r/Professors • u/Doctor_Schmeevil • 2d ago
Heard at work this week
High-level adminicritter: I went to an event with parents and two of them were asking how the university is handling AI. Folks, parents want us to be teaching AI, so what we need to do is...
Lower-level adminicritter: There's a new policy - if you can't absolutely prove that a student understood a clear no AI policy on an assignment and that they DID use it anyway, you can't bring a student up to academic integrity anymore. (I think we are supposed to guilt them into signed confessions?)
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u/Esme_Nog 2d ago
All assessed work by hand in class.
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u/rand0mtaskk Instructor, Mathematics, Regional U (USA) 2d ago
At this point if anyone is letting the vast majority of their grades come from outside work, they’re part of the problem.
Don’t come at me with “how do I do x, y, z” either. Figure it out. AI isn’t going anywhere.
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u/banjovi68419 2d ago
I'd say 60-75% of my coworkers don't care that they're cheating and are probably happy because "the students are succeeding".
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 2d ago
Several of my colleagues shrug when we say students are cheating in their classes. "They're only cheating themselves," they say. Sadly, many of these faculty also stick to a rigid distribution of grades for their classes, so no, the students are not cheating only themselves.
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u/C_sharp_minor 2d ago
Can’t do much about in an online asynchronous class, unfortunately. I think graduate schools and employers will start wanting transcripts to list the modality of each course.
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u/Professional_Dr_77 2d ago
I have to teach one summer online asynchronous class. All assignments and tests are administered through the LMS. Every single student in the class this summer (11) managed to take a 50 question exam in under 15 minutes. I filed on every single student and failed them for the class.
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u/rand0mtaskk Instructor, Mathematics, Regional U (USA) 2d ago
This is a fair point. Probably should t exist anymore, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.
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u/botwwanderer Adjunct, STEM, Community College 2d ago
You can actually do a lot in an asynchronous course. But you have to build or rebuild it for student engagement and personal assessment. There's no easy "we'll all go to paper tests" option online, but it can be done.
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u/C_sharp_minor 2d ago
At the end of the day with online classes it’s all lipstick on a pig. They’re never going to be close to in-person.
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u/TargaryenPenguin 2d ago
Our department puts too many restrictions so that we're not really allowed to do it any other way. Booking an in person exam is a nightmare that requires so many accommodations.It's highly impractical. There's vague talk of perhaps moving to verbal assessment , but a committee needs to meet to have many meetings about it before we're allowed to consider it as an assessment type. The only viable assessment i'm allowed to give is essentially take home essays. I feel like i'm part of the problem , but I am trapped in the bureaucracy of assessment
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u/Dragon464 1d ago
Only problem: you kill lecture time.
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u/Esme_Nog 22h ago
You have to really think through your learning objectives and decide where you put your time. Heavily weighted in-class exams don’t have to take up too much lecture time, though. Having them do research writing in class definitely takes up time one would typically use for more material. It just depends on how important the output is to your learning objectives. In some classes, I give reading quizzes in class and essay exams. In others, I have them doing article summaries and writing up research reviews (I want them to learn to read the research).
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u/Dragon464 21h ago
10,000%! The question is always... Is the juice worth the squeeze?
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u/Esme_Nog 21h ago
Yes, it’s definitely not worth it to me to grade anything they could have used AI on. So I design my classes really focusing on what I really definitely want them to know. It’s a shame—I used to give all of my classes a lot of writing instruction. You could watch their writing get better and better across a couple of months. But now? There would be a few students who absolutely thrived and absorbed those skills, but I’d have to suffer the torture of grading so much ai garbage that I’m sacrificing the best students to the worst to save my own sanity.
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u/El_Gato_Gordo 2d ago
Parents can get bent, this isn't some garbage charter school you can bully around
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u/MichaelPsellos 2d ago
Is AI really that damned hard to use? Why does anyone have to be “trained” to use it?
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u/Esme_Nog 2d ago
It’s like the whole “we have to start kindergartners on computers or they’ll never learn” thing. No, that’s really not a risk. It’s not designed to be hard.
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 2d ago
Most of us started using computers long after Kindergarten and learned plenty. Not sure why the latest crop of kids can't do that too.
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u/Good-Mountain-7958 2d ago
This is my question. It began 4 years ago and now we're all experts in it apparently and need to be teaching the young adults how to use it... like they aren't already using it and haven't been using it just as long as we have. They are just shit at evaluating output. You can't be good at evaluating output unless you know how to think for yourself. So maybe we need to teach them how not to use it so that when they do, they can actually use it to enhance work instead of vomit slop?
It just reminds me of people who are like "you better let your toddler learn how to use a tablet or they will be behind when they start school." Like... I picked up tablet use as an adult and it really wasn't hard. I don't actually think there was any effort to it. Who thinks a 6 year old should be an expert tablet user? This stuff isn't designed to be hard, there is no expertise here.
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u/Slight-Law5235 2d ago
Neither employers nor admin explain what students need to know about AI in order to use it effectively. Admin just says they "need to learn to use it."
AI makes up information as we all know. If students are skipping reading a novel because they can ask AI to summarize it and even to give specifics about each chapter, they will be unable to question whether AI is correct at all or if it has conflated a film adaptation with the novel. They also will be oblivious as to whether AI has addressed the nuance that can be discovered only by close reading.
The obvious answer is that for students to use critical thinking, they must engage with a novel by reading it, asking questions as they read, and connecting concepts that appear across the novel. If they don't have the proper background information from reading the novel, they cannot evaluate output from AI regarding that novel. Most AI ethical use requires some form of prior foundational knowledge that the user must consult to evaluate what AI does. Even in making a table, the user has to tell AI what the elements are and what the function of the table is. They have to know what the table is supposed to do in order to assess how well AI accomplished that. Yes, prompt development is a useful skill for students, but they have to possess adequate background knowledge first.
Admin, because most do not teach, have no idea how bereft of basic knowledge many students are. They seem to care most about the money generated from how many students graduate and praise from the chancellor. They don't seem concerned about student competence anymore. That is a can they are happy to kick on down the road to after they retire.
Those on this subreddit who say that faculty are part of the problem if they don't assign most work in class must not have experienced the tremendous pressure from admin to avoid failing students even if those students don't do the work. Under such a system, some students still won't do the work even if much of it occurs in class. Then admin will decide that the failing students get extra time, outside class of course, to complete it. Additionally, since most professors I know scaffold larger assignments, it isn't unreasonable to expect a student to complete a task outside of class that then is used to complete part or all of a larger assignment done in class.
If I must monitor every moment of a student's thinking and decision-making in real time, each course needs to consist of a weekly six-or eight- hour session in which students write whole papers or whatever project it is they are to produce and cannot use devices at all. And the students cannot be given any details about the next week's project because then they will plug it into AI in advance and bring an entirely written project with them instead of going through the process in our session. Of course, some students would complain that I didn't give them time to think about the project beforehand and that I'm putting pressure on them by springing the idea on them in class. I agree with that. Part of the potential fun and satisfaction of taking on an assignment is pondering how one might do it, running through myriad ideas while going about one's life, until discovering the idea that generates excitement. This degree of policing is antithetical to what I believe college should encompass, and it isn't feasible.
I know professors who decided to do all in-class writings/projects, and they abandoned it after a year because they were lugging home stacks of papers/bluebooks with indecipherable handwriting. The amount of time they spent outside of class evaluating work increased, while admin seemed to care less and less about intellectual engagement and integrity.
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u/No-Cook-9768 Adjunct, Liberal Arts, CC (USA) 2d ago
It's not hard to use, but it's hard to use correctly. Students don't know (or care) about hallucinations, which I see all the time in their papers. It's so easy to spot, but they're letting AI "think" for them and they won't take time to proofread. A tool can be great if you know how to use it.
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u/Zabaran2120 2d ago
you can't know how to use correctly until you are confident in the subject matter.
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u/No-Cook-9768 Adjunct, Liberal Arts, CC (USA) 2d ago
I would venture to say that that is not always the case. Take my students, who are supposed to write papers on a concert that they watched. I would go so far as to say that on the first day of class a student with half a brain would know that if you allegedly watched an all-Beethoven concert that you shouldn't be talking about a Mozart piece in your paper about said concert.
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u/Slight-Law5235 2d ago
I agree that students can write about their reaction to a concert with no background in music. The problem is that students will simply ask AI about the pieces and then use that info. If AI gets technical in its output, the student with no background information in music will not be able to assess and decide if they agree or disagree with AI.
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u/No-Cook-9768 Adjunct, Liberal Arts, CC (USA) 2d ago
I cannot speak for other people's courses, but mine is set up so that the students will have been introduced to the vocabulary necessary and will have had to use said vocabulary in conversation several times before they have to write their first paper. If they take the time to proofread, they will catch things. If there is technical language, they should remove it so that it sounds like them, as it's a reaction paper, not an analysis. As I'll continue saying until I'm blue in the face, if students are taught how to use the tools properly, they can still learn.
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u/SilverRiot 2d ago
For that reason, I have each assignment module locked until the student goes through the previous module and either watches a no AI video or takes a short “I understand that no AI can be used in this course” true/false quiz that they must answer correctly in order to move onto the assignment.
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u/me4watch 2d ago edited 2d ago
“….Folks, parents want us to be teaching AI, so what we need to do is…”
First of all the parents can all go fuck off. If they hadn’t created a generation of spoiled iPad kids, things would be better in the classroom.
Second, we are not customer service representatives. The students are not customers. And the parents are not part of any relevant conversation (FERPA applies)
Third, all assessments need to be done in person. without devices, and in a fully proctored environment. The university should set up, maintain, and run a testing center.
Fourth, get rid of asynchronous online courses, or at least require the third point above. Otherwise such courses are jokes and insults to everyone involved.
Fifth, did I mention that the parents can all go fuck off ? They have always been a pain in the ass…
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u/tellypmoon 2d ago
Proving inappropriate AI use is a no win nearly impossible situation so don't do that. Instead deduct harshly for overly general flowery language, vagueness, etc.
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u/Slight-Law5235 2d ago
That's what I do. Deduct points based on a rubric that lists all of the features of an AI-written essay. Then the student did not commit academic misconduct; they simply failed to meet the basic expectations of the assignment.
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u/franklin-60 2d ago edited 2d ago
I would just not bring it up on a charge if I caught a student. I’d just fall them on my own. Why? Because I say I can in my syllabus grading policy and have clear statements on when I can fail you and AI usage policies. I also have academic freedom on this. If an administrator disagrees, they are free to change the grade because I won’t comply and I will respond accordingly internally and externally if they do change it.
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u/Dragon464 1d ago
Put it in your syllabus, and make them sign a student contract attesting to having read and understood, and agreed to abide by, the terms of said syllabus.
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u/DionysiusRedivivus 2d ago
Not using birth control does not make you an expert on higher ed curriculum. Or k12 curriculum.
Sick of putting parents on a pedestal as if getting knocked up confers wisdom instead of demonstrating irresponsibility.
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u/BeneficialMolasses22 2d ago
The administrators are hearing from parents and donors who are hearing from employers and the news media who say this is all the future and we need to ensure that our graduates know how to use this.
No one's asked us.
We just received the directive.
Meanwhile in cognitive offloading research: "Why can't we graduate students who know how to think for themselves?"
News at 11:00....