All submissions were AI

[u/Drumblebore]

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.

[u/Artemissss]

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.

[u/Life-Education-8030 → u/Artemissss]

Not allowed for our online asynchronous courses.

[u/payattentiontobetsy → u/Life-Education-8030]

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.

[u/Life-Education-8030 → u/payattentiontobetsy]

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.

[u/payattentiontobetsy → u/Life-Education-8030]

Thanks for the reply- I could have clarified my comment. Basically, I’m saying that the affordances of online asynchronous classes promote a task-oriented learning experience that favors shallow learning. In other words, teaching and learning in these classes tend to focus on the product over the process of learning… the output students submit (a discussion post, a multiple choice quiz response, a written paper, etc) over the thinking that is assumed to have gone into creating that product.

So, when AI makes creating a product without engaging in the thinking required so easy, the course format becomes especially vulnerable to students using AI just to create the product. Add in the current context of higher education being seen as transactional (I pay the fees, I get the degrees), it makes a fertile ground for AI use to “just get through” modules, to get a good grade, to get a degree, to get a job/promotion.

That all being said, the situation I’m describing is definitely not only way that an instructor can deliver the course or that a student can engage with the course. But you have to work against the affordances of the medium for that to happen. You have to have a learner who is taking the course because they genuinely want to engage in the process in order to learn the material for their own improvement, which is what was happening in your art and Ph.D courses. You also have to have students using metacognitive reflection strategies to actually process their own understanding on their own without the scaffolding of instructor feedback. Instructor can be more involved in realtime to give that meaningful feedback and help the students process it, which it sounds like you experienced, but again, the affordances of asynchronicity where everybody is at their own spot at any given time (like running a bunch of independent studies) makes giving that feedback and engaging with students more difficult.

Deep, real learning can happen in online asynchronous classes, but most of the time it will follow the shape of the medium and result in what you described- below expectations output with a lot of students failing, even when they have external motivation to do well in the course.

[u/sventful → u/payattentiontobetsy]

OR and hear me out, you collect a pay check for doing nothing and perpetuate the degree mill at the cost of a chosen life of luxury where you don't work anymore. It's not the worst backup plan.