Emily Campbell

@elou.bsky.social

154 Followers 581 Following

Person on earth. Planning, housing, transit, product design, water

Screenshot of a Reddit post. Post title: I can’t give students a zero for using AI, unless I have proof? No problem. Post Text: I’m a high school English teacher. I have two major annoyances when it comes to kids doing work. First, a lot of kids don’t read or listen to directions. Assignment instructions are written on their papers, and I read them out loud, but I still have students asking me “What are we doing?” That’s no big deal, though - it’s a pretty normal thing to deal with as a teacher. The real issue bugging me is students cheating on writing assignments using ChatGPT. I’m pretty good at spotting AI-generated essays. But the problem is that when I try to accuse students of using AI, they deny it. They act outraged that I would accuse them even though we both know they’re playing dumb. I usually just give them a zero and move on with my life, but there’s always the fear that one of them might take the issue to administration. If they did, I’m not confident that admin would back me up. It’s hard to prove something is AI-generated, and these days, the higher ups are more likely to side with the student. So I hatched a plan. I gave an open-ended creative writing assignment. The directions said to “write a story about anything you want” and then answer some questions about the story you wrote. The thing is, when you ask ChatGPT, “Tell me a story,” it always spits out the exact same story - about a girl named Elara who lives in the woods. ”Once upon a time, in a small village nestled between rolling hills and dense forests, there lived a young woman named Elara. She was known throughout the village for her curiosity and sense of adventure, always eager to explore the world beyond the familiar paths of her home.” So, in slightly smaller print under the instructions, I wrote ”If your main character’s name is Elara, -99 points.”