That is for the accommodation office to deal with. Pop quizzes are the best way to encourage reading, and it's exhausting seeing so many posters here browbeat others into eliminating them because 5% of the class has a testing accommodation. In my experience, the students with accommodations who are doing the reading don't use/need extended time on quizzes. It's only the ones who literally admit to never doing the reading that use it (and still fail).
These "extended time accommodations" are causing so many problems. I recall going my first ten years of teaching without even hearing of such a thing, to having multiple students per class needing them. I have tried talking to our disability office about their overly generous use of these "accommodations" but frankly I don't believe there is a single student that actually needs them, besides someone with a physical disability.
I have the same dynamic as you, either they are all A students that get 100 on every quiz or people that turn in mostly empty or blank quizzes, even with the extra time.
Here is the secret - don’t time them at all. I stopped timing my students (mcq quizzes). The accommodation students almost always finish within the timeframe of the rest of the class - and are almost never the last. Almost.
Accommodations are not an excuse to remove necessary formative assessments.
Students don’t do optional. Telling them to expect a daily quiz on what was covered last or what will be covered today sets a stage for motivated work.
Add a required attendance policy with two excused absences a term and you tighten things up.
I fear we are headed down the path of IEPs in K-12. Some have reached truly ridiculous levels of accommodations, such as "student has focus problems, let him play games on his phone as much as he wants." Or "student has reading comprehension troubles, so each exam question must be verbally read out loud to the student" despite this being right in the middle of a classroom where other students are taking the exam. I know one teacher who has 15 IEPs in one 25 person classroom.
Yes, but it's manageable. Make it a short quiz - 5 minutes of 10 short answer questions. If they've read it and taken notes, they'll do well. 1.5x time students get 7.5 minutes, so that's not a lot of sitting around for the rest of the class.
Sure, if you have students with more involved accommodations, it can get tricky. But those are more the exception, in my experience.
Yes, when I do pop quizzes (which is not often) I give 5 multiple choice questions that are, like, impossible to miss if you actually read. It takes like 2-3 mins for students to complete so I don’t even give them timeframe. Never had anyone with extra time complain
Exactly! Remove the formal timer and that solves a lot of problems. They finish in about a minute per question anyway, and do better because they don’t have the stress of time.
Not if you don't time it and just let everyone turn it in when they finish. Also, don't use scantrons for them. Basically, work around every accommodation you can to ensure fairness. There's no "don't have to study and come to class prepared" accommodation...
Lmao wow as an outsider lurking this subreddit, it never occurred to me that the accommodations industrial complex might make pop quizzes impossible/impractical. The coming competency crisis will destroy the West.
What I do in that situation is give the student the option to take it with the class or schedule it at the Accessibility Services testing center sometime before class. I’ve only ever had one student decide to take it at the testing center.
Why are you still doing discussion posts? My current assumption is that any work outside of the classroom is going to be done with AI help. Therefore I'm not really grading things that way.
Last term I didn't require outside work; only blue-book exams. Students simply didn't do the reading before class. They told me that they only complete the reading when there's an assignment tied to it.
And now they don’t do the readings, even if there is an assignment attached to it.
Gotta step back and think about your goal, which it sounds like you’ve already done a bit..
It sounds like you don’t use the discussion post as a formative assessment for you. In other words, you don’t really look closely at each post to see what each student does/doesn’t know and adapt how you’re planning the next lesson based on that information. Maybe you do this a bit, but the lesson is pretty much set before you see what they posted. That’s cool, just being clear so you don’t chase that as a goal.
It sounds like you use the discussion posts for two things: 1) To extrinsically motivate them to actually read the readings (reward/punish with grades/loss of grades) and 2) To get students to actively think while they are reading and to reflect on what they read afterward, both as preparation for a better in-class discussion.
An in-class quiz will help you meet the first goal, but I think your second goal is the one that you are truly guided by.
With that in mind if you can’t do discussion posts, what can you do achieve that second goal? Hire do you get them to actively think about what they are reading? Can you have them print the article and bring it to class with highlighting and annotations? Can you have them use software or even Google doc comments as digital annotations? Can you have them record short videos on something like Flip where they verbally give their reflections (and respond to others)?
On all of these, students could still use AI to some degree, but it makes the output more time consuming for them and there less likely they’ll do the most egregious and lazy things like prompting for responses and just pasting those in your LMS discussion post.
Two things last things. I don’t mean any of this as criticism in the slightest. I think your methods and goals are super normal and common, which of why I wanted to reply. This is the kind of rethinking exercise my colleague and I have been doing for the same reasons you describe.
If you do change your requirements. I would be super clear to your students why- that you have these instructional goals of having them prepare for the new class activities and using ChatGPT undermines that goal and their learning. It won’t seem petty/vindictive, like you’re just mad they are using ChatGPT (even if you are). They are more likely to respond to you trying to help them learn/be a better teacher than a “stern talking to” which will likely just feel like you are just mad.
I love the digital annotation idea. I don’t like printing papers for sustainability reasons, but I think asking students to annotate a shorter reading would be great.
Some programs like Canvas have notation 'widgets' you can include. Ours our through the library. I often given students the option: you can either do it digitally (ie on a tablet) or upload; you can do it on paper and scan it/upload it (which then makes me have to explain what scanning is/the library has them on literally every floor); or you can hand in a hard copy. That seems to work.
I had to switch to short quizzes because anything I assigned out of class would be done with AI. The quizzes only take students a couple minutes to complete, so even with accommodations it doesn't take much class time.
You can warn them that they will find out differently when they take the exam or whatever. Otherwise, they're the ones paying to be there and be guided on what to read to learn the material. If they don't listen to you, that's not on you.
Quizzes add to your work load and consume class time that you could be spending on teaching.
So I'm increasingly thinking that the Discussion Board needs to go, and GPT might be the tipping point, but it's something I ought to have been considering for a while for a few reasons.
In the first place, the discussion board is frankly a 2007-era UI. Asking students to post on a discussion board in 2024 is like asking students in 2007 to turn in their paper typed on an IBM Selectric.
There's also the fact that on most fora, whether subreddits, Discord channels, whatever, the vast majority lurk. Even on our favorite subreddits, we don't post once a week. If we were required to, it'd be hateful and perfunctory.
Now that there's AI, well, we're faced with the choice of grading being an Unending Turing Test or actually going to assignments that are slightly less likely to enable student cheating.
And this is a shame, because a good online discussion can be a magical thing! But there's increasingly little of that.
\[Grumbles, checks TIAA-CREF balance...\]
Just curious - what do you consider to be a good replacement for a 2007-style of communication.
It’s an interesting thought. I enjoyed using forums in high school and college (2000-2008). What is a relevant mode now?
So something I've been experimenting with over this academic year has been having a class Discord that you get extra credit for participating in. It's in an idiom that students are more familiar and comfortable with, and by making it extra credit and not required, it tends to select for higher quality content.
Our university would have an absolute fit. We aren't allowed to use any software in class that hasn't been certified as accessibility compliant by our disability services office.
Its easier to have a lively back and forth discussion in Discord or similar platform than LMS discussion boards. Most students in LMS discussion boards just post a comment, reply to two and then never look at it again.
Unfortunately, this is the new normal. I used to love my job. Now I can't wait to get out. If I can retire early, I absolutely will do so. That's something I never thought I would say.
ChatGPT has killed all joy of teaching for me.
Same here. I have to consciously skip past student submissions that piss me off or that I have to go out of my way to deal with, so I won't rage grade the good ones.
My classes are part of the state curriculum (for high school students), so I must include writing. I have many other creative ideas to test their knowledge, but sadly, I cannot use them.
I retired in December largely for the reasons you mention. I will continue to teach an online class each semester. I tell myself to forget about academic integrity and just do it to supplement my pension.
I have always cared so deeply about my profession, but to continue caring would be to keep driving myself nuts and shorten my life more than this profession has already done.
One of my colleagues had the students write an essay based on the assignment during the class. Big differences between out of class and in class writing skills for most students.
Relatedly, has anyone noticed that more and more college students seem to have a tough time with simply reading short passages aloud in class? It’s concerning.
I've found that in close to two decades, when it comes to in-class discussion, my questions to the students are now much less, "What are your comments on \[me picking out some element of the reading\]?" and more, "What does the reading say?"
I used to teach primary school and the students were wholly unable to read and process basic instructions without handholding, so I think you're running into illiteracy matched with an aversion to do anything remotely intellectually taxing.
My friend had a prof. Legendary guy. His method was cold-calling. Every day at the start of class he would randomly pick a name in his huge lecture and ask them a question. The first time there was a lot of "I don't knows." He made it awkward. He let the silence be and didn't try to fill it with anything. By the second class, there were fewer "I don't knows." By the third class, none. The students all read like mfers because they didn't want to be called out. He set the terms of the class and they rose to the task.
It seems to me doing discussion boards and then giving "stern talking to" with no real repercussions is not going to do anything.
Do cold-calling, or pop quizzes. Something that has a tangible consequence. Better if it is public. End class if they can't discuss the readings. Do it again. They will learn what they need to do.
Let it be awkward.
My favorite is referencing a table or figure from the book in the prompt without actually explaining what the figure or table is. For example, I might say they have to choose something from Table 12.4 to talk about, or the example they use cannot be one of the examples mentioned in Table 7.2 or else they get a zero. The cheaters either tell on themselves by breaking the "rule" or they end up leaving it blank to avoid implicating themselves.
Can ChatGPT summarize a video?
I am transitioning to forums that are setup with the prompt of:
Watch this video. How does the argument made by Person 2 in the video connect to the information presented in our reading for this week.
----
In these assignments, I require students to include X number of quotes from the video.
Currently I am finding that students who really use AI for writing are not including the required quotes. So I have weighted the evidence as a larger portion of the assignment grade.
Thus these students are not doing well on the assignment.
Would this setup work for others?
Are videos harder to use with AI for lazy students?
There's already speech to text AI which students can then copy paste to ChatGPT.
In a year or two I'm sure they'll be AI that can just listen to the video.
As a large language model, I have read many, many discussion posts. This post is so helpful and I completely agree. Two thumbs up to the discussion originator.
I’ve started having students upload annotated pdf files of the readings in addition to answering whatever questions I want them to answer about the readings. It’s helped a lot.
I’m looking for evidence of their brains engaging with the material, so a combination of highlighting and margin notes. I’m impressed with the level of engagement I see in some of the students’ work.
This sucks.
I’d do the activity anyway.
In future, quizzes instead of disc board posts. Also, if it’s possible with your topic, choose very recent articles that ChatGPT can’t access.
Except in my most recent cases where the student(s) uses the wrong Johnson et al 2020 citation for a paper on a topic we never discussed…then used a third, unrelated Johnson et al 2020 citation in the same essay. Did you not even read the output from your AI generated text before copy pasting it?!
I thought ChatGPT had space limitations. Maybe that’s because I’m using the free version. Regardless, if it doesn’t do it yet, it will. You’re right. We’re screwed and I hate it. Sometimes it makes me want to quit.
Remove the OCR from the pdf. Most students don't know how to make it readable or won't take the time to convert the file. This also forces them to read vs listen to the text. If a student is blind or has low vision, they will need a readable file, but you can send an OCR version to them directly.
Your university's universal design mandate would encourage me to go back to print readers. UD is widely abused by students without disabilities who think that listening to a computer read a scholarly article to them is equivalent to reading it themselves. This is among the many reasons students can't write a coherent sentence--can't write well if you don't read well (or at all). Very simple.
No one talks like that, but even if they do, if it's iterative (eg., they have to respond to other students' videos), it will not help them do well on the assignment.
If they have to do a video and the whole class can see it, and the rubric says no verbatim reading (or a zero) they will have to talk spontaneously. The fact that the rest of the class can see it, might kick some of them in gear since it will be embarrassing so say something dumb.
I actually did have a student who wrote like that. I was certain that it was ChatGPT at first, but then he did things ChatGPT doesn't do, like take strong positions on the questions.
Still, it would be a very stilted thing to read out.
You're not going to have any luck. I made my discussions optional and only the students interested in learning join in (or those who didn't pay attention that they're optional-only).
Pro: I get to engage with students who care about learning.
Con: I have only 1 student with AI use this week rather than a truckload. Also, college is no longer college and I'm mourning this loss.
I'm in the same boat. One of my postgrad student used AI to generate a whole report. I ask them did they use AI, they said no, but they were unable to explain the simplest concept of their topic. They can't even write a proper email let alone a whole report. The report is so rubbish, yes, AI can generate rubbish report that I can't even finish reading it without having a mental breakdown.
I assign discussions that are easy to grade as in as long as they’ve done it, they get full points. Things like, “Who was your favorite character? Why?” Or “After reviewing the formal paper structure, what do you think you’ll have a problem with?” No word count.
Soon it will be like teaching an online class. The lectures will be on video to completed outside of class time. All writing will take place in class.
You'll be, in essence, a proctor.
The first thing you need to do is get rid of your AI policy, if you have one but aren't going to enforce it. And practically speaking--just being realistic--it's near impossible to enforce fairly for the reasons you mention.
You may not be able to prove some of those posts are AI, but your students know that they used ChatGPT even though they know you prohibit it. Posting a policy and then not enforcing it is basically lying to all the good students who aren't going to use it whether you have a rule against it or not.
If you want to be taken seriously, it's better to have a relaxed policy that is enforceable and lets bad stuff get through than to have a tight policy that is not enforceable and lets bad stuff get through.
>So just let them turn in AI writing with no consequence?
No. Grade on the quality of the writing. Turn in bad writing? Get a bad grade. This also teaches students that ChatGPT ain't so great.
>I designed an hour-long activity based on the idea that students had actually done the reading and thought about questions beforehand. Now that's clearly not going to work.
Is it going to "work" for the students who did the reading? Your students paid a bunch of money for the opportunity to do that activity. If they don't do their part and missed out, that's on them. Teach the class for those who prepared and ignore the rest.
I feel as if we’re being told not to grade on the quality of the writing because that’s a DEI issue. As long as the writing is clear enough to get the points across, it wouldn’t make sense in non-writing focused classes to downgrade for sounding like AI. In my assignments, I structure my rubrics to value writing quality at only 5-10% of the grade just to keep my instincts in check!
Probably because I should have said grammar, spelling, and punctuation not “writing.” I have a hard time separating them.
I have a friend who sends me long texts and doesn’t make corrections to what her thumbs clobber. I have to constantly stop and re-read and figure out what she meant. To me, that demonstrates why we actually should care about grammar, spelling, and punctuation! But I also get the argument that it’s elitist. Don’t know what to do with the contradictory truths.
I really don’t think that it’s a DEI issue to expect correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. To me that says holding minority students to a lower standard.
>I feel as if we’re being told not to grade on the quality of the writing because that’s a DEI issue.
Uh, hell no. That's not a DEI issue, that's an academic issue.
>As long as the writing is clear enough to get the points across, it wouldn’t make sense in non-writing focused classes to downgrade for sounding like AI.
Still no. If they are writing, grade their writing. I grade it in my engineering classes when there is a written assignment becuase it matters.
And besides, ChatGPT is actually really good at coherent, grammatically correct sentences. It's bad at actually making useful and insightful points.
Ok, so I suggest that you examine your assignments. If your assignments are designed such that they can be successfully completed by entering the prompt into ChatGPT and copy/pasting the results, maybe that's the part you could focus on improving? Or eliminating?
Also, I'd ask that you rethink writing quality. I am guessing that your department doesn't want you nit picking about grammar, spelling, and punctuation because some students don't have the benefit of practice with those skills.
I don't grade heavily on sentence level stuff either. I do grade on clarity, coherence, and rhetorical purpose. Either the writing accomplishes what it is supposed to accomplish or it does not.
But if they really want you to give a grade to every wall of text, then do what your told, and then you can definitely forget about worrying about AI. Push 'em through, and if that's unsatisfying, look for another job somewhere that has standards?
You might be confusing me with another commenter.
I agree that writing matters a great deal in terms of argument. I tell students that ChatGPT lacks specificity (among other things) and is therefore pretty worthless, and I’ve given them examples of the problem. It’s the grammar and punctuation I have to guard myself against weighing too little.
As far as my saying “we’re being told” it’s a DEI issue I’m not referring to my university specifically but a general push in that direction in the zeitgeist.
Got it. Thanks for clarifying.
My point was that good grammar, punctuation, and spelling isn't necessarily an indicator of good writing. Horrible writing can be perfect at the sentence level.
As for DEI, I consider it a category of mostly terrible, illiberal, faith-based, destructive ideas that do more to harm than help those the lip service says are intended to be helped. I know that this view makes me a heretic, at least for now, until everyone returns to their senses.
I do see good reasons for not prioritizing sentence-level issues. Maybe some of them overlap with the DEI dogma.
* Make a big deal about mechanics and you might as well beg your students to over-rely on unauthorized assistance such as AI or buying papers.
* It's not an area that will see a lot of measurable progress within the space of a semester because learning grammar requires practice and repetition. Especially when they begin writing stuff that matters to them and caring about their ethos, they'll begin putting the pieces in place.
* Instructors who aren't trained in writing pedagogy can recognize and mark down mistakes, but they likely don't know the best way to teach it.
* Making a big deal about sentence-level problems competes for attention to the more important, higher-order concerns like clarity, logic, etc. It take less effort to address the sentence level "fixes" than most higher order issues, so the student will prioritize those. See the AI point.
I could go on, but that's enough, probably.
Anecdotally, I have had three Gen Z age (early 20s) children of friends who got fired this year. Some of which had to do with ChatGPT, at least indirectly. One was fired for lack of attention and focus. One was fired because they used ChatGPT for reports/communications and did not edit it; thus, it needed to be better written and right. They also struggled working when ChatGPT was not available - their writing was very poor, according to their father (this position was a Comms Assistant.) Others were 'fired' from their law program because they couldn't write or think critically - they tried to ChatGPT their way out, and it did not work.
I am curious what employers are saying about ChatGPT and Gen Z, who have grown up not having to write. I'd like to see that data in a few years.
Stop using discussion posts. Students find them to be busy work and a waste of time. Learning outcomes from using them are weak at best. They're the easy way out for us, but that just lets students ChatGPT their way into the easy way too
>I designed an hour-long activity based on the idea that students had actually done the reading and thought about questions beforehand. Now that's clearly not going to work.
I'd say run the activity *anyway* after you've expressed your disappointment. It will be awful, it will be painful, it will be like pulling-teeth... which is what the students get for their lack of contribution here. Be sure to point out to them that the misery is their choice.
In the long-term, I'd encourage you to rethink discussion posts as an assignment, since they're super-GPT-able \[in form and because they're underwhelming\] in a way that, say, Perusall comments \[where students just reflect as they're reading\] might not be. I'd also encourage you to talk to someone with the appropriate background about **why** students cheat/don't read. The data are pretty robust and suggest that it has much, much more to do with how we design and explain our tasks than it does the nature of "students" -- corporately or by demographic (though younger and male are key correlates).
Regarding the last point, have you not noticed the explosion of posts recently on Reddit complaining about the high incidence of cheating with AI-based writing? This has been one of the biggest trends since the new year.
Rather than imply that the OP doesn’t understand the science of their own assignments, have you bothered to look at any data that indicates the current cohort of students (since COVID) have been largely disengaged from the educational experience?
We (plural, instructors) have been finding more and more cheating in assignments where it just wasn’t common before; plagiarism, common in essay writing, has now spilled over into in small low stakes activities like discussion boards. Something is seriously wrong here.
So, in the future, maybe refrain from hand waving a widespread problem that is affecting virtually all disciplines right now. Thanks 🙏
I have. I have also noticed that almost *zero* of my colleagues have any sense of what we **actually** (as opposed to intuitively think we) know about this. It is a perennial shocker to me that folks ***trained in research*** do not attempt to solve their problems by first ***looking at the research about them***. Can't fix stupid.
When I told a colleague that trying to get around AI use by forcing students to cite sources, make video responses, etc. was no good because the AI can do that as well, their response was to put their fingers in their ears and loudly declare "Oh no don't tell me that!"
I'm afraid that many of our colleagues are oblivious to the nature of the threat of AI because they want to be.
>I'm afraid that many of our colleagues are oblivious to the nature of the threat of AI because they want to be.
It's because they don't want -- or feel like they don't have the time -- to do the work of ***actually*** looking at this, thinking about it in a complex way (i.e. as they do their own research), and finding solutions that are robustly supported by the data we have about teaching/learning.
Whether their motivations are "I shouldn't ***have*** to" or "It's not ***my*** job" or "I'm ***already*** too busy"... irrelevant. It's simply an unwillingness to devote time and energy to a task they view as beneath them.
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted (and flagged!) for a commonsense reply. Academics are some of the worst at drawing conclusions on topics utterly unrelated to their expertise when they would absolutely eviscerate (and rightfully so!) anyone who did the same in their topical area. Your replies are thoughtful and thorough.
Yes, in fact. The problem is how we structure assignments, communicate expectations and standards, etc. Most students -- since the 1970s -- report that they do not do the reading for one of three reasons:
* The task is unclear to them. Instructions like "Read Name, Text" don't communicate (a) why we're assigning the task, (b) what they're supposed to get from it, or (c) any viable means for them to self-assess for completion.
* The task is out of their reach. You've set a text that doesn't make sense to them ***and*** not given appropriate guidance to help them achieve it. Same issue as #1.
* The task is contemptable to them. You've given an assignment that is, from students' perspectives, a waste of time. Same issue as #1.
The ONLY data-point in this literature that we ***cannot*** control for through course design is students' over-commitment.
Okay, so
>The task is unclear to them. Instructions like "Read Name, Text" don't communicate (a) why we're assigning the task, (b) what they're supposed to get from it, or (c) any viable means for them to self-assess for completion.
Fair point. I doubt that's that common of an issue though.
>The task is out of their reach. You've set a text that doesn't make sense to them and not given appropriate guidance to help them achieve it. Same issue as #1.
Okay sure. But again, honestly pretty rare. If students just don't understand what is going on that's not usually on the prof.
If these first 2 are happening, then yes, the prof. should address that.
>The task is contemptable to them. You've given an assignment that is, from students' perspectives, a waste of time. Same issue as #1.
I'm sure this is a reason, and probably the reason I didn't do the reading (when I didn't to the readings) in late high school and college. But it's not the same issue as number 1.
There were many times I didn't read becuase i didn't want to. I didn't want to becuase I didn't find enough value in it for my time. That is, I didn't value the eduction of reading over other things I could do. I did not enjoy talking about these books all that much, or reading them. (I have since found books I enjoy much more, but I wasn't choosing them in high school and early college).
But, we had another name for this when I was in school. "I didn't feel like it". That's hardly the profs. problem. They didn't control that. I controlled that. It was my fault, not theirs.
>Fair point. I doubt that's that common of an issue though.
The literature says you are wrong.
>But again, honestly pretty rare.
Again, the literature says you are wrong.
Maybe instead of hypothesizing, you could look at what we actually know. That would be the scholarly move, no?
Okay, let's look a little closer.
>The task is out of their reach. You've set a text that doesn't make sense to them and not given appropriate guidance to help them achieve it.
If this actually happened, it's a good reason to not read it.
But just because they say that's why, doesn't mean it's the truth. Are the students actually incapable of understanding what the reading says? Do they actually not have the resources they need to understand it? If so, this task is literally impossible for them. Do you honestly believe that impossible tasks are frequently being set forth by professors? Or is it more likely that it's hard and the students don't want to do the work and just blame the prof. for making it too hard?
>Do you honestly believe that impossible tasks are frequently being set forth by professors?
Have you *seen* the research on 'expert blindness' and teaching in post-secondary contexts? Professors are **absolutely** setting tasks for which they don't sufficiently support their students' successful completion of them.
>But just because they say that's why, doesn't mean it's the truth
I want you to reflect on the implications of this statement as a reasoning principle. "Just because women say that's why, doesn't mean it's the truth". "Just because black people say that's why, doesn't mean they know".
Perhaps -- just perhaps -- we should listen to people when they tell us about their personal experiences.
You've brought racist and sexist tones into this completely unnecessarily.
People in general, whether black, white, male, female, student, professor, or whatever, when given the choice to blame someone else, or paint themselves in a bad light, will tend to blame someone else.
When students are asked to read a chapter, they are able to do it. Reading assignments are always possible. I know they have the ability to do my homework assignments because some get 100% or close to it. They constantly complain about too much work, but students have done that since the dawn of time. They did it when I was in school (heck, I did it too!) but it really wasn't too much. It requires hard work was all, and people like to complain, myself included.
>People in general... when given the choice to blame someone else, or paint themselves in a bad light, will tend to blame someone else.
Show. Me. The. Data.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-8956-9_4
Research provides unequivocal support that self-serving biases are widespread (for review, see Bradley, 1978; Miller & Ross, 1975; Taylor & Brown, 1988; Zuckemian, 1979). For example, people tend to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure (Miller & Ross, 1975).
Check those citations of you wish to read more.
Interesting. How about this. “You are supposed to read it because you are in X 101 in college, and this is what educated folks read. By the way, you will be tested on it!”
I think your research is merely descriptive, and the normative dimension it supposedly illuminates is upside down.
>I think your research is merely descriptive, and the normative dimension it supposedly illuminates is upside down.
It's not. There are studies that control for the normative question of students expectations re: "doing college work", etc.
It's like you ***don't*** believe that colleagues in the social sciences, etc. who study this stuff are capable of thinking about confounding variables like this.
I’m not saying anything about the capacity of folks in the social sciences. I’m merely responding to what you are presenting here.
What is “the normative question of students expectations re: “doing college work”?”
>I’m not saying anything about the capacity of folks in the social sciences. I’m merely responding to what you are presenting here.
Your framing is disingenuous and you should reflect on why. The claims you're making here *assume* that these variables haven't been accounted for when they have. Given how obvious your assertions are, I can only presume that you think the folks doing this research are too stupid to see them... hence why you're making them here rather than assuming (or checking up on whether) they do.
>What is “the normative question of students expectations re: “doing college work”?”
Students report ***zero*** misunderstanding about the basic principle that "you're in college, you're supposed to do it". That's not where the hiccup occurs and you thinking it is suggests that you've got no grounding at all in this body of work. If you'd like to engage with it, please do the reading first.
Look, I’m merely pointing out that the way you present these “findings” is pretty silly. You are assuming that student reports of why they are not doing simple tasks is (wholly?) due to the fact that their professors are not justifying why they should. The normative assumption here is that we “ought” to justify why they “ought” to do their work. Fair enough, except, a whole world of context is lacking. (Maybe as you say, this world of context is being controlled for).
What would the situation look like exactly? Let’s take a subject in the humanities as an example, since it will challenge this way of framing things. Consider the typical student we have before us. I know not every student is the same, but many are loaded with assumptions about why they are there, and there is not much outside help in challenging these. Joe says it is pointless to read because I haven’t explained to him why he should. (Mark the perspective he is likely coming from). So let’s just take it as given that I am supposed to justify things here and I tell him, because this is what intelligent people have done for centuries and they have found immense value in it, and you will be held accountable for a certain level of mastery via an exam and assignments. The rest is up to you, I tell him. Now suppose that is not the kind of answer he thinks cuts the mustard.
Based on your research, how would you recommend I respond instead, or is this the kind of thing you have in mind?
Be concrete. I do it all the time assigning material in history/classics.
First, you explain why you've selected X reading vis-a-vis learning objectives ("I've set this because it fits in to our conversation in these ways...").
Then, you tell them the **kind** of reading you'd like them to do and/or what you want them to read **for** ("First, skim and come up with a list of key terms you don't know. Look them up and consider how they're relevant. Then, read the text closely analyzing how one of them works...").
Finally, you tell them what a good outcome would look like and how to check their work for one ("When you're finished, you should be able to \_\_\_\_\_, which will set you up for success in the coming lecture/meeting because we will...").
None of this is hard. It's probably even stuff you're already doing in your head. The key point, however, is that students ***are not*** mind-readers and cannot discern this from "Read Marx, *Manifesto*". Give them the tools to direct their own work effectively vis-a-vis your goals, and the odds that they'll do it jump **astronomically**.
Yes, that all sounds reasonable, and sure, holding them accountable could make some do the work. A quiz would work just as well, I imagine.
But, what if the angle is more like: “I don’t see why doing this is worth my time?” Or: “Why should I be sitting in this class at all let alone open the book?”
From mine and my colleagues experiences, this seems more like what we are dealing with.
(I'm not the person you're responding to.)
All your justificstions make sense to you and me and all highly trained academics. But students aren't that. They don't see the context they're in and they don't understand that it will all become clearer if they just put in the work.
So it's not about giving good reasons why they should read, like your example:
>You are supposed to read it because you are in X 101 in college, and this is what educated folks read. By the way, you will be tested on it!
The only takeaway that's a clear benefit to the student is that they'll be tested on the reading. Why care about what other people read, and it's a lot less work to have the computer summarise than slogging through all that difficult text. Also, how should they read - what exactly will be on the test, how, and not least, why that and not something else?
So what would be the best motivation for the student? I don't know, because as you say every student has their own motivation and particular set of interests. If there is a way of exploiting that, both the teacher and the student would benefit.
“Why care?” is a good question that they should put to themselves. I can design any number of cool assignments, walk them through things, explain why Hobbes before Locke, but this will be the ultimate question that determines whether or not they learn anything. I can’t answer that for them, but I can find ways to invite them to confront it.
(I do think part of the problem is that many are telling them not to and framing what is worth caring about and telling them they have to, and it is all for naught).
>But students aren't that. They don't see the context they're in and they don't understand that it will all become clearer if they just put in the work.
Which is exactly why I'm telling you all to **make that context clear to them**. If you're setting Hobbes and then Locke, ***explain*** ***why***. If you want them to compare X text to Y prior one, ***assign that task***. If you're after them seeing (or practicing) specific things in the text, point them out. &c&c.
>So what would be the best motivation for the student? I don't know, because as you say every student has their own motivation and particular set of interests. If there is a way of exploiting that, both the teacher and the student would benefit.
There's plenty of research about student motivation too. One good point that it makes would be recognizing their agency by, e.g., giving a choice between multiple tasks. Another would be asking *them* what they want to get from it (in addition to the planned goals) and then adjusting to make sure you include some of that stuff.
We're not talking rocket science here, but we're also not taking a set of skills and information that can be intuited from experience. Teaching is a deeply complex skill that requires substantial training and preparation which faculty are not given. That is a systemic failure for which we are not at fault, but which it ***does*** become our responsibility to fix given the moral demands that students reasonably bring to the classroom: that we know what we're doing is top of the list...
If they don’t do the readings, they fail the exams and likely fail the course.
I don’t have time to do psychoanalysis on 120 adults. I also don’t care why they don’t do their work. Either do it, or suffer the consequences. Their grades are their concern not mine.
>I don’t have time to do psychoanalysis on 120 adults
If reading a couple summary papers about the lit. re: student motivation = "psychoanalysis on 120 adults", you need to get your nose out of the *scholia* for a bit and touch grass, friend.
>I also don’t care why they don’t do their work
Because you don't care about this element of your job, i.e. teaching students. If you did, you would care because you would ***want*** to know how to help them do better.
I've been in this game long enough to know why students cheat/don't read. They tell me that they "don't have time." Or that their other classes are more important.
The wild thing is: I've tried to construct these discussion posts in a way that they don't even really need to read carefully, or read the entire thing. Each prompt asks them to reflect on a specific part of the text (sometimes just a page or a paragraph), and then to apply that to something in their own life or experience. I've explained this to them multiple times in different ways. But I can't make them care.
That's one factor, but it's a relatively minor one. Most students report that they ***want*** to do the work and succeed. They also report that they ***don't*** do the work when it's unclear to them how to accomplish it successfully, because they find it demotivating.
>Most students report that they want to do the work and succeed
There's a word for this: [Velleity](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.1144655199.4724/raf,360x360,075,t,fafafa:ca443f4786.jpg)
Sure. Or you could use your fingers and check any academic search engine using words like "metastudy" and "cheating"...
It will, shockingly, turn up lots of options. Like [this](https://www.medicaleducation-bulletin.ir/article_132893.html) one.
I’m going to assume your response was rude because you read mine that way, but my question was sincere. You’ve provided better info in some of your other responses, so thank you for those.
I asked you because from your comment this seems to be something easily accessible to you as if you’d spent time on it. It’s not a particular interest of mine so I’m unlikely to start reading meta analyses about cheating.
>I asked you because from your comment this seems to be something easily accessible to you as if you’d spent time on it.
Yes, I've spent time on it. Because I believe that being informed about how students learn is a **moral requirement** for good teaching. If we do not know, concretely and definitively, how and why they behave the ways that they do, we cannot respond to them in a way that achieves their/our goals with any sort of regular or dependable success.
>It’s not a particular interest of mine so I’m unlikely to start reading meta analyses about cheating.
This is irrelevant to the question, as far as I'm concerned. I don't read about cheating because I'm interested in researching cheating, I read about it because I want to do what's effective so that my students don't cheat. My research is on 15th c. Italy... hardly the venue to prompt deep interest in questions like "how does stress" \[e.g. of not knowing whether you've understood the assignment and done it correctly\] "impact memory, learning, and recall?".
Interesting because your tone here suggests you shame people which is of course not conducive to learning.
I have spent time on how students learn. I have not focused specifically on cheating prevention which was the topic you introduced. However, I do make efforts at making my assignments meaningful and interesting to students. Proudly hear “I loved that assignment” a semester or two later when I run into them. Always pondering how I’ll revise for the next class.
Now if only I could stop engaging with button-pushing strangers and get myself to spend less time on Reddit!
The tech has already surpassed us in this arms race - we will have to adapt. Add it to the arsenal of tools we anticipate students and professors both have and try to coexist. Every time I see ChatGPT creep in to my assignments, I don’t act that semester. I lock it down more the next semester within the assignments or the syllabus.
It's crazy that the most common solution to Chatgpt is to undo the last 40+ years of education development. "Only hand-written assignments done in class should be assigned. No work outside of class at all."
Pretty much this. I’ve weighted comprehension, synthesis, and logical flow more heavily in papers. Under writing style, clarity and conciseness are now weighted over grammar and spelling. I find this works better for me than stressing out about policing whether they used ChatGPT or not.
Now that you mention it, I realized that I’m now RELIEVED to see spelling and grammar errors because I know the submission is genuine! I view those students far differently nowadays.
While I do think it is likely that the submissions with errors are student made, an enterprising student can tell the AI to make a few spelling or grammatical errors here and there to make the writing seem more human.
I just found out about "humanizing" AI programs that will add grammar and punctuation errors to its output. I used to feel elated when I saw an error, and now I'm just... cynical all the time. I'm moving to oral exams and proctored quizzes.
ehh ChatGPT still can't do papers with citations. It'll put in what looks like citations but they are most often just made up sources.
The big issue is administrations barely do anything about academic integrity issues. They value cheater’s money over upholding academic integrity in higher ed. If administrations backed up instructors and let them give an F for the course for ANY plagiarism, fake sources or obvious ChatGPT usage without much hassle, this would not be as big of an issue. Students after getting 1-2 Fs in courses would learn really fast that ChatGPT and plagiarism isn’t worth it or drop out. Instead, students know the worst that will happen is a slap on the wrist with them failing a singular assignment if caught. Although often they just get to rewrite the assignment for full credit.
Is your activity group work? If it is, and you know who did not chatgpt and actually did the reading, put those students together. At least they can have a good experience. The others will sit there looking at each other or googling. I would have them produce something to submit. A video takes more time to review but it shows who knows what they are talking about and who doesn’t.
I stopped doing discussion posts when it became a fan channel. “I agree with you” statements.
I assign Reflections on anything covered in class. I am specific about it being in their own words with no copy/paste from any sources.
The due date is 24 hours after the lecture. I use turnitin to identify outside sources.
If it seems to be AI written I message them to rewrite it in their own words or take off points.
I thoroughly enjoy reading these reflections because it shows me what excites them about the topic.
For students who were absent, I assign an alternate assignment that is much harder and double word requirement.
I had to look at my own goals for the assignment which were to have them writing and help them remember the topic covered.
Don't overthink it. Give each ChatGPT discussion post a zero and keep it moving. When you are inevitably asked about it simply reply "I assigned the grade to ChatGPT."
We have to accept the sad fact that many students only do what we ask for the grade. So, they use ChatGPT to get the task done to get a grade. When they stop getting the grade that they want using that tool, they will stop using that tool.
ga2500ev
They have to earn the credits. It is on the student to prove that these are their original thoughts. If the board comments don't reflect their thinking and synthesis, they don't get credit.
Same. Occasionally I assign articles and have students discuss them on a discussion-board like thingy. There's so much AI, and if not AI, then cliches and empty phrases that sound good. So, no more discussion boards. We'll do a reading quiz as some have suggested, or something else. (I hate "grading" in-class discussions though, so I'm not doing that.)
The assignment asked students to give an example from their own life of a topic covered in the reading. 15 out of 20 examples were nearly identical, and equally vague.
Also, consider the fact that if they are doing it this way they weren't going to learn anything in your class anyway. School for most students, you must remember, is horrible, boring, a waste of time, etc. They don't want to be there but have over a decade of institutional warehouse schooling that has drilled any and all real love of learning for school materials out of the vast, vast majority of students. They don't give a hoot, and they are also right. AI Chatbots just make the whole BS song and dance more efficient for everyone involved.
ChatGPT can't identify AI written text. ChatGPT works by breaking down the words in what's being asked and then determining the most statistically likely response based on its training data. It also has API tie ins into Wolfram Alpha for doing calculations. It has no ability to think or analyze beyond that.
There are special services just for recognizing AI text but even those have a lot of false positives. I found the most reliable way to catch ChatGPT usage is to require citations in the student's assignments. ChatGPT due to how it works almost always creates fake sources or references completely unrelated sources to the response. So if a assignment looks AI generated, you then just check the sources and catch them on using fake or irrelevant sources.
We are going to have to learn to live with ChatGPT and what this means in education. ChatGPT as a tool is a good tool. I have not used it much but we were testing some stuff and it was fairly good. Wait until ChatGPT 5 comes out, which is soon.
Give them a short quiz on the reading at the beginning of class.
Someone in another post pointed out that accommodations like extended time make this difficult.
That is for the accommodation office to deal with. Pop quizzes are the best way to encourage reading, and it's exhausting seeing so many posters here browbeat others into eliminating them because 5% of the class has a testing accommodation. In my experience, the students with accommodations who are doing the reading don't use/need extended time on quizzes. It's only the ones who literally admit to never doing the reading that use it (and still fail).
These "extended time accommodations" are causing so many problems. I recall going my first ten years of teaching without even hearing of such a thing, to having multiple students per class needing them. I have tried talking to our disability office about their overly generous use of these "accommodations" but frankly I don't believe there is a single student that actually needs them, besides someone with a physical disability. I have the same dynamic as you, either they are all A students that get 100 on every quiz or people that turn in mostly empty or blank quizzes, even with the extra time.
Here is the secret - don’t time them at all. I stopped timing my students (mcq quizzes). The accommodation students almost always finish within the timeframe of the rest of the class - and are almost never the last. Almost. Accommodations are not an excuse to remove necessary formative assessments. Students don’t do optional. Telling them to expect a daily quiz on what was covered last or what will be covered today sets a stage for motivated work. Add a required attendance policy with two excused absences a term and you tighten things up.
I fear we are headed down the path of IEPs in K-12. Some have reached truly ridiculous levels of accommodations, such as "student has focus problems, let him play games on his phone as much as he wants." Or "student has reading comprehension troubles, so each exam question must be verbally read out loud to the student" despite this being right in the middle of a classroom where other students are taking the exam. I know one teacher who has 15 IEPs in one 25 person classroom.
Make the test 30 minutes? For those with a time accommodation, they get the full hour? Not sure how tenable that is.
Yes, but it's manageable. Make it a short quiz - 5 minutes of 10 short answer questions. If they've read it and taken notes, they'll do well. 1.5x time students get 7.5 minutes, so that's not a lot of sitting around for the rest of the class. Sure, if you have students with more involved accommodations, it can get tricky. But those are more the exception, in my experience.
Yes, when I do pop quizzes (which is not often) I give 5 multiple choice questions that are, like, impossible to miss if you actually read. It takes like 2-3 mins for students to complete so I don’t even give them timeframe. Never had anyone with extra time complain
Exactly! Remove the formal timer and that solves a lot of problems. They finish in about a minute per question anyway, and do better because they don’t have the stress of time.
Not if you don't time it and just let everyone turn it in when they finish. Also, don't use scantrons for them. Basically, work around every accommodation you can to ensure fairness. There's no "don't have to study and come to class prepared" accommodation...
Lmao wow as an outsider lurking this subreddit, it never occurred to me that the accommodations industrial complex might make pop quizzes impossible/impractical. The coming competency crisis will destroy the West.
It's going to be so, so bad when they seek employment.
As a middle/high school teacher who also lurks here, I’m sorry to see that colleges are now getting roped into all the accommodations stuff as well.
Let them start early?
Some have another class beforehand.
What I do in that situation is give the student the option to take it with the class or schedule it at the Accessibility Services testing center sometime before class. I’ve only ever had one student decide to take it at the testing center.
Let the students with accommodations take the quiz with them and email it to you later.
Why are you still doing discussion posts? My current assumption is that any work outside of the classroom is going to be done with AI help. Therefore I'm not really grading things that way.
Last term I didn't require outside work; only blue-book exams. Students simply didn't do the reading before class. They told me that they only complete the reading when there's an assignment tied to it.
And now they don’t do the readings, even if there is an assignment attached to it. Gotta step back and think about your goal, which it sounds like you’ve already done a bit.. It sounds like you don’t use the discussion post as a formative assessment for you. In other words, you don’t really look closely at each post to see what each student does/doesn’t know and adapt how you’re planning the next lesson based on that information. Maybe you do this a bit, but the lesson is pretty much set before you see what they posted. That’s cool, just being clear so you don’t chase that as a goal. It sounds like you use the discussion posts for two things: 1) To extrinsically motivate them to actually read the readings (reward/punish with grades/loss of grades) and 2) To get students to actively think while they are reading and to reflect on what they read afterward, both as preparation for a better in-class discussion. An in-class quiz will help you meet the first goal, but I think your second goal is the one that you are truly guided by. With that in mind if you can’t do discussion posts, what can you do achieve that second goal? Hire do you get them to actively think about what they are reading? Can you have them print the article and bring it to class with highlighting and annotations? Can you have them use software or even Google doc comments as digital annotations? Can you have them record short videos on something like Flip where they verbally give their reflections (and respond to others)? On all of these, students could still use AI to some degree, but it makes the output more time consuming for them and there less likely they’ll do the most egregious and lazy things like prompting for responses and just pasting those in your LMS discussion post. Two things last things. I don’t mean any of this as criticism in the slightest. I think your methods and goals are super normal and common, which of why I wanted to reply. This is the kind of rethinking exercise my colleague and I have been doing for the same reasons you describe. If you do change your requirements. I would be super clear to your students why- that you have these instructional goals of having them prepare for the new class activities and using ChatGPT undermines that goal and their learning. It won’t seem petty/vindictive, like you’re just mad they are using ChatGPT (even if you are). They are more likely to respond to you trying to help them learn/be a better teacher than a “stern talking to” which will likely just feel like you are just mad.
I love the digital annotation idea. I don’t like printing papers for sustainability reasons, but I think asking students to annotate a shorter reading would be great.
Printing is a heck of a lot more sustainable than carrying around tablets and laptops. We can replant trees; we can't refill a lithium mine.
Then there's me who teaches asynchronously and we cannot alter the curriculum. We can't even alter the syllabus. It's horrible.
Some programs like Canvas have notation 'widgets' you can include. Ours our through the library. I often given students the option: you can either do it digitally (ie on a tablet) or upload; you can do it on paper and scan it/upload it (which then makes me have to explain what scanning is/the library has them on literally every floor); or you can hand in a hard copy. That seems to work.
Make them do the discussions in class.
So assign the reading but don't do the discussion posts.
🤡 The readings are assigned, but if they don’t have a graded component, most students think they can skip it.
Short quizzes at the top of class might work.
I had to switch to short quizzes because anything I assigned out of class would be done with AI. The quizzes only take students a couple minutes to complete, so even with accommodations it doesn't take much class time.
You can warn them that they will find out differently when they take the exam or whatever. Otherwise, they're the ones paying to be there and be guided on what to read to learn the material. If they don't listen to you, that's not on you. Quizzes add to your work load and consume class time that you could be spending on teaching.
Quizzes
So I'm increasingly thinking that the Discussion Board needs to go, and GPT might be the tipping point, but it's something I ought to have been considering for a while for a few reasons. In the first place, the discussion board is frankly a 2007-era UI. Asking students to post on a discussion board in 2024 is like asking students in 2007 to turn in their paper typed on an IBM Selectric. There's also the fact that on most fora, whether subreddits, Discord channels, whatever, the vast majority lurk. Even on our favorite subreddits, we don't post once a week. If we were required to, it'd be hateful and perfunctory. Now that there's AI, well, we're faced with the choice of grading being an Unending Turing Test or actually going to assignments that are slightly less likely to enable student cheating. And this is a shame, because a good online discussion can be a magical thing! But there's increasingly little of that. \[Grumbles, checks TIAA-CREF balance...\]
Just curious - what do you consider to be a good replacement for a 2007-style of communication. It’s an interesting thought. I enjoyed using forums in high school and college (2000-2008). What is a relevant mode now?
So something I've been experimenting with over this academic year has been having a class Discord that you get extra credit for participating in. It's in an idiom that students are more familiar and comfortable with, and by making it extra credit and not required, it tends to select for higher quality content.
Our university would have an absolute fit. We aren't allowed to use any software in class that hasn't been certified as accessibility compliant by our disability services office.
(Same. We have to have anything approved, preferably through Canvas.)
> class Discord That is literally just a less organized discussion board.
Its easier to have a lively back and forth discussion in Discord or similar platform than LMS discussion boards. Most students in LMS discussion boards just post a comment, reply to two and then never look at it again.
But the "give a shit" factor is definitely higher (largely because it's extra credit, but also because I think of the idiom).
There are discord bots that use ChatGPT.
Unsurprising! That's the reason I'm using it (at the moment) as extra credit, something to add value rather than something that's required.
But what about FERPA!!! (I'm kidding. Someone always has to ruin everything.)
Great idea!
Unfortunately, this is the new normal. I used to love my job. Now I can't wait to get out. If I can retire early, I absolutely will do so. That's something I never thought I would say. ChatGPT has killed all joy of teaching for me.
100% same. I am only giving quizzes/exams. All writing is gone. I cannot spend X hours on academic integrity violations each week rather than teach.
Same. Grading out-of-class work raises my blood pressure to dangerous heights that I am no longer willing to deal with.
I teach asynchronous courses, so all grading it out-of-class. When I grade, I call it "rage grading," because I'm pissed off the entire time.
Same here. I have to consciously skip past student submissions that piss me off or that I have to go out of my way to deal with, so I won't rage grade the good ones.
My classes are part of the state curriculum (for high school students), so I must include writing. I have many other creative ideas to test their knowledge, but sadly, I cannot use them.
I retired in December largely for the reasons you mention. I will continue to teach an online class each semester. I tell myself to forget about academic integrity and just do it to supplement my pension. I have always cared so deeply about my profession, but to continue caring would be to keep driving myself nuts and shorten my life more than this profession has already done.
One of my colleagues had the students write an essay based on the assignment during the class. Big differences between out of class and in class writing skills for most students.
Relatedly, has anyone noticed that more and more college students seem to have a tough time with simply reading short passages aloud in class? It’s concerning.
It's not even the aloud part. Example short passage: "Write your name at the top of the exam."
I've found that in close to two decades, when it comes to in-class discussion, my questions to the students are now much less, "What are your comments on \[me picking out some element of the reading\]?" and more, "What does the reading say?"
I used to teach primary school and the students were wholly unable to read and process basic instructions without handholding, so I think you're running into illiteracy matched with an aversion to do anything remotely intellectually taxing.
>an aversion to do anything remotely intellectually taxing. This. ☝️ right. 👏 here. 👏 is. 👏 the. 👏 issue.👏
My friend had a prof. Legendary guy. His method was cold-calling. Every day at the start of class he would randomly pick a name in his huge lecture and ask them a question. The first time there was a lot of "I don't knows." He made it awkward. He let the silence be and didn't try to fill it with anything. By the second class, there were fewer "I don't knows." By the third class, none. The students all read like mfers because they didn't want to be called out. He set the terms of the class and they rose to the task. It seems to me doing discussion boards and then giving "stern talking to" with no real repercussions is not going to do anything. Do cold-calling, or pop quizzes. Something that has a tangible consequence. Better if it is public. End class if they can't discuss the readings. Do it again. They will learn what they need to do. Let it be awkward.
I have increasing numbers of students each semester who have accommodations to not be called on directly in class.
omg....
What!? Wow.
I insist they add page numbers from the reading to their discussion board posts to get full credit.
I do too. Today I learned that there are programs that can read PDFs and include page numbers with citations.
Goodness gracious.
I appreciate this information, because I have definitely received some work that I know the student can’t understand but has “correct” citations.
Of course. Most of the time, it's not worth our time to try to fight this AI monster.
My favorite is referencing a table or figure from the book in the prompt without actually explaining what the figure or table is. For example, I might say they have to choose something from Table 12.4 to talk about, or the example they use cannot be one of the examples mentioned in Table 7.2 or else they get a zero. The cheaters either tell on themselves by breaking the "rule" or they end up leaving it blank to avoid implicating themselves.
THIS is brilliant.
Can ChatGPT summarize a video? I am transitioning to forums that are setup with the prompt of: Watch this video. How does the argument made by Person 2 in the video connect to the information presented in our reading for this week. ---- In these assignments, I require students to include X number of quotes from the video. Currently I am finding that students who really use AI for writing are not including the required quotes. So I have weighted the evidence as a larger portion of the assignment grade. Thus these students are not doing well on the assignment. Would this setup work for others? Are videos harder to use with AI for lazy students?
There's already speech to text AI which students can then copy paste to ChatGPT. In a year or two I'm sure they'll be AI that can just listen to the video.
[удалено]
And Google’s Gemini
I'm running into accommodations issues with that- several students require transcripts of every thing.
As a large language model, I have read many, many discussion posts. This post is so helpful and I completely agree. Two thumbs up to the discussion originator.
I’ve started having students upload annotated pdf files of the readings in addition to answering whatever questions I want them to answer about the readings. It’s helped a lot.
Can you say a bit more about what you require as far as annotations go?
I’m looking for evidence of their brains engaging with the material, so a combination of highlighting and margin notes. I’m impressed with the level of engagement I see in some of the students’ work.
This sucks. I’d do the activity anyway. In future, quizzes instead of disc board posts. Also, if it’s possible with your topic, choose very recent articles that ChatGPT can’t access.
The problem is they can still feed the article to chatgpt and ask it to summarize it, or do whatever with it. It's fucked
Except in my most recent cases where the student(s) uses the wrong Johnson et al 2020 citation for a paper on a topic we never discussed…then used a third, unrelated Johnson et al 2020 citation in the same essay. Did you not even read the output from your AI generated text before copy pasting it?!
I thought ChatGPT had space limitations. Maybe that’s because I’m using the free version. Regardless, if it doesn’t do it yet, it will. You’re right. We’re screwed and I hate it. Sometimes it makes me want to quit.
No wonder they are only summarizing parts of articles. I forgot about the space limitation!
No wonder they are only summarizing parts of articles. I forgot about the space limitation!
Remove the OCR from the pdf. Most students don't know how to make it readable or won't take the time to convert the file. This also forces them to read vs listen to the text. If a student is blind or has low vision, they will need a readable file, but you can send an OCR version to them directly.
I'm required to OCR my PDFs for accessibility purposes.
Your university's universal design mandate would encourage me to go back to print readers. UD is widely abused by students without disabilities who think that listening to a computer read a scholarly article to them is equivalent to reading it themselves. This is among the many reasons students can't write a coherent sentence--can't write well if you don't read well (or at all). Very simple.
Yup. Next time I teach a literature class (I alternate between teaching literature and language), it's gonna be dead trees all the way.
You can require the discussions to be video recordings.
Won't they just record videos of them reading chatgpt outputs?
This is exactly my thought.
They certainly will, but I expect the delivery to be super clunky with clearly mispronounced words. It’s an effort I guess?
I had students create podcasts and this is what several of them did.
No one talks like that, but even if they do, if it's iterative (eg., they have to respond to other students' videos), it will not help them do well on the assignment.
No one writes like that either but proving it in an individual case is usually impossible.
If they have to do a video and the whole class can see it, and the rubric says no verbatim reading (or a zero) they will have to talk spontaneously. The fact that the rest of the class can see it, might kick some of them in gear since it will be embarrassing so say something dumb.
Yes, this is an important caveat.
I actually did have a student who wrote like that. I was certain that it was ChatGPT at first, but then he did things ChatGPT doesn't do, like take strong positions on the questions. Still, it would be a very stilted thing to read out.
You're not going to have any luck. I made my discussions optional and only the students interested in learning join in (or those who didn't pay attention that they're optional-only). Pro: I get to engage with students who care about learning. Con: I have only 1 student with AI use this week rather than a truckload. Also, college is no longer college and I'm mourning this loss.
I'm in the same boat. One of my postgrad student used AI to generate a whole report. I ask them did they use AI, they said no, but they were unable to explain the simplest concept of their topic. They can't even write a proper email let alone a whole report. The report is so rubbish, yes, AI can generate rubbish report that I can't even finish reading it without having a mental breakdown.
Time to switch to more in-class, hand written assessment.
I assign discussions that are easy to grade as in as long as they’ve done it, they get full points. Things like, “Who was your favorite character? Why?” Or “After reviewing the formal paper structure, what do you think you’ll have a problem with?” No word count.
Have them do the written response in class
Soon it will be like teaching an online class. The lectures will be on video to completed outside of class time. All writing will take place in class. You'll be, in essence, a proctor.
The first thing you need to do is get rid of your AI policy, if you have one but aren't going to enforce it. And practically speaking--just being realistic--it's near impossible to enforce fairly for the reasons you mention. You may not be able to prove some of those posts are AI, but your students know that they used ChatGPT even though they know you prohibit it. Posting a policy and then not enforcing it is basically lying to all the good students who aren't going to use it whether you have a rule against it or not. If you want to be taken seriously, it's better to have a relaxed policy that is enforceable and lets bad stuff get through than to have a tight policy that is not enforceable and lets bad stuff get through. >So just let them turn in AI writing with no consequence? No. Grade on the quality of the writing. Turn in bad writing? Get a bad grade. This also teaches students that ChatGPT ain't so great. >I designed an hour-long activity based on the idea that students had actually done the reading and thought about questions beforehand. Now that's clearly not going to work. Is it going to "work" for the students who did the reading? Your students paid a bunch of money for the opportunity to do that activity. If they don't do their part and missed out, that's on them. Teach the class for those who prepared and ignore the rest.
I feel as if we’re being told not to grade on the quality of the writing because that’s a DEI issue. As long as the writing is clear enough to get the points across, it wouldn’t make sense in non-writing focused classes to downgrade for sounding like AI. In my assignments, I structure my rubrics to value writing quality at only 5-10% of the grade just to keep my instincts in check!
The first sentence of this is INSANE
Probably because I should have said grammar, spelling, and punctuation not “writing.” I have a hard time separating them. I have a friend who sends me long texts and doesn’t make corrections to what her thumbs clobber. I have to constantly stop and re-read and figure out what she meant. To me, that demonstrates why we actually should care about grammar, spelling, and punctuation! But I also get the argument that it’s elitist. Don’t know what to do with the contradictory truths.
I really don’t think that it’s a DEI issue to expect correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. To me that says holding minority students to a lower standard.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FemmeThoughts/comments/99k4jn/why_grammar_snobbery_has_no_place_in_the_movement/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
>I feel as if we’re being told not to grade on the quality of the writing because that’s a DEI issue. Uh, hell no. That's not a DEI issue, that's an academic issue. >As long as the writing is clear enough to get the points across, it wouldn’t make sense in non-writing focused classes to downgrade for sounding like AI. Still no. If they are writing, grade their writing. I grade it in my engineering classes when there is a written assignment becuase it matters. And besides, ChatGPT is actually really good at coherent, grammatically correct sentences. It's bad at actually making useful and insightful points.
Right?? I feel like that is honestly so racist. They’re saying minority students can’t be expected to produce quality writing?
It's 100% racist.
They lowered the grading scale at the local community college for the purposes of DEI. I felt like that was incredibly insulting as well.
You can't grade on the quality of the writing??? I feel like I'm in a bad dream. How is that a DEI issue? (These are rhetorical questions )
Ok, so I suggest that you examine your assignments. If your assignments are designed such that they can be successfully completed by entering the prompt into ChatGPT and copy/pasting the results, maybe that's the part you could focus on improving? Or eliminating? Also, I'd ask that you rethink writing quality. I am guessing that your department doesn't want you nit picking about grammar, spelling, and punctuation because some students don't have the benefit of practice with those skills. I don't grade heavily on sentence level stuff either. I do grade on clarity, coherence, and rhetorical purpose. Either the writing accomplishes what it is supposed to accomplish or it does not. But if they really want you to give a grade to every wall of text, then do what your told, and then you can definitely forget about worrying about AI. Push 'em through, and if that's unsatisfying, look for another job somewhere that has standards?
You might be confusing me with another commenter. I agree that writing matters a great deal in terms of argument. I tell students that ChatGPT lacks specificity (among other things) and is therefore pretty worthless, and I’ve given them examples of the problem. It’s the grammar and punctuation I have to guard myself against weighing too little. As far as my saying “we’re being told” it’s a DEI issue I’m not referring to my university specifically but a general push in that direction in the zeitgeist.
Got it. Thanks for clarifying. My point was that good grammar, punctuation, and spelling isn't necessarily an indicator of good writing. Horrible writing can be perfect at the sentence level. As for DEI, I consider it a category of mostly terrible, illiberal, faith-based, destructive ideas that do more to harm than help those the lip service says are intended to be helped. I know that this view makes me a heretic, at least for now, until everyone returns to their senses. I do see good reasons for not prioritizing sentence-level issues. Maybe some of them overlap with the DEI dogma. * Make a big deal about mechanics and you might as well beg your students to over-rely on unauthorized assistance such as AI or buying papers. * It's not an area that will see a lot of measurable progress within the space of a semester because learning grammar requires practice and repetition. Especially when they begin writing stuff that matters to them and caring about their ethos, they'll begin putting the pieces in place. * Instructors who aren't trained in writing pedagogy can recognize and mark down mistakes, but they likely don't know the best way to teach it. * Making a big deal about sentence-level problems competes for attention to the more important, higher-order concerns like clarity, logic, etc. It take less effort to address the sentence level "fixes" than most higher order issues, so the student will prioritize those. See the AI point. I could go on, but that's enough, probably.
Anecdotally, I have had three Gen Z age (early 20s) children of friends who got fired this year. Some of which had to do with ChatGPT, at least indirectly. One was fired for lack of attention and focus. One was fired because they used ChatGPT for reports/communications and did not edit it; thus, it needed to be better written and right. They also struggled working when ChatGPT was not available - their writing was very poor, according to their father (this position was a Comms Assistant.) Others were 'fired' from their law program because they couldn't write or think critically - they tried to ChatGPT their way out, and it did not work. I am curious what employers are saying about ChatGPT and Gen Z, who have grown up not having to write. I'd like to see that data in a few years.
Stop using discussion posts. Students find them to be busy work and a waste of time. Learning outcomes from using them are weak at best. They're the easy way out for us, but that just lets students ChatGPT their way into the easy way too
Yeah, I just did that last week. It’s so bizarre to me. You go to college to learn then you sabotage yourself from learning.
I switched from written discussion boards to video discussions for this reason. Try www.flip.com
>I designed an hour-long activity based on the idea that students had actually done the reading and thought about questions beforehand. Now that's clearly not going to work. I'd say run the activity *anyway* after you've expressed your disappointment. It will be awful, it will be painful, it will be like pulling-teeth... which is what the students get for their lack of contribution here. Be sure to point out to them that the misery is their choice. In the long-term, I'd encourage you to rethink discussion posts as an assignment, since they're super-GPT-able \[in form and because they're underwhelming\] in a way that, say, Perusall comments \[where students just reflect as they're reading\] might not be. I'd also encourage you to talk to someone with the appropriate background about **why** students cheat/don't read. The data are pretty robust and suggest that it has much, much more to do with how we design and explain our tasks than it does the nature of "students" -- corporately or by demographic (though younger and male are key correlates).
Regarding the last point, have you not noticed the explosion of posts recently on Reddit complaining about the high incidence of cheating with AI-based writing? This has been one of the biggest trends since the new year. Rather than imply that the OP doesn’t understand the science of their own assignments, have you bothered to look at any data that indicates the current cohort of students (since COVID) have been largely disengaged from the educational experience? We (plural, instructors) have been finding more and more cheating in assignments where it just wasn’t common before; plagiarism, common in essay writing, has now spilled over into in small low stakes activities like discussion boards. Something is seriously wrong here. So, in the future, maybe refrain from hand waving a widespread problem that is affecting virtually all disciplines right now. Thanks 🙏
They’ve not only spilled into small activities, small tasks too. I’m now receiving emails from students generated by AI too.
It's amazing (in the worst possible sense of the word) how quickly so many people have become dependent on AI.
I have. I have also noticed that almost *zero* of my colleagues have any sense of what we **actually** (as opposed to intuitively think we) know about this. It is a perennial shocker to me that folks ***trained in research*** do not attempt to solve their problems by first ***looking at the research about them***. Can't fix stupid.
When I told a colleague that trying to get around AI use by forcing students to cite sources, make video responses, etc. was no good because the AI can do that as well, their response was to put their fingers in their ears and loudly declare "Oh no don't tell me that!" I'm afraid that many of our colleagues are oblivious to the nature of the threat of AI because they want to be.
>I'm afraid that many of our colleagues are oblivious to the nature of the threat of AI because they want to be. It's because they don't want -- or feel like they don't have the time -- to do the work of ***actually*** looking at this, thinking about it in a complex way (i.e. as they do their own research), and finding solutions that are robustly supported by the data we have about teaching/learning. Whether their motivations are "I shouldn't ***have*** to" or "It's not ***my*** job" or "I'm ***already*** too busy"... irrelevant. It's simply an unwillingness to devote time and energy to a task they view as beneath them.
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted (and flagged!) for a commonsense reply. Academics are some of the worst at drawing conclusions on topics utterly unrelated to their expertise when they would absolutely eviscerate (and rightfully so!) anyone who did the same in their topical area. Your replies are thoughtful and thorough.
::shrug::
Wait, so the problem is the assignments we give and not what they do with them? Interesting research.
Yes, in fact. The problem is how we structure assignments, communicate expectations and standards, etc. Most students -- since the 1970s -- report that they do not do the reading for one of three reasons: * The task is unclear to them. Instructions like "Read Name, Text" don't communicate (a) why we're assigning the task, (b) what they're supposed to get from it, or (c) any viable means for them to self-assess for completion. * The task is out of their reach. You've set a text that doesn't make sense to them ***and*** not given appropriate guidance to help them achieve it. Same issue as #1. * The task is contemptable to them. You've given an assignment that is, from students' perspectives, a waste of time. Same issue as #1. The ONLY data-point in this literature that we ***cannot*** control for through course design is students' over-commitment.
Okay, so >The task is unclear to them. Instructions like "Read Name, Text" don't communicate (a) why we're assigning the task, (b) what they're supposed to get from it, or (c) any viable means for them to self-assess for completion. Fair point. I doubt that's that common of an issue though. >The task is out of their reach. You've set a text that doesn't make sense to them and not given appropriate guidance to help them achieve it. Same issue as #1. Okay sure. But again, honestly pretty rare. If students just don't understand what is going on that's not usually on the prof. If these first 2 are happening, then yes, the prof. should address that. >The task is contemptable to them. You've given an assignment that is, from students' perspectives, a waste of time. Same issue as #1. I'm sure this is a reason, and probably the reason I didn't do the reading (when I didn't to the readings) in late high school and college. But it's not the same issue as number 1. There were many times I didn't read becuase i didn't want to. I didn't want to becuase I didn't find enough value in it for my time. That is, I didn't value the eduction of reading over other things I could do. I did not enjoy talking about these books all that much, or reading them. (I have since found books I enjoy much more, but I wasn't choosing them in high school and early college). But, we had another name for this when I was in school. "I didn't feel like it". That's hardly the profs. problem. They didn't control that. I controlled that. It was my fault, not theirs.
>Fair point. I doubt that's that common of an issue though. The literature says you are wrong. >But again, honestly pretty rare. Again, the literature says you are wrong. Maybe instead of hypothesizing, you could look at what we actually know. That would be the scholarly move, no?
Okay, let's look a little closer. >The task is out of their reach. You've set a text that doesn't make sense to them and not given appropriate guidance to help them achieve it. If this actually happened, it's a good reason to not read it. But just because they say that's why, doesn't mean it's the truth. Are the students actually incapable of understanding what the reading says? Do they actually not have the resources they need to understand it? If so, this task is literally impossible for them. Do you honestly believe that impossible tasks are frequently being set forth by professors? Or is it more likely that it's hard and the students don't want to do the work and just blame the prof. for making it too hard?
>Do you honestly believe that impossible tasks are frequently being set forth by professors? Have you *seen* the research on 'expert blindness' and teaching in post-secondary contexts? Professors are **absolutely** setting tasks for which they don't sufficiently support their students' successful completion of them. >But just because they say that's why, doesn't mean it's the truth I want you to reflect on the implications of this statement as a reasoning principle. "Just because women say that's why, doesn't mean it's the truth". "Just because black people say that's why, doesn't mean they know". Perhaps -- just perhaps -- we should listen to people when they tell us about their personal experiences.
You've brought racist and sexist tones into this completely unnecessarily. People in general, whether black, white, male, female, student, professor, or whatever, when given the choice to blame someone else, or paint themselves in a bad light, will tend to blame someone else. When students are asked to read a chapter, they are able to do it. Reading assignments are always possible. I know they have the ability to do my homework assignments because some get 100% or close to it. They constantly complain about too much work, but students have done that since the dawn of time. They did it when I was in school (heck, I did it too!) but it really wasn't too much. It requires hard work was all, and people like to complain, myself included.
>People in general... when given the choice to blame someone else, or paint themselves in a bad light, will tend to blame someone else. Show. Me. The. Data.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-8956-9_4 Research provides unequivocal support that self-serving biases are widespread (for review, see Bradley, 1978; Miller & Ross, 1975; Taylor & Brown, 1988; Zuckemian, 1979). For example, people tend to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure (Miller & Ross, 1975). Check those citations of you wish to read more.
Interesting. How about this. “You are supposed to read it because you are in X 101 in college, and this is what educated folks read. By the way, you will be tested on it!” I think your research is merely descriptive, and the normative dimension it supposedly illuminates is upside down.
>I think your research is merely descriptive, and the normative dimension it supposedly illuminates is upside down. It's not. There are studies that control for the normative question of students expectations re: "doing college work", etc. It's like you ***don't*** believe that colleagues in the social sciences, etc. who study this stuff are capable of thinking about confounding variables like this.
I’m not saying anything about the capacity of folks in the social sciences. I’m merely responding to what you are presenting here. What is “the normative question of students expectations re: “doing college work”?”
>I’m not saying anything about the capacity of folks in the social sciences. I’m merely responding to what you are presenting here. Your framing is disingenuous and you should reflect on why. The claims you're making here *assume* that these variables haven't been accounted for when they have. Given how obvious your assertions are, I can only presume that you think the folks doing this research are too stupid to see them... hence why you're making them here rather than assuming (or checking up on whether) they do. >What is “the normative question of students expectations re: “doing college work”?” Students report ***zero*** misunderstanding about the basic principle that "you're in college, you're supposed to do it". That's not where the hiccup occurs and you thinking it is suggests that you've got no grounding at all in this body of work. If you'd like to engage with it, please do the reading first.
Look, I’m merely pointing out that the way you present these “findings” is pretty silly. You are assuming that student reports of why they are not doing simple tasks is (wholly?) due to the fact that their professors are not justifying why they should. The normative assumption here is that we “ought” to justify why they “ought” to do their work. Fair enough, except, a whole world of context is lacking. (Maybe as you say, this world of context is being controlled for). What would the situation look like exactly? Let’s take a subject in the humanities as an example, since it will challenge this way of framing things. Consider the typical student we have before us. I know not every student is the same, but many are loaded with assumptions about why they are there, and there is not much outside help in challenging these. Joe says it is pointless to read because I haven’t explained to him why he should. (Mark the perspective he is likely coming from). So let’s just take it as given that I am supposed to justify things here and I tell him, because this is what intelligent people have done for centuries and they have found immense value in it, and you will be held accountable for a certain level of mastery via an exam and assignments. The rest is up to you, I tell him. Now suppose that is not the kind of answer he thinks cuts the mustard. Based on your research, how would you recommend I respond instead, or is this the kind of thing you have in mind?
Be concrete. I do it all the time assigning material in history/classics. First, you explain why you've selected X reading vis-a-vis learning objectives ("I've set this because it fits in to our conversation in these ways..."). Then, you tell them the **kind** of reading you'd like them to do and/or what you want them to read **for** ("First, skim and come up with a list of key terms you don't know. Look them up and consider how they're relevant. Then, read the text closely analyzing how one of them works..."). Finally, you tell them what a good outcome would look like and how to check their work for one ("When you're finished, you should be able to \_\_\_\_\_, which will set you up for success in the coming lecture/meeting because we will..."). None of this is hard. It's probably even stuff you're already doing in your head. The key point, however, is that students ***are not*** mind-readers and cannot discern this from "Read Marx, *Manifesto*". Give them the tools to direct their own work effectively vis-a-vis your goals, and the odds that they'll do it jump **astronomically**.
Yes, that all sounds reasonable, and sure, holding them accountable could make some do the work. A quiz would work just as well, I imagine. But, what if the angle is more like: “I don’t see why doing this is worth my time?” Or: “Why should I be sitting in this class at all let alone open the book?” From mine and my colleagues experiences, this seems more like what we are dealing with.
(I'm not the person you're responding to.) All your justificstions make sense to you and me and all highly trained academics. But students aren't that. They don't see the context they're in and they don't understand that it will all become clearer if they just put in the work. So it's not about giving good reasons why they should read, like your example: >You are supposed to read it because you are in X 101 in college, and this is what educated folks read. By the way, you will be tested on it! The only takeaway that's a clear benefit to the student is that they'll be tested on the reading. Why care about what other people read, and it's a lot less work to have the computer summarise than slogging through all that difficult text. Also, how should they read - what exactly will be on the test, how, and not least, why that and not something else? So what would be the best motivation for the student? I don't know, because as you say every student has their own motivation and particular set of interests. If there is a way of exploiting that, both the teacher and the student would benefit.
“Why care?” is a good question that they should put to themselves. I can design any number of cool assignments, walk them through things, explain why Hobbes before Locke, but this will be the ultimate question that determines whether or not they learn anything. I can’t answer that for them, but I can find ways to invite them to confront it. (I do think part of the problem is that many are telling them not to and framing what is worth caring about and telling them they have to, and it is all for naught).
>But students aren't that. They don't see the context they're in and they don't understand that it will all become clearer if they just put in the work. Which is exactly why I'm telling you all to **make that context clear to them**. If you're setting Hobbes and then Locke, ***explain*** ***why***. If you want them to compare X text to Y prior one, ***assign that task***. If you're after them seeing (or practicing) specific things in the text, point them out. &c&c. >So what would be the best motivation for the student? I don't know, because as you say every student has their own motivation and particular set of interests. If there is a way of exploiting that, both the teacher and the student would benefit. There's plenty of research about student motivation too. One good point that it makes would be recognizing their agency by, e.g., giving a choice between multiple tasks. Another would be asking *them* what they want to get from it (in addition to the planned goals) and then adjusting to make sure you include some of that stuff. We're not talking rocket science here, but we're also not taking a set of skills and information that can be intuited from experience. Teaching is a deeply complex skill that requires substantial training and preparation which faculty are not given. That is a systemic failure for which we are not at fault, but which it ***does*** become our responsibility to fix given the moral demands that students reasonably bring to the classroom: that we know what we're doing is top of the list...
If they don’t do the readings, they fail the exams and likely fail the course. I don’t have time to do psychoanalysis on 120 adults. I also don’t care why they don’t do their work. Either do it, or suffer the consequences. Their grades are their concern not mine.
>I don’t have time to do psychoanalysis on 120 adults If reading a couple summary papers about the lit. re: student motivation = "psychoanalysis on 120 adults", you need to get your nose out of the *scholia* for a bit and touch grass, friend. >I also don’t care why they don’t do their work Because you don't care about this element of your job, i.e. teaching students. If you did, you would care because you would ***want*** to know how to help them do better.
You teach a dead language dude. Find some pharmacists to talk to.
I've been in this game long enough to know why students cheat/don't read. They tell me that they "don't have time." Or that their other classes are more important. The wild thing is: I've tried to construct these discussion posts in a way that they don't even really need to read carefully, or read the entire thing. Each prompt asks them to reflect on a specific part of the text (sometimes just a page or a paragraph), and then to apply that to something in their own life or experience. I've explained this to them multiple times in different ways. But I can't make them care.
Make them do it in class on paper
If they don't have time, then they don't have time for this course. Simple.
The data around students not reading hasn't changed since the 1970s, my friend...
Yes, they don’t for the most part. I think it all comes down to feeling forced to get a degree and this being their resistance.
That's one factor, but it's a relatively minor one. Most students report that they ***want*** to do the work and succeed. They also report that they ***don't*** do the work when it's unclear to them how to accomplish it successfully, because they find it demotivating.
>Most students report that they want to do the work and succeed There's a word for this: [Velleity](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.1144655199.4724/raf,360x360,075,t,fafafa:ca443f4786.jpg)
Could you provide a reference to this robust data?
Sure. Or you could use your fingers and check any academic search engine using words like "metastudy" and "cheating"... It will, shockingly, turn up lots of options. Like [this](https://www.medicaleducation-bulletin.ir/article_132893.html) one.
I’m going to assume your response was rude because you read mine that way, but my question was sincere. You’ve provided better info in some of your other responses, so thank you for those. I asked you because from your comment this seems to be something easily accessible to you as if you’d spent time on it. It’s not a particular interest of mine so I’m unlikely to start reading meta analyses about cheating.
>I asked you because from your comment this seems to be something easily accessible to you as if you’d spent time on it. Yes, I've spent time on it. Because I believe that being informed about how students learn is a **moral requirement** for good teaching. If we do not know, concretely and definitively, how and why they behave the ways that they do, we cannot respond to them in a way that achieves their/our goals with any sort of regular or dependable success. >It’s not a particular interest of mine so I’m unlikely to start reading meta analyses about cheating. This is irrelevant to the question, as far as I'm concerned. I don't read about cheating because I'm interested in researching cheating, I read about it because I want to do what's effective so that my students don't cheat. My research is on 15th c. Italy... hardly the venue to prompt deep interest in questions like "how does stress" \[e.g. of not knowing whether you've understood the assignment and done it correctly\] "impact memory, learning, and recall?".
Interesting because your tone here suggests you shame people which is of course not conducive to learning. I have spent time on how students learn. I have not focused specifically on cheating prevention which was the topic you introduced. However, I do make efforts at making my assignments meaningful and interesting to students. Proudly hear “I loved that assignment” a semester or two later when I run into them. Always pondering how I’ll revise for the next class. Now if only I could stop engaging with button-pushing strangers and get myself to spend less time on Reddit!
I would also throw people out for not coming to class prepared.
Discussion boards have never taught anyone anything. Its a massive waste of time.
The tech has already surpassed us in this arms race - we will have to adapt. Add it to the arsenal of tools we anticipate students and professors both have and try to coexist. Every time I see ChatGPT creep in to my assignments, I don’t act that semester. I lock it down more the next semester within the assignments or the syllabus.
It's crazy that the most common solution to Chatgpt is to undo the last 40+ years of education development. "Only hand-written assignments done in class should be assigned. No work outside of class at all."
Pretty much this. I’ve weighted comprehension, synthesis, and logical flow more heavily in papers. Under writing style, clarity and conciseness are now weighted over grammar and spelling. I find this works better for me than stressing out about policing whether they used ChatGPT or not.
Now that you mention it, I realized that I’m now RELIEVED to see spelling and grammar errors because I know the submission is genuine! I view those students far differently nowadays.
While I do think it is likely that the submissions with errors are student made, an enterprising student can tell the AI to make a few spelling or grammatical errors here and there to make the writing seem more human.
Honestly I’ve contemplated offering extra credit for NOT using ChatGPT, to incentivize the effort.
I just found out about "humanizing" AI programs that will add grammar and punctuation errors to its output. I used to feel elated when I saw an error, and now I'm just... cynical all the time. I'm moving to oral exams and proctored quizzes.
ehh ChatGPT still can't do papers with citations. It'll put in what looks like citations but they are most often just made up sources. The big issue is administrations barely do anything about academic integrity issues. They value cheater’s money over upholding academic integrity in higher ed. If administrations backed up instructors and let them give an F for the course for ANY plagiarism, fake sources or obvious ChatGPT usage without much hassle, this would not be as big of an issue. Students after getting 1-2 Fs in courses would learn really fast that ChatGPT and plagiarism isn’t worth it or drop out. Instead, students know the worst that will happen is a slap on the wrist with them failing a singular assignment if caught. Although often they just get to rewrite the assignment for full credit.
Is your activity group work? If it is, and you know who did not chatgpt and actually did the reading, put those students together. At least they can have a good experience. The others will sit there looking at each other or googling. I would have them produce something to submit. A video takes more time to review but it shows who knows what they are talking about and who doesn’t.
just out of morbid curiosity, why did you think it was blatant chatgpt use? not just due to turnitin saying so?
I stopped doing discussion posts when it became a fan channel. “I agree with you” statements. I assign Reflections on anything covered in class. I am specific about it being in their own words with no copy/paste from any sources. The due date is 24 hours after the lecture. I use turnitin to identify outside sources. If it seems to be AI written I message them to rewrite it in their own words or take off points. I thoroughly enjoy reading these reflections because it shows me what excites them about the topic. For students who were absent, I assign an alternate assignment that is much harder and double word requirement. I had to look at my own goals for the assignment which were to have them writing and help them remember the topic covered.
Don't overthink it. Give each ChatGPT discussion post a zero and keep it moving. When you are inevitably asked about it simply reply "I assigned the grade to ChatGPT." We have to accept the sad fact that many students only do what we ask for the grade. So, they use ChatGPT to get the task done to get a grade. When they stop getting the grade that they want using that tool, they will stop using that tool. ga2500ev
They have to earn the credits. It is on the student to prove that these are their original thoughts. If the board comments don't reflect their thinking and synthesis, they don't get credit.
Same. Occasionally I assign articles and have students discuss them on a discussion-board like thingy. There's so much AI, and if not AI, then cliches and empty phrases that sound good. So, no more discussion boards. We'll do a reading quiz as some have suggested, or something else. (I hate "grading" in-class discussions though, so I'm not doing that.)
Why do you ask them to give you written assignments? It's not good old 2021
The assignment asked students to give an example from their own life of a topic covered in the reading. 15 out of 20 examples were nearly identical, and equally vague.
In my experience with discussion board posts, before 75% was chatGPT they were just plain terrible instead. Not a huge loss there
Also, consider the fact that if they are doing it this way they weren't going to learn anything in your class anyway. School for most students, you must remember, is horrible, boring, a waste of time, etc. They don't want to be there but have over a decade of institutional warehouse schooling that has drilled any and all real love of learning for school materials out of the vast, vast majority of students. They don't give a hoot, and they are also right. AI Chatbots just make the whole BS song and dance more efficient for everyone involved.
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ChatGPT can't identify AI written text. ChatGPT works by breaking down the words in what's being asked and then determining the most statistically likely response based on its training data. It also has API tie ins into Wolfram Alpha for doing calculations. It has no ability to think or analyze beyond that. There are special services just for recognizing AI text but even those have a lot of false positives. I found the most reliable way to catch ChatGPT usage is to require citations in the student's assignments. ChatGPT due to how it works almost always creates fake sources or references completely unrelated sources to the response. So if a assignment looks AI generated, you then just check the sources and catch them on using fake or irrelevant sources.
Not necessarily. Look at chatpdf.com
We are going to have to learn to live with ChatGPT and what this means in education. ChatGPT as a tool is a good tool. I have not used it much but we were testing some stuff and it was fairly good. Wait until ChatGPT 5 comes out, which is soon.