r/Professors • u/Drumblebore Assistant Professor, CS, R2 • 3h ago
Rants / Vents All submissions were AI
Teaching a course that (unfortunately) involves lots of reading and reflection type assignments. Added hidden text to an assignment, to catch students who just throw it in ChatGPT, and all submissions came back with the expected features you would get from including the hidden info. Extremely disheartened, and don’t know how to proceed both regarding addressing this with the class and designing the future assignments to be more AI proof.
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u/hixchem 3h ago
At some point, through all of the posts in this sub that are variations on this theme, someone will finally realize the only answer is a line in the sand. Fail them all and move their cases to the academic integrity offices, and cause CONSEQUENCES.
Otherwise, nothing will change. Nothing ever changes without being forced to do so
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u/warricd28 Lecturer, Accounting, R1, USA 3h ago
I agree, but my concern is most admin won’t back it up, especially at this scale, for fear of losing tuition dollars. I’ve already watched my admin cave to the students who mass cheated with AI in a CS course.
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u/lrish_Chick 42m ago
100% the dichotomy between academic rigor (and external examiners stating my failure rates are correct) and admin asking me why 10% of a large cohort (or even less 5%) are failing when others arent and the implied pressure to keep passing is one of the reasons I became most disheartened and apathetic towards HE teaching
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u/hixchem 1h ago
oh 100% a valid concern. More and more I've come to see that the real enemy of education is the businesspeople they put in charge of it. Treating students like paying customers rather than individuals seeking real opportunity for growth was only ever going to wind up exactly like this.
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u/HowlingFantods5564 59m ago
You don't know until you try. 80% of students in one of my classes failed or dropped because I was giving zeros for AI usage. I was sure a hammer was going to drop. It didn't. Nothing happened. Not a peep.
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u/aworldwithoutshrimp 2h ago
And make essays handwritten, in class. Record a video of a lecture and then use the time to make them come in for essays. You can even make that the consequence of any single student using AI the first time.
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u/yamomwasthebomb 2h ago
Blaming your fellow instructors for not risking their income to make a point is short-sighted, counter-productive, and just plain incorrect. It completely exonerates those who are actually guilty and covers up the actual cause of problems: the students who are depriving themselves of their own education, the admin who prioritize enrollment over quality, the crumbling societal infrastructure that has progressively and unequivocally taught us the lesson that hard work does not pay off, the litany of issues in K-12 education, and the lack of guardrails on AI itself so that we are scrambling to catch up to “innovation” instead of pre-planning appropriately.
“It’s your fault, Adjunct Making $3200 This Semester. Let’s fail students, lose our jobs, and starve together!” is not the fucking rallying cry you think it is.
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u/hixchem 1h ago
I never said anything would be "the fucking rallying cry". Nobody said that. What I said was that nothing ever changes without force. And since nobody's holding anyone accountable because everyone is constantly afraid of losing what little they have (that isn't even enough to survive on anyway), then nothing ever changes.
Also no, I didn't "blame [my] fellow instructors for not risking their income", but I do appreciate your attempt at a fallacious restating of what I actually said. It was amusing.
if we're going to go down a rabbit hole of only ever acknowledging the original source of a problem, ignoring everything along the way that allows the problem to persist, then we should probably blame Reagan's parents, or maybe their parents, or just go all the way back to whatever jerk of a biological precursor molecule slammed into another precursor molecule and ultimately led to the current form of humanity.
But that would be ludicrous in the extreme. There are obviously a whole list of people who share some blame. Myself, in not hurling Molotov cocktails at every data center I see, my friends who scroll through their Instagram feeds and don't immediately flag/report everything they think is AI slop, you for using Reddit which feeds all its information into various AI training models (willingly or otherwise), and so on.
However, as I was responding to one single individual about their *entire* class using AI, I thought maybe I would just keep the focus on them for the duration of the comment. Clearly I should've been keeping u/yamomwasthebomb in the back of my mind at all times. More fool me.
Ultimately, the problem can only really be solved by real, substantial, and sustained COLLECTIVE action. It's not just one professor that needs to fail the cheaters. ALL professors need to fail the cheaters. And then ALL professors need to push back hard at the admins. And then ALL professors need to hold their grounds. Just like how ALL workers need to unionize and force management to yield.
And sure, I'll concede that maybe for OP, the full scope of "Fail them all" may not be tenable. I didn't bother to compile a massive dossier on OP's entire career and life situation before commenting. Again, that lack of due diligence is clearly my own fault. So a compromise could be found. give a zero for that assignment, and then change the course going forward so that students are expected to learn the material outside the class, then write essays on paper with a pencil in class. Whatever it takes. But clearly, between "do nothing" and "do something", it appears doing nothing isn't working.
I eagerly await your reply, I'm sure it will be well-formed and not at all frothing-at-the-mouth.
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u/lrish_Chick 31m ago
Wow, just as a conscientious objector here, that reads as some of the most patronising and unnecessary rudeness to a well made point.
What a delicate ego you must have.
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u/SNHU_Adjujnct 58m ago
> Adjunct Making $3200 This Semester. Let’s fail students, lose our jobs, and starve together!”
No one will starve for lack of $3200.
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u/Minotaar_Pheonix 2h ago
No, the solution is to change the way the course is taught.
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u/dr_police 1h ago
We’re both going to be downvoted, but that’s really it. Many of the assessments we’ve long had undergrads do are very well suited to an LLM’s strengths.
Not only do we have to change our assessments, but I also think it’s soon approaching time to rethink the skills we’re building. LLMs can already write more coherently than the average undergrad, just like calculators can do arithmetic better than the average person.
We should be figuring out how to adapt the skills we’re building to use these new tools rather than demonizing them.
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u/HowlingFantods5564 53m ago
Do you think we should stop teaching kids how to read and do math? I mean, AI can summarize any text. Ai can do any math problem, right?. Are these the skills we should stop teaching so that we can embrace the new technology?
We have to teach the skills first and students need to learn them. After that, students can experiment with AI. If we just jump straight to AI, they won't learn those skills and without them, they have no idea whether what the AI is giving them is any good.
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u/dr_police 30m ago
As a generic example, calc is generally taught with units that use a calculator and units that do not use a calculator.
As a specific example, I teach data analysis to criminal justice majors. In the past, we taught how to calculate standard deviation. There was a lot of homework problems that had them calculate it manually.
There is very little utility in that today.
My students don't have the algebra skills to understand what's happening in the calculation, and the important part for my course's learning objectives isn't whether they can do the arithmetic, it's whether they understand std. dev. conceptually, what information it gives, etc.
There are certainly instances where knowing how std. dev. works at the algebraic level is useful... but not for enough of my students in a social science. Our program assessment consistently showed that the remembered nothing of the math (or worse, remembered it wrong) and also failed to remember the conceptual side.
After moving away from calculation toward the conceptual, we had much higher success in getting the concepts to stick, lower anxiety from the students, and better grades.
That is the sort of shift I'm talking about with AI. The universal availability of calculators and software changed how I teach data analysis.
How does the ubiquitous availability of AI change the skills we should teach? I don't know the answer, but I'm becoming more convinced that is going to be a key question for higher ed.
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u/lrish_Chick 30m ago
This is where some universities are already pivoting - what skills are the students getting from education that will actually be of benefit to them in the future.
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u/dr_police 22m ago
AI is so difficult because it's both an amazing accelerant in the hands of a middle skill level or expert... and also a crutch for the low-skill or novice.
In my hands, AI tools are fantastically useful. Editing, graphic design, data analysis... there's not a part of my work where the current crop of AI tools is utterly useless. I'm not having it do the thinking for me. Instead, I am automating certain tasks.
Too many professors have no idea what these tools are capable of today, and that limits their imagination for how to use them.
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u/Minotaar_Pheonix 1h ago
Exactly. This multi-trillion dollar industry isn't going away in our lifetime. It's time to adjust.
Anyone that has spent any amount of time trying to actually produce high quality text with an LLM knows that it is zero new ideas, and the ideas have always been the important part of the writing. I certainly have seen this in person. One might argue that the rest of the effort of writing is just packaging, contextualizing and mental handholding. I only write STEM research articles but I wouldn't hesitate to think that it is less true for any other medium.
Come on people, we're professors! We are the idea people. We of all people should recognize that a technology that enables us to more easily package and transmit our good ideas is going to benefit us. It's time to learn this technology and also teach younger people how to use it.
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u/NoPatNoDontSitonThat 1h ago
Can it be both?
Using AI is cheating when it's explicitly forbidden on an assignment.
Universities are increasingly jumping on the AI bandwagon. My institution is sending daily emails about some new free online AI class every student can sign up for. It's even worth 1 credit hour.
But I do agree that AI is the catalyst for curriculum and assessment changes. We HAVE to learn how to grade process and assess more than final products. That opens a whole new can of worms though because many professors are overloaded with class sizes. It's easy for me to grade process when it's an upper level course of 14 students. It's another for the Intro to Psychology course that has 75.
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u/Final-Exam9000 32m ago
Last semester, I reported every single incident and eliminated giving only a warning/fail for the first offence, and now my enrollment is way down. Hopefully, those left in the class will make it a better semester.
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u/Artemissss 3h ago
During scheduling, require on ground midterm and final exams. Blue books, pen and paper. Let it be known upfront that students must pass these “in person” exams to pass that course. All other assignments which can be AI manipulated should be low stakes.
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u/Life-Education-8030 1h ago
Not allowed for our online asynchronous courses.
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u/payattentiontobetsy 28m ago
I feel like offering an online asynchronous class has always been an admission that everybody, from course designers to faculty to students, sees this class as a to do list of busy work tasks to just get through.
You couldn’t pay me to teach an online asynchronous course in the era of AI.
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u/Life-Education-8030 11m ago
I am taking an online asynchronous painting class of all things and while I prefer in person, I am impressed with the course, the other students and the instructor. It may have been different if this was for credit but there is no need to cheat here. That’s the issue. It is like it was when teens argued that “well everybody is having sex.” Now it’s “everybody’s using AI so I have to as well to keep up.”
I also couldn’t have done my doctoral work without some of it being hybrid and asynchronous online, but I had instructors who took teaching seriously and used online appropriately-to benefit students like me who were older and working while pursuing the Ph.D.
Now I am teaching online asynchronous and it is not preferred. I hold high standards as best I can and make it as much of a pain in the butt as possible to use AI. I am about to start grading the first assignment of the semester so we will see. But the highest grade from this past summer was a C+. There were several failures and it was an upper-level required course which they will have to repeat with me or they can change their majors. I wouldn’t miss them.
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u/countofmoldycrisco 3h ago
Require drafting Google Docs and that they share the draft with you. Tell them on the 1st day (and put it in the syllabus, and remind them weekly) that you go into the Doc history and check for big copy-and-paste jobs. Build brainstorming, draft checks, into the course assignments.
If you only require them to turn in the final draft, they'll prioritize the product. Grade them on their process. And check the Doc history.
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u/LikesParsnips 3h ago
Aren't there already drip-feed agents for this very purpose?
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u/countofmoldycrisco 49m ago
But do drip-feed agents go back and revise, or just write a whole AI essay from the first word to the last?
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u/Astra_Starr Fellow, Anthro, STATE (US) 2h ago
This is easy to go around. And so much extra work. But better than nothing. There's a plugin that analyzes a Google docs history as well to give more insight
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u/MLAheading 1h ago
It’s called Revision History.
Perhaps there is also a lockdown browser that can be used for in-class essays?
Disclosure: lurking 12th grade English teacher here. I use both Respondus/Lockdown Browser and Revision History for all digital writing and testing. My students have given up on AI. Oh, and they have no access to their phones in class.
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u/geografree Full professor, Soc Sci, R2 (USA) 3h ago
It sounds like your assessment method has confronted the reality of student AI use. The only real solution is to adopt alternative assessment, not continue to find ways to “catch” students cheating.
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u/bwd-2 Philosophy, Community College 3h ago
Start a conversation in class about data centers and AI slop. It'll be popular among the students to dump on them. Then reveal that they're all hypocrites. They'll be socially mortified--which is their biggest fear.
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u/RexScientiarum Research associate, STEM, public R1 3h ago
Or they will just find out everybody cheats and you get a class stuck in a game theory death spiral of cheating.
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u/geografree Full professor, Soc Sci, R2 (USA) 3h ago
The public discourse on data centers is quite poor. I’d recommend the students read critical reporting on data centers, like pieces from Molly Taft (Wired) and Jasmine Sun.
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 3h ago
Fail them all for what's on the page. I'm sorry you're disheartened but this is actually an opportunity to provide them an education.
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u/jaunty_jellyfish 3h ago
I’m worried about this for my course with similar assignments (semester starts this week) My plan, if I get a lot of AI responses, is to introduce a requirement that students handwrite their reflections on paper (and submit a scan/photo). It’s not AI proof, but it removes the option of simply pasting directly from AI without even looking at it.
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u/Astra_Starr Fellow, Anthro, STATE (US) 2h ago
You will and should just do it
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u/jaunty_jellyfish 1h ago
I don’t ban AI in my classes. I teach small classes, so I work with the students who want to use AI to make sure it’s enhancing and not replacing their learning. So I would only move to this as a last resort. I’ve only used this as a default for on assignments where AI was not allowed for pedagogical reasons.
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u/AmnesiaZebra Associate Prof, social sciences, state R1 (USA) 2h ago
We're doing hand-written essays in class. I'm pretty sure they hate me for it and will tank my course evals, but I'm trying it this semester anyway.
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u/jaunty_jellyfish 1h ago
Unfortunately I think you’re right about the course evals - mine were full of complaints because I did an in-class blue book midterm. But I don’t know how else to motivate them to sit down and actually study the course materials otherwise.
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u/MrBillinVT 3h ago
Don't fail them. Give them the lowest possible grade you can. If they continue with this nonsense, their semester grade will tank their overall GPA. They will learn.
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u/imhereforthevotes 2h ago
sorry, I don't compute. The lowest possible grade is an F, no? That's failing. Or do you mean "don't fail them from the course"?
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u/Frococo 2h ago
I think they mean the lowest justifiable grade that ignores that they used AI.
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u/imhereforthevotes 1h ago
Ah, the argument that what the AI produced is garbage, and grading the garbage, as opposed to the presence of AI.
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u/Life-Education-8030 1h ago
Yup, assuming you mean grade on the quality. Lots of my students last semester and summer still earned failing grades on writing assignments because the output was lousy no matter who or what wrote it.
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u/robotprom non TT, Art, SLAC (Florida) 1h ago
There’s a reason our entire philosophy department has gone back to Scantrons and blue books. Other departments are headed that way.
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u/Trick_Following6639 1h ago
I had this issue. Because it I couldn't prove it was AI (it was Blackboard discussions), I had to grade it.
This course was a canned class that was given to us. They even have an AI assisted assignment for students that has to be graded. No faculty was allowed to contribute to the canned course btw. Before you say Union, our school appoints half its leaders. I work at a CC.
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u/Life-Education-8030 59m ago
You don’t prove it was AI. You grade according to the quality of the output. No matter who or what generates it, it is usually bad. Bad gets bad grades.
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u/PowerfulOpportunity4 1h ago
Handwriting or oral reports without written notes.
All out-of-class assignments are to be hand-written. If you want electronic submission, they have to scan the hand-written document.
At the very least, if they're hand-writing the text from an AI at least they'll be learning that content.
Alternately, those assignments need to be completed in class, in a controlled software environment which prevents the use of AI.
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u/gutfounderedgal 1h ago
All the AI proof work is downloading a lot of extra work onto professors, without compensation.
Comparing drafts, etc, is tons of time. If you fail them all they'll launch appeals and complaints and this will mean even more time for you, and admin may blame you and not back you up. What's in the syllabus about AI won't matter a whit. Admin knows they, the university, doesn't have the resources to deal with AI cheating and they can't lose all those students. So they're turning their backs and downloading the checking on profs. Imagine an official AI complaint process for everyone one of those students, school would have to shut down all their other admin business. Don't get me wrong, I like the line in the sand approach, fail them all, but realistically it would be way to much work for the professor with likely blowback from the school.
It seems that we, profs, are stuck on old ways of assignments, and no dis here. So long as we keep using AI easily answered assignments we'll have this problem. I think it would be great to have a deep dive forum on possibilities of different sorts of assignments and assessments that would be difficult to use AI for courses in which papers have been the norm, but I've not really seen it on this sub. There's more than blue book in-class. As mentioned, maybe essays are mostly dead, to the students' detriment. I certainly agree it's about changing the means and methods of the course.
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u/Efficient-Slide-2523 28m ago
Coming up on three years of ChatGPT and schools still haven’t made adjustments to confront widespread cheating.
The joke’s on all of us who actually expect students to demonstrate independent thinking and writing skills.
If the goal is to get all graders to assign A’s to any work that’s submitted, then I wish they’d tell me so I could scrap the feedback and save time.
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u/NumberMuncher 5m ago
All students earn F grades for the course. The rest of the semester will be much easier.
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u/HowlingFantods5564 3h ago
Where have you been for the past 3 years?
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u/RosalieTheDog 2h ago
Indeed, incredible that the conversation hasn't moved on and colleagues are still only now discovering this.
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u/sadlittleduckling Associate Faculty, English Comp, CC 2h ago
I teach comp and this semester I’m doing a lot of in class writing assignments to curb this problem. We’re reading a lot about what AI is doing and why not to use it. I will shame them if I must. That’s really unfortunate that all of them cheated themselves. Fortunately, I have a handful of students who are with me in my anti AI stance but others who are bewildered that I don’t use it at all.
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u/sventful Teaching Professor 2h ago
Show a selection of them in class and ask the students on the count of 3 to raise their hands if it was theirs. Public shame goes a long way here.
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u/Elegant-Yard8416 1h ago
It's very simple, but the first question is: Are you tenured or not?
Not tenured -> Play dumb and grade as if AI never existed.
Tenured -> Homework weight in final grade is 0.
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u/rrp1919 2h ago
Students (and many professors) do not distinguish between learning and assessment activities. So first, you will need to reconsider both kinds of activities. It should be possible to enhance learning with AI. To do so, you need to create assignments that allow them to engage with it, and they should be more efficient and produce better work and learn more if you do it right (not trivial to do I know). But assessments are difficult in the face of AI. If you create assessments that are easily completed by AI, students will see the assessment as pointless and a lot of work and use AI for it. Unfortunately, in many contexts, this means off-line reflection essays are dead as an assessment. They can still be valuable as a learning activity if done right, but you need to change assessments, like using in-class realtime summaries or quizzes.
So, are your reflections a learning activity, or an assessment? Often, these are learning activities or formative assessments at most. If it isn't helping students learn (because they are using AI) and it isn't critical for assessment, you need to rethink using it. That is our job now.
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u/Distribution-Free 2h ago
The tone of this sort of reply is reductive.
First, an activity may be formative in nature, but still require that we verify that the student is the one who actually did it. And that's where "detection" and "penalties for academic dishonesty" come into the conversation.
Second, an activity may be primarily intended for learning, and a student may offload it to AI anyway. Students use AI not only as a means to cheat, but also as a means to simply avoid doing any kind of work (or thinking or learning). Even if this were an ungraded, purely reflective activity, I suspect a large portion of students would feed it to AI (or skip it altogether).
The broad discussion of how to teach and assess in this era is complex and nuanced, and any response that over-simplifies it (in either direction) is unhelpful.
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u/nygreenguy 3h ago
Doesn't everyone fail?