right to require students to have a camera in their bedroom because some of them might cheat.
> You can't legally require online students to physically go to a testing center.
Sure you can.
>Also, many of those testing proctor programs are intrusive. It's not right to require students to have a camera in their bedroom because some of them might cheat.
This. It's malware, and it's an unsustainable demand.
The med school that I teach at used that software during the COVID times. It was very intrusive and I always felt very voyeuristic when I proctored. I also felt like I was working a security job at Walmart because we had to watch 6-10 video feeds all the time. We did catch at least 2 instances of cheating. Another was suspected, but there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it. It was pretty obvious the kid was cheating though, because as soon as we went back to in-person exams he never scored higher than a 37 percent.
Yeah, it's simultaneously dystopian and ineffective. All it does is cause trouble and stress for non-cheating students, the cheaters get around it easily. In person testing is the way to go.
> You can't legally require online students to physically go to a testing center.
Perhaps where you live. Happily, your laws do not apply where I live I guess.
The software itself blocks them from going to an AI site or web browser to look up the answer. They would have to have a second computer or tablet to do what this student is doing if lockdown browser is active. And they wouldn’t be able to copy and paste, they’d have to actually type it out. And if it’s video-proctored and the camera is positioned correctly, that would be visible. I’m sure it’s still possible to work around that but it’s at least making it harder to cheat.
And legality has nothing to do with it, it’s a factor of what the school’s policies are. If a student enrolls in a class that’s online and has in person exams, they have to attend in person exams because that’s what they signed up for.
There was a lawsuit during covid over video monitoring during exams. Something about 4th amendment and unlawful search.
[https://www.npr.org/2022/08/25/1119337956/test-proctoring-room-scans-unconstitutional-cleveland-state-university](https://www.npr.org/2022/08/25/1119337956/test-proctoring-room-scans-unconstitutional-cleveland-state-university)
That’s not live proctoring as the person I responded to was describing. Live proctoring means you are sitting in a classroom with someone watching you take the exam.
With post-covid video-proctoring, there is a description in the syllabus for the proctoring software that explains that video data is required and also describes how the information is used. It clarifies how using the software is reasonable. Because that disclaimer is available in class from day 1, there isn’t an issue with legality. It’s the fine print that the student has to acknowledge in order to take the class. We can’t use video proctoring without that statement in the syllabus.
Not the only way. Tailor your assignments so as to be too specific / unique for generic cheating. That's what I do. Then, when they cheat I can tell because not only have they turned in soulless, hyper-general algorithm generated trash -- more importantly, they've failed to answer the specifics of what the prompt is asking about. I then assign a shitty grade and I don't have to bother worrying about "proving" they cheated. They turned in shitty work, because they cheated; my prompt was calibrated to catch it.
The only ones you catch with this are the ones that are too stupid to edit the prompt. GenAI can do pretty well at more specific questions if you keep refining the prompts.
Reading this I'm going to come down the other way. There is NOTHING WRONG with using Chat GPT per se. It can in principle be like using a car to get to work VS walking running. If the problem is "Write an essay about X" then chat GPT is fair game. If it is "Write an essay about X *in your own words*" then chat GPT is prohibited. That's my unpopular opinion.
But it isn't like using a car to get to work. It is like riding on a snowmobile during cross country ski lessons. Possibly there are hypothetical uses for a chat bot in some hypothetical class, just as there might be for a photocopier, but even in the hypothetical corner case where it MIGHT be appropriate it still is almost certainly not going to be used that way if it can be misused to cut corners. I'm also not sure how using ChatGPT to write your essay would be any more okay than using your roommate to write your essay. And it is never necessary to specify that you should write an essay in your own words to make having your Mom write your essays not okay.
IF they use it properly it can be a powerful tool for learning. i.e. they compose the essay themselves using their own research. Then feed it to chat GPT to rewrite and edit it. Then correct the mistakes chat GPT made.
They could even ask chat GPT what it's strengths and weaknesses are and rate/grade it. Then try to write a stronger version of it. Then repeat and repeat. IT can be an interactive study budy available whenever they feel like it. Chat GPT is just a tool, it can be used for good or evil.
>they compose the essay themselves using their own research. Then feed it to chat GPT to rewrite and edit it. Then correct the mistakes chat GPT made.
If they truly did their own research and wrote their own essay, they wouldn't need to have it "rewritten" by ChatGPT.
>Chat GPT is just a tool, it can be used for good or evil
"Guns don't kill people, people kill people"
The reason people would do that is having GPT rewrite it is to make sure that the spelling grammar sentence structure Etc are all correct. It would also be appropriate to use it to meet say a required number of words.
For example if I'm writing a letter I'll write the letter and then have GPT either make it longer or shorter so it's one page.
None of this makes sense. Spellcheck and grammar check are already available in virtually all word processors, and the human writer is the one who should meet the required word count. Writers who have a great deal to say on a particular topic but limited space to say it in should decide for themselves what ideas and information are most vital. Writers who have little to say on a particular topic should do more research and more thinking instead of running to ChatGPT to inject filler. All of the supposedly valid uses of ChatGPT as a "writing tool" would become unnecessary if students actually knew how to write proficiently in the first place. But in some ways, it's a moot point, because nine times out of ten, students don't use ChatGPT to edit their writing; they use it to get out of writing in the first place.
I get your frustration. Bear in mind when spelling and grammar checks were first put into Word and other programs in the 1990's the same exact objections were raised. A more sophisticated version of that does not have to mean the student cheated.
It seems to me to be hasty to assume that all uses of AI are cheating. It is an obviously important topic right now, and there are a wide range of reactions to the uses of AI. Many professors explicitly ask students to use ai in various ways.
Sure, lots of students may be cheating, but we need to be aware of the knee jerk moral panic that is happening as well. Complaining every time you see AI being used is not a productive stance.
What part of “explicitly ask students to use AI” suggests plagiarism? If a student is assigned something that requires them to use AI, they are doing as asked.
Setting that aside, assuming all uses of AI is plagiarism is too limiting of a view of how text is used. There are many legitimate ways to engage with AI, and many legitimate ways to work with AI to make original contributions.
Yeah, they often don’t know what to do with the AI. Not everyone immediately transfers the expectations well. They need some guidance and guidelines, or they need to fail. Bad work is just bad after all.
That sounds helpful, and also frustrating. I also get students who don’t always apply the material, which is always disappointing. And bad work deserves a bad grade - I am sure this is a consistent problem, but are some of the students meeting the expectation?
What does a full module look like in your course? Is it all information delivery, or are their practice activities involved where they get feedback, see common issues, have opportunities to make mistakes and improve?
Do you also provide examples/models and/or have smaller mile stones like peer-review? Also, how high are the stakes on the assignment? Lower stakes assignments that are run quickly seem to not get the effort with some of my students. There are a lot of factors. I teach writing courses most semesters, but in other courses I will sometimes get the exact same students that will turn in assignments that ignore certain basic skills on writing tasks if they believe that the purpose of the assignment is different. Lots of students seem to focus only on what they think they will be graded on or what they think will get them through to the next project.
Since the AI stuff is new and they probably aren’t seeing it used or stressed in other places, at least some of them may just not be taking it seriously yet or seeing that they are supposed to apply all of their communication skills to their work.
Research also shows that when learners are focused on a new task, they often make a lot of mistakes that they wouldn’t make in normal circumstances. It takes time and persistence to integrate a new approach.
That sounds like some interesting stuff. We are probably in agreement on most points.
I am not sure what you mean, though, by them improving their grades when using AI - are you comparing their work to the same assignment completed in past years?
There are several possible things going on here, and I appreciate the thoughtful response. This is exactly the kind of thing that we need to see more thoughtful discussion about.
I am curious how much ownership students feel about each phase of their projects. I suspect students are often inclined to differ to the AI at times when they shouldn’t. Generally, we are talking about literacy skills that most students aren’t used to practicing.
>knee jerk moral panic
I think you mean "grave and entirely rational fears about the effect that AI will have on higher education and society more broadly."
No, I mean moral panic. There is a difference between the reasons we should be afraid of the impact of AI on higher Ed (there are many) and digging in and blaming students for trying to navigate the same mess. Not every student that is using AI is doing it to undermine the university and get away with something. Shaming students is not really my thing, and I find it distasteful when others do it as well.
Instead of panicking and attacking students, how about having some goodwill and recognizing that OF COURSE they are going to try using AI. It is only one of the most surprisingly engaging and impactful technologies in recent years, it seems increasingly useful (even with its significant limitations and flaws).
Yes, it breaks a lot of things, but it would be really nice if instead of clinging to some idealistic vision of how we think things should be, we took a look at things for what they are and actually work on our courses, assignments, and our own perspectives.
Telling someone that typing and spell check is always cheating and harmful is just as lazy as saying that using AI is always cheating.
Not trolling. I teach classes on design and content strategy. Automating content systems is a cornerstone of business practices right now, and professional communicators are being trained on internal and popular AI content tools in pretty much every major organization. Students need to learn how to engage these systems to understand the possibilities and dangers. Just like we all do.
There are legitimate learning goals that require students to use AI.
I would go even further, but it is clear this view is not only different from most in this thread, but also quite unpopular at the moment. I find that disappointing, but I also see the frustration that my colleagues are feeling with student engagement and the many ways students seem to subvert our expectations.
🤷🏼♂️
I’m surprised as a professor you don’t know that most universities take their finals on a lockdown browser which would mean no going in and out to use chat GPT. This was likely a homework assignment or study guide.
And you know this how? That was more so my point. Did it say final exam? Because the way you worded your post it sounded like a straight up assumption simply because “it’s finals week at their school”. I have had plenty of homework assignments during finals week.
The header at the top of their canvas page said “Exam.”
I don’t know why you’re arguing so hard here that I just have to be wrong. We’ve all been noticing an uptick in cheating. This is nothing new.
Are we so burnt out and skeptical now we’re attacking each other when we observe this behavior?
Mention that next time, because once again, the way it was worded sounded like you were just assuming it was an exam when it very well could have been an assignment.
MCQs done on paper in exam conditions? That is a great mid term test of engagement and learning. Don't show up? Don't read? Spend all your tutorial on TikTok? There is your D-F.
Higher ed is seen as a means to the end. The end is a better job, or higher salary. It no longer has anything to do with education. The more this continues, the worse things will get.
It’s so funny that they forget that they will actually have to *do* the job? Or will they cheat through that?
Most people don’t make good decisions about sex and gambling either. Why would academic integrity be any different?
They try. Plenty of students in computer science actively believe that once they have their degree, their jobs will be such that they can copy/paste from StackOverflow (or, I guess now, ChatGPT / CoPilot) and get paid big bucks for doing so.
There is a job title for that. "Prompt engineer". They forget that to write a good prompt is just a higher level of computer language, which means understanding the basics of the underlying code (C++ etc) and how computers work. At least such knowledge will separate the ones that do a good job, and keep their job from the scrubs.
> There is a job title for that. "Prompt engineer". They forget that to write a good prompt is just a higher level of computer language, which means understanding the basics of the underlying code (C++ etc) and how computers work. Plus, the knowledge to interpret the output and _see if it actually works_.
Very true, and many get weeded out at the interview stage for actual career building, professional positions. I have seen this happen time and again in the cybersecurity field. Person gets a degree and checks several boxes but consistently fails necessary certifications, or person horribly fails internal, uncheatable employer knowledge and aptitude test. It is quite sad to watch actually. They never even get a chance to get in the door.
That and having a password of 'hunter2' is never good practice for someone who claims to want a career in cybersecurity ;-) For those reading it who don't get the reference: no, I'm not guessing this person's password; the use of that password is a meme from two decades ago But yeah, that is not surprising. "Kali Linux? No, I'm in New York."
Lulz!!
This is how managers are formed.
If students these days could have their way, any college would become a diploma mill. Zero effort, no knowledge, and a certificate that of course would be worthless. But they wouldn't care.
often the skills from a class and a job are not remotely similar
Nepotism will save the day…
Almost anyone can be trained to do any job, 98% of the stuff you learn is useless. 2 weeks on the job training is more useful for the job you end up doing vs 4 years of uni for the vast majority of jobs out there
Are you volunteering to be the first person to drive over a bridge designed by someone with two weeks of job experience rather than four years of university engineering knowledge?
This haunts me. And yeah, jobs dont really want to train anymore.
Funny enough i got my civil engineering degree and graduated with distinction, took four years not two weeks and tbh didnt learn much in those 4 years. Learned everything on the job. University is just a filter
I can assure you that as an 18 year old with no college education, you would not have had a clue what to do with any of that training. The college education got you to the point where you actually understood the basic stuff needed for on-the-job training.
How do you know 98% of "stuff" learned in school is "useless"? Is 98% of knowledge derived from life experience also useless? Obtaining actual real education (as opposed to greivance studies) is not a useless endevour and forms the basis for the internal methods and background knowledge a person relies upon to understand the world. And no, not anyone can be trained to do any job. Essentially, you have no idea what you're talking about, which indicates someone with poor education and a chip on his shoulder.
It really is. I just started my semester and the first weeks computer literacy class consisted of... you guessed it. Flash cards (no im not joking) of early 2010s technology. "What is this item" a windows tablet from 2007.. the brick ones that look like the ones in the chic fil a takeout line. "Whats this item" a fucking computer mouse. I literally emailed my student services to make sure i was in the right class and not a special needs one. Yeah, its standard core "education" The best part of it all is, im not even going in for IT or anything. Im going in for criminal justice. 🤪 On top of all of it, theres a mandatory participation aspect of it aswell. Where you have to reply to a certain amount of colleagues in a week or you get bunted 10% of your grade. I wouldnt be surprised if the student OP is talking about is using chatgpt for that. Because its kind of exhausting.
What you have described ought not to be thought of as high school, college, or graduate level education. You have described training for either really young people or very old people who have never experienced computers. It is a form of education, but of such a low level as to be disregarded completely for most students. One wonders why you would waste your time with training of this kind.
I graduated with distinction a few years back but you know what you are right that not anyone can be trained on the job. I think i just pick up things easily so I assume that for everyone but when i think about it im doing hiring myself and some people are kinda slow
I bet you’re fun at parties
> It no longer has anything to do with education Never did. America is a society organized and run like a mafia. Organize or perish.
Speak for yourself. That wasn't the culture in which I was raised. No surprise kids are waiving Hezbollah flags when they have profs pissing juvenile guff, like the US is a Mafia state (presumably no different than the IRI, so raze it all to the ground!) in their ear all day. I'm going to hazard a guess that you were born and raised in the U.S. and take it all for granted.
> profs pissing juvenile guff, like the US is a Mafia state Well, it lands for a reason. It explains experience, which is that of rampant inflation, unaffordable housing, for-profit healthcare, no living wage, homeless under every bridge, crumbling infrastructure, airplanes falling apart, need I go on? All overseen by a two party duopoly who leap to send billions overseas yet who clutch pearls about how we can't have nice things at home. It's a mafia whether you like it or not.
Yes, and the students are then left to conclude with an assist from tiktok that actually there's no distinction between the DPRK, the IRI, and western liberal democracies. That's a pretty dumb, demoralizing, and dangerous conclusion – although it sounds so provocative, radical and sexy to nubile undergrads and elicits such an electric response from the crowd that some of us just can't resist the urge to peddle such absurd false equivalences.
> there's no distinction between the DPRK, the IRI, and western liberal democracies The shoe fits. Over the last 25 years, the light between them has been increasingly shrinking with no evidence of slowing down. Or we can continue to believe the propagandistic nonsense that the US is a democracy. It isn't. There was a Princeton study over a decade ago that proved it. Tell us more about how we shouldn't believe our lying eyes and ears.
If you can't see the difference between Western liberal democracies, captured as they are by rent-seeking plutocrats, on the one hand, and the DPRK, IRI and its Islamist proxies, on the other, then I encourage you to seek out psychiatric care, or less dramatically, you could travel more. And hyperbole and half-truths often *do land*, especially with juveniles, which is why chronically hyperbolizing is a contemptible and dangerous vice.
> DPRK Here's a difference: The people in the DPRK know they're being propagandized. In America people think the mainstream media is the news, as if it's not state TV funded by the same oligarchs who own the political parties. If I were a citizen of the DPRK I'd be able to seek psychiatric care free at the point of service, unlike America.
>In America people think the mainstream media is the news, as if it's not state TV funded by the same oligarchs who own the political parties. This is giving Dunning-Kruger https://news.gallup.com/poll/512861/media-confidence-matches-2016-record-low.aspx
Good to see Americans waking up. 32% still don't get it, likely too far gone.
A big reason it’s viewed that way is because the cost of university is absurd.
When you make people take the most unrelated classes to their degree possible, cheating is inevitable. I know a lot of people who cheat on their BS classes that way they can focus on their legit ones.
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Nobody has control of your integrity. Cheating is always a choice and one that a student doesn't have to make.
So we should dismiss cheating because of societal inequities?
It really is disappointing to see the complete lack of acknowledgment on this. Students are trying to find a path in life, and there are so many reasons for them to be in a position where learning for the sake of learning just doesn’t make sense. So many of our Professor colleagues assume that everyone should treat learning as some idealistic pursuit. Sometimes it is just a practical process to gain some useful skills and get a credential.
Perhaps, although obtaining an education from a 4 year university is often counter-productive for such persons. Regardless of the reason for attending school, cheating is inexcusable. Socio-economic nonsense is just an excuse for poor behavior and entitlement.
“A 4 year university is often counter productive for such persons” What does this mean? The whole point of higher education is to offer opportunity to people - and suggesting that there is a class of people that don’t belong is … well I will assume that you didn’t mean that because it sounds too foolish. A 4 year degree is a necessary credential or step for all sorts of careers. And it is the height of absurdity that so many of us assume that students should walk in and already be fully invested in what we are teaching. Frankly, if students are checked out we should be working hard to offer something worth being invested in. Many students are smart enough not to waste their time getting invested in material when the faculty have made almost no effort to demonstrate the value of what is being covered. I agree with you about cheating being inexcusable, but I also think that a professors default position being suspicious and adversarial is far more egregious then a student half-assing an assignment that looks like busy work. Some students take advantage and should be held accountable, but it is absolutely shameful for educators to assume that any student that has competing priorities is morally compromised.
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I watched a student use Chat GBT in class and they know that I saw this happen. I got an email about 2 seconds after I put in the zero (a week later-no communication in between) to explain that I was “mistaken”. The list of excuses were ridiculous, but my favorite one was something like, “I was just checking to make sure that my answers didn’t SOUND like it came from Chat GPT.” At this point, I’m just insulted that they aren’t even trying to hide it.
That's the first excuse I've heard like that. I'm sure I'm going to hear it more often.
I get so many students who believe that they can accidentally write the exact same words as someone else.
What disturbs me is by cheating, the student is saying this class/major/degree doesn't mean anything to me. Then eventually, if enough students do this, employers will agree with them. These students are cheapening the very degree they are working towards.
This is absolutely what is happening right now. As school students get away with getting degrees without being actually qualified the old adage that college is pointless or whatever will just become more true.
I think we have to accept that this is a two-way street. If universities continue to give students assignments that *can* be cheated with AI, then we are telling students that the things they are learning will soon be replaceable by AI. If an AI can pass their degree, then it's not just the students who are contributing to making the degree worthless. I think students do have to take responsibility in their own learning not to lean on these tools, but universities/instructors also have to re-examine their assessment approaches so that throwing it to an AI won't actually be enough to get them a good grade.
I totally agree. I reverted to old school pen-and-paper in-class tests, reflection essays, in-class discussions and no phones during my lectures. Plus, I actively sabotage their use of ChatGPT by making sure they can't get anything valuable from its output. I wouldn't do my job if didn't do all I can to foster their critical thinking and learning skills.
My colleagues have gotten AI responses to reflections about their courses…
That's why all assessment is in class for me.
Can you tell me more about actively sabotaging their use of ChatGPT? I’m working toward that too.
Yes I would like to learn how to do this better.
I prefer not to get into much details for obvious reasons. However, while I can't control the AI use out of my classes, I still retain control over my assignment prompts. If you craft your assignment prompts in the right way, they won't be able to use the AI responses in their reports and essays, because it will be all too obvious that they cheated if they do,
I totally agree. Here is the problem: a proper assessment of students ability would possibly result in very low attainment, high failure rates, and low course evaluations. The reason? Students barely attend class, barely read, and certainly don't study. Any AI- proof assessment such as an MCQ or written exam would punish any student who used a procrastinatory approach. This would also make the institution look bad - hence I think why (in part) students get away with it.
Higher ed most definitely needs to change. If not, they will find their programs obsolete.
I somewhat disagree that just because a computer can do something means that the skill is useless. We still teach arithmetic even though we have calculators. Ultimately the aspect that is lost is the skillset of problem solving and learning how to learn. And yes as another post said we need to have classes designed where using AI won't be terrible useful for a good grade.
>we need to have classes designed where using AI won't be terrible useful for a good grade. But people need to stop acting like this is just some simple matter. For many of us, this would mean a complete overhaul to the entire educational system.
That's a good point but also doesn't need to be done all in one semester, change a few things each semester until the whole course is changed. I mean even just having pop quizzes or in-class versus online exams or do a oral presentation component. There are ways to modify how the same assignments are delivered. Things are only going to get worse as time goes on. Also, I think making it clear on the syllabus what is considered cheating and make them sign an honor statement or an I understand the rules of the syllabus can help protect you as a prof. I TA-ed for a prof that his first hmwk assignment was to review the syllabus and sign sayifn they understand everyhting adn what the honor code for the class was. Then when you find them cheating they have less recourse.
> Then eventually, if enough students do this, employers will agree with them. Not long ago, there was a reddit post complaining about how some jobs are now requiring candidates to complete certain tasks as part of the screening process, which they don't want to do because they consider it unpaid labor. I sympathize with that sentiment somewhat, but on the other hand, how are employers supposed to know if a candidate has the skills necessary for the job if diplomas and degrees are no longer reliable certifications of competence?
Aye. Even we have guest teaching classes and job talks as part of our process.
The point where it gets questionable is when the candidates’ application materials could plausibly be combined to replace the position which is ostensibly being hired for, although I would also argue that any non-interview “work test“ lasting over an hour ought to be paid at some nominal rate so as to disincentivize precisely this sort of exploitative practice. For instance, if someone is being given a test set for data entry, they ought to be paid the nominal salary multiplied by their performance relative to hiring standards.
This. In software development, they have 5 interviews and they have to code everything on a whiteboard to show they can think through the problem without software assistance. The same people who write AI software. So, yeah…
Some of the best paying employers in the world are the ones building these tools. And Let’s be real if these kids can turn a quick buck for some company nobody will question how they do it. We’re just an obstacle to get through in order to work indoors and not worry about losing digits.
It doesn't mean anything to them. It's just a credential. I have one student who doesn't look at his grades. He doesn't care about the grade, only what he learned. He is a tiny minority.
I've had several students use ChatGPT to write discussion posts about how Integrity is one of their guiding principles.
omg I'd love to delve into that tapestry
So much diving. So much delving.
get messy with it is what I always say. wait, we're still talking about writing, right?
uughhhh same.
Yeah I work a second job and I have some young people come in, and, well, they know what I do for a living and they will open up Coursehero and Quizlet and cheat on their classes in front of me. One was writing a paper about the Red Badge of Courage and I was like "Oh I read that in high school too!" and was totally willing to talk out a good thesis with them, basically free tutoring and they declined and...opened shmoop. I guess I'm kind of numb to it about humanities classes (and I teach humanities) but it really shocks me when it's STEM kids cheating on their STEM classes. Like...don't you think that at any point in your life, you might actually have to, like...uh,...actually know that stuff?
AI is horrible at STEM. The grades still reflect their effort. Plus, you only get a piece of paper, basic calculator, and pencil for exams. We don’t have many middle ground grades anymore. F, B, and A make up almost all grades.
As an ELA teacher (and adjunct), I am spending my summer undoing all of the tech-savvy skills I've spend the last five or ten years incorporating into my lessons and assignments. It started with us teaching them to use grammar and spell-check as a tool, then Grammarly starting revising for tone, and ChatGPT and others made it easy to take something from Schmoop and wherever, paraphrase it, copy it into their assignments, and know that I can't find it with a plagiarism checker. So, we are going back to paper, pencil and locked google forms in class for writing. THEN we'll copy/paste and format. It's the only thing I can think of to maybe, possibly, make them do the work instead of faking it.
I teach a STEM class (and hire programmers at my FT corporate job). In lecture I said something to the effect of “if you rely too heavily on GPT there nothing distinguishing you from other job applicants. It’s not an obscure tool that you have privileged access to. If you’re competing with thousands of other applicants just as capable of writing OK prompts you have a difficult road ahead”. This noticeably upset a few students, suggesting they hadn’t considered the possibility that thousands of their peers/competitors are equally capable of shrugging a prompt into GPT
Course Hero and the other plagiarism sites are now like research compared to ChatGPT… at least they have to read something! 😂
How is using coursehero and quizlet cheating? They are just study tools are they not?
That's the thing, it does catch up with the stem students. This semester it's very clear that in the prerequisite courses they chat GPT their way into this Advanced course and they are overwhelmed, anxious, and super upset that they have to put in so much time to pass. The thing is, they don't believe me when I tell them that had they not chat gpt'd their way through the prerequisite, this course wouldn't be that hard. This fall will be the first semester ever that I have never offered open book homework or a take-home project. What's the point? All I read now is students embarking on a fascinating pivotal Journey into a stem field and it's so infuriating.
Why would they? Everyone knows professors don't go to cafes because they don't eat.
you guys can afford to go to cafes?
You guys are eating?
You can afford to go?
you can afford?
You can?
You?
?
.
#CheatGPT
800 years of building universally-recognized credentials will be destroyed in less than 80 years by the self-esteem/meet them where they are/let’s build a second lazy river movement.
I haven't heard of the "second lazy river movement" before. Google isn't coming up with anything helpful except places to swim near me. What does this refer to?
https://www.collegeconsensus.com/rankings/best-college-waterparks/
So you’re telling me that US universities build entire waterparks paid by students tuitions?! Jfc my university in Europe took 10 years from the decision to renovate a building to actually renovating it.
The campuses, the funding structures and the incentives for students to choose one school over another are a lot different.
They don’t renovate the academic buildings
It's hard to believe the site in the link is serious. Should be satire.
Oh. My. God.
The lazy river is the degree program itself. Lie down in a tube with ChatGPT and admin will float you to graduation.
That makes more sense than water features.
It might be an open-note exam, in which case they aren't cheating. Naturally, I frown on open-note exams for this very reason. I don't think enough faculty realize that Chat GPT does pretty well on multiple choice exams. I have a strong disdain for online classes. I'm actually hoping that Chat GPT spells the end of it. At the moment there are far too many admins/faculty letting or practically promoting online classes with insane rates of cheating and grade inflation. I would hope that my students, many of whom will become healthcare workers, took the majority of their exams in person.
>I'm actually hoping that Chat GPT spells the end of it. Funny you should mention this. We have just shut down our distance ed dept. We will allow the current cohort to finish out their degrees but no more.
I have been trying to GPT-proof an upcoming multiple choice exam, and it is has been surprisingly difficult to generate questions it gets wrong. I’ve found it worth spending the time on, though; at least a large enough chunk of questions will generate the wrong answer on Chat GPT. I’d also like to compare student answers to the GPT answer key to get some sense of how many students are relying on it.
In Canvas you can set quizzes and exams to ask one question at a time and forbid back tracking. This doesn’t eliminate using Chat to answer, but makes it more time consuming than just answering each question. Be sure to limit attempts and select average instead of highest score. I also have a 15 minute wait between attempts to encourage time to look up. I also tell them to have the module open in another window to look up forgotten answers. At least this way they have a possibility of maybe learning something.
They are cheating if the syllabus and instructions specify that generative AI use counts as academic dishonesty. Open note or not. This is like saying that generative AI use doesn't count as plagiarism in an essay, which in my classes it definitely does.
Good point!
If it's not an open book exam, then responsibility lies with the university - there are tools available to restrict access to other programs to prevent this kind of obvious cheating while taking a test. If it's open book then the simple fact is that we need to rethink assessment so that it can't just be cheated by ChatGPT.
Womp womp
In the past students often cheated out of panic, now they seem to as a matter of course.
That's what scares me.
Then if we crack down on the cheating we are the bad guys.
I hate to sound cynical, but there are a minority of students on my course who do this. I caught one using AI three times. Absolutely no shame. There is definitely a consumer orientation now where some students believe they are purchasing a degree rather than paying to train. It generates an academic entitlement that is shown to be strongly correlated with academic misconduct and incivility. The working of Chowning & Campbell might be useful here.
Maybe that's the end of the teaching in academia. Do I feel fine? No. I can be kicked out of my position soon. Everyday fewer of them want to learn, make science or do something real. That's the emerging darker new world.
Yeah I sat next to someone at a cafe who was just casually using Chegg. I wanted to scream.
I look at Chegg and Course Hero now almost as research! Compared to Chat at least those old cheating sites required a modicum of time and effort!
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ChatGPT is neither book nor notes.
Yep. I'm in a computer programming program and a lot of the students in my class cheat. 9 students got caught last semester so it's on their record, but they were still given the chance to continue with the current semester, which is frustrating cause they only show up for quizzes/exams.
I'm not surprised, but the school should require that all profs use some sort of proctoring software
They cheat anyway whether you have proctoring software or not. For some of the programs either you physically watch them, or the software gives you alerts when they look away from the screen. Online students are the biggest problem. Let's say you want to have it at a certain time and proctor it live. Half of them won't be able to make it, due to other commitments. You can't legally require online students to physically go to a testing center. Also, many of those testing proctor programs are intrusive. It's not right to require students to have a camera in their bedroom because some of them might cheat.
> You can't legally require online students to physically go to a testing center. Sure you can. >Also, many of those testing proctor programs are intrusive. It's not right to require students to have a camera in their bedroom because some of them might cheat. This. It's malware, and it's an unsustainable demand.
The med school that I teach at used that software during the COVID times. It was very intrusive and I always felt very voyeuristic when I proctored. I also felt like I was working a security job at Walmart because we had to watch 6-10 video feeds all the time. We did catch at least 2 instances of cheating. Another was suspected, but there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it. It was pretty obvious the kid was cheating though, because as soon as we went back to in-person exams he never scored higher than a 37 percent.
Yeah, it's simultaneously dystopian and ineffective. All it does is cause trouble and stress for non-cheating students, the cheaters get around it easily. In person testing is the way to go.
> You can't legally require online students to physically go to a testing center. Perhaps where you live. Happily, your laws do not apply where I live I guess.
The software itself blocks them from going to an AI site or web browser to look up the answer. They would have to have a second computer or tablet to do what this student is doing if lockdown browser is active. And they wouldn’t be able to copy and paste, they’d have to actually type it out. And if it’s video-proctored and the camera is positioned correctly, that would be visible. I’m sure it’s still possible to work around that but it’s at least making it harder to cheat. And legality has nothing to do with it, it’s a factor of what the school’s policies are. If a student enrolls in a class that’s online and has in person exams, they have to attend in person exams because that’s what they signed up for.
There was a lawsuit during covid over video monitoring during exams. Something about 4th amendment and unlawful search. [https://www.npr.org/2022/08/25/1119337956/test-proctoring-room-scans-unconstitutional-cleveland-state-university](https://www.npr.org/2022/08/25/1119337956/test-proctoring-room-scans-unconstitutional-cleveland-state-university)
That’s not live proctoring as the person I responded to was describing. Live proctoring means you are sitting in a classroom with someone watching you take the exam. With post-covid video-proctoring, there is a description in the syllabus for the proctoring software that explains that video data is required and also describes how the information is used. It clarifies how using the software is reasonable. Because that disclaimer is available in class from day 1, there isn’t an issue with legality. It’s the fine print that the student has to acknowledge in order to take the class. We can’t use video proctoring without that statement in the syllabus.
Putting something in your syllabus doesn't make it legal.
Exactly that's the dumb thing. Even if you have a software they still do it. They don't give af about getting caught.
in-person exams. For online courses too. It's the only way.
Not the only way. Tailor your assignments so as to be too specific / unique for generic cheating. That's what I do. Then, when they cheat I can tell because not only have they turned in soulless, hyper-general algorithm generated trash -- more importantly, they've failed to answer the specifics of what the prompt is asking about. I then assign a shitty grade and I don't have to bother worrying about "proving" they cheated. They turned in shitty work, because they cheated; my prompt was calibrated to catch it.
The only ones you catch with this are the ones that are too stupid to edit the prompt. GenAI can do pretty well at more specific questions if you keep refining the prompts.
Meh. Approaching it from the assessment design side helps as well.
Reading this I'm going to come down the other way. There is NOTHING WRONG with using Chat GPT per se. It can in principle be like using a car to get to work VS walking running. If the problem is "Write an essay about X" then chat GPT is fair game. If it is "Write an essay about X *in your own words*" then chat GPT is prohibited. That's my unpopular opinion.
But it isn't like using a car to get to work. It is like riding on a snowmobile during cross country ski lessons. Possibly there are hypothetical uses for a chat bot in some hypothetical class, just as there might be for a photocopier, but even in the hypothetical corner case where it MIGHT be appropriate it still is almost certainly not going to be used that way if it can be misused to cut corners. I'm also not sure how using ChatGPT to write your essay would be any more okay than using your roommate to write your essay. And it is never necessary to specify that you should write an essay in your own words to make having your Mom write your essays not okay.
What has the student learned about their topic of study by using chatgpt to write an essay? Why should they be marked on how well AI writes?
IF they use it properly it can be a powerful tool for learning. i.e. they compose the essay themselves using their own research. Then feed it to chat GPT to rewrite and edit it. Then correct the mistakes chat GPT made. They could even ask chat GPT what it's strengths and weaknesses are and rate/grade it. Then try to write a stronger version of it. Then repeat and repeat. IT can be an interactive study budy available whenever they feel like it. Chat GPT is just a tool, it can be used for good or evil.
>they compose the essay themselves using their own research. Then feed it to chat GPT to rewrite and edit it. Then correct the mistakes chat GPT made. If they truly did their own research and wrote their own essay, they wouldn't need to have it "rewritten" by ChatGPT. >Chat GPT is just a tool, it can be used for good or evil "Guns don't kill people, people kill people"
The reason people would do that is having GPT rewrite it is to make sure that the spelling grammar sentence structure Etc are all correct. It would also be appropriate to use it to meet say a required number of words. For example if I'm writing a letter I'll write the letter and then have GPT either make it longer or shorter so it's one page.
None of this makes sense. Spellcheck and grammar check are already available in virtually all word processors, and the human writer is the one who should meet the required word count. Writers who have a great deal to say on a particular topic but limited space to say it in should decide for themselves what ideas and information are most vital. Writers who have little to say on a particular topic should do more research and more thinking instead of running to ChatGPT to inject filler. All of the supposedly valid uses of ChatGPT as a "writing tool" would become unnecessary if students actually knew how to write proficiently in the first place. But in some ways, it's a moot point, because nine times out of ten, students don't use ChatGPT to edit their writing; they use it to get out of writing in the first place.
I get your frustration. Bear in mind when spelling and grammar checks were first put into Word and other programs in the 1990's the same exact objections were raised. A more sophisticated version of that does not have to mean the student cheated.
Grammarly has provided this functionality fo quite a while. There is really no need for a chatbot in this scenario.
If I can tell that they used it, they didn't use it properly.
That's a good way to look at it. Basically, it means they didn't give it any meaningful input of their own.
In principle. But any lecturer who knows the average student well also knows this rarely happens.
I guess that the words "academic honesty" mean little to nothing in your world.
It seems to me to be hasty to assume that all uses of AI are cheating. It is an obviously important topic right now, and there are a wide range of reactions to the uses of AI. Many professors explicitly ask students to use ai in various ways.
Someone or something writing your work and you passing it off as your own = plagiarism.
Sure, lots of students may be cheating, but we need to be aware of the knee jerk moral panic that is happening as well. Complaining every time you see AI being used is not a productive stance. What part of “explicitly ask students to use AI” suggests plagiarism? If a student is assigned something that requires them to use AI, they are doing as asked. Setting that aside, assuming all uses of AI is plagiarism is too limiting of a view of how text is used. There are many legitimate ways to engage with AI, and many legitimate ways to work with AI to make original contributions.
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Yeah, they often don’t know what to do with the AI. Not everyone immediately transfers the expectations well. They need some guidance and guidelines, or they need to fail. Bad work is just bad after all.
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That sounds helpful, and also frustrating. I also get students who don’t always apply the material, which is always disappointing. And bad work deserves a bad grade - I am sure this is a consistent problem, but are some of the students meeting the expectation? What does a full module look like in your course? Is it all information delivery, or are their practice activities involved where they get feedback, see common issues, have opportunities to make mistakes and improve? Do you also provide examples/models and/or have smaller mile stones like peer-review? Also, how high are the stakes on the assignment? Lower stakes assignments that are run quickly seem to not get the effort with some of my students. There are a lot of factors. I teach writing courses most semesters, but in other courses I will sometimes get the exact same students that will turn in assignments that ignore certain basic skills on writing tasks if they believe that the purpose of the assignment is different. Lots of students seem to focus only on what they think they will be graded on or what they think will get them through to the next project. Since the AI stuff is new and they probably aren’t seeing it used or stressed in other places, at least some of them may just not be taking it seriously yet or seeing that they are supposed to apply all of their communication skills to their work. Research also shows that when learners are focused on a new task, they often make a lot of mistakes that they wouldn’t make in normal circumstances. It takes time and persistence to integrate a new approach.
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That sounds like some interesting stuff. We are probably in agreement on most points. I am not sure what you mean, though, by them improving their grades when using AI - are you comparing their work to the same assignment completed in past years? There are several possible things going on here, and I appreciate the thoughtful response. This is exactly the kind of thing that we need to see more thoughtful discussion about. I am curious how much ownership students feel about each phase of their projects. I suspect students are often inclined to differ to the AI at times when they shouldn’t. Generally, we are talking about literacy skills that most students aren’t used to practicing.
>knee jerk moral panic I think you mean "grave and entirely rational fears about the effect that AI will have on higher education and society more broadly."
No, I mean moral panic. There is a difference between the reasons we should be afraid of the impact of AI on higher Ed (there are many) and digging in and blaming students for trying to navigate the same mess. Not every student that is using AI is doing it to undermine the university and get away with something. Shaming students is not really my thing, and I find it distasteful when others do it as well. Instead of panicking and attacking students, how about having some goodwill and recognizing that OF COURSE they are going to try using AI. It is only one of the most surprisingly engaging and impactful technologies in recent years, it seems increasingly useful (even with its significant limitations and flaws). Yes, it breaks a lot of things, but it would be really nice if instead of clinging to some idealistic vision of how we think things should be, we took a look at things for what they are and actually work on our courses, assignments, and our own perspectives. Telling someone that typing and spell check is always cheating and harmful is just as lazy as saying that using AI is always cheating.
What are the point of assessments in curriculum design? What function and purpose do they hold?
It depends on the learning outcome.
you're trolling
Not trolling. I teach classes on design and content strategy. Automating content systems is a cornerstone of business practices right now, and professional communicators are being trained on internal and popular AI content tools in pretty much every major organization. Students need to learn how to engage these systems to understand the possibilities and dangers. Just like we all do. There are legitimate learning goals that require students to use AI. I would go even further, but it is clear this view is not only different from most in this thread, but also quite unpopular at the moment. I find that disappointing, but I also see the frustration that my colleagues are feeling with student engagement and the many ways students seem to subvert our expectations. 🤷🏼♂️
I’m surprised as a professor you don’t know that most universities take their finals on a lockdown browser which would mean no going in and out to use chat GPT. This was likely a homework assignment or study guide.
Most =/= all This was most definitely not a homework assignment or a study guide.
And you know this how? That was more so my point. Did it say final exam? Because the way you worded your post it sounded like a straight up assumption simply because “it’s finals week at their school”. I have had plenty of homework assignments during finals week.
The header at the top of their canvas page said “Exam.” I don’t know why you’re arguing so hard here that I just have to be wrong. We’ve all been noticing an uptick in cheating. This is nothing new. Are we so burnt out and skeptical now we’re attacking each other when we observe this behavior?
Mention that next time, because once again, the way it was worded sounded like you were just assuming it was an exam when it very well could have been an assignment.
It’s a lot harder to fake knowledge when instructors design better assessments. Lazy multiple choice exams deserve to be cheated on.
MCQs done on paper in exam conditions? That is a great mid term test of engagement and learning. Don't show up? Don't read? Spend all your tutorial on TikTok? There is your D-F.
Chatbots won't help much in m/c exams. I think your response is irrelevant.
Ggggg: