My students are new to the college experience, and not just in the sense that most of them are college freshmen. They are often the first generation in their families to go to college; they live in rural northwest New Mexico and many have never been on a large urban college campus; they want to learn and improve their financial situation, but often enter my freshman composition class wondering if they belong there. It is my deepest desire that my students develop confidence and a sense of belonging in my class. I see it as my job to remove any barriers I can, making visible the unwritten rules of the college institution and of the institution that comprises college reading and writing practices.
Of course, I don’t want them to be required to install a piece of software that many of their computers won’t run because their machines are too old, or they are working on a high school-issued computer and don’t have administrator privileges. Of course, I don’t want them to be required to give access to their webcams where an invisible big brother observes them composing an essay, making sure they aren’t transcribing from a second screen. Of course, I don’t want to require them to go to an institution near them that offers in-person proctoring for $50-$100.
And yet, I am seriously considering requiring just this.
Some Context:
These problems don’t arise in a face-to-face setting, but in my a-synchronous online classes, it is another story. I am currently teaching a 6-week a-synchronous online class, and just one year and 7 months after the release of ChatGPT 3, I am seeing alarming amounts of AI plagiarism.
To be clear, AI is explicitly banned in my classes and in addition to being posted in the syllabus and online materials, students complete an early reflection on plagiarism where they explain to me why any use of AI in my class counts as plagiarism. There is no grey area and any student who plagiarizes in my class should know they are cheating.
A Failed Strategy:
In this short semester, I was hoping to avoid requiring my students to complete proctored essays. Instead, I required them to complete a low-stakes writing assignment in the Respondus Lockdown Browser which is already integrated into our Canvas learning management system (LMS). My thinking here was that if a student were to complete an assignment where they could not have Grammarly running or where they could not leave the window and bring up an AI, I would get a sample of their authentic writing that I could use to judge the authenticity of their future essays. My thinking went that if a later, revised essay came in significantly more advanced in terms of syntax and vocabulary, I wouldn’t need to deal with the thorny issue of using AI detectors – I could detect it myself by contrasting the suspect essay with an original authentic sample of the student’s writing.
Then, I encountered a student essay that described TicTok as a “virtual agora.” It included vocabulary like “innocuously, piqued, digital ecosystem.” Of course, I went right away to the lockdown browser assignment for a contrast and, wait for it, the student had not completed the assignment. I set up a required phone conference with the student in which they claimed the writing was their own. I asked them to define some of these vocabulary words. As they paused to respond, I wondered if they were searching online for the definitions, and the definitions came back shortly thereafter. Rather than going further down that rabbit hole, I required the student to complete the lockdown browser assignment.
They completed that assignment, and the essay written in the browser was quite strong, including what looked like a few transcription errors. My guess is the student used an AI on their phone or another screen to come up with the paper and transcribe it.
I then required another phone conference.
In this conference, I stated to the student that I didn’t believe this was their writing, and that there was too large a gap between their speaking voice and the voice in these papers. They claimed over and over again that the writing was theirs. I then said that because of the differences between their speaking and writing voices, I would have to meet them on campus and observe them writing to be sure it was their voice.
They then immediately admitted they had plagiarized using AI.
More Plagiarism:
Now I am seeing more examples of plagiarism in my classes. One-off assignments are coming in with distinctly AI voices; full essays are coming in with voices that in no way resemble their lockdown browser reflection counterparts. And these are just the obvious cases. I wonder where students are using AI in ways I cannot detect, skipping the work and the learning but getting the assignments done more quickly and with just enough finesse to slide under my radar.
A Lesson from My Math Colleagues:
I have learned that many of my math colleagues have been using proctored exams in online classes for years now because of the availability of online programs that allow students to cheat. When it becomes so easy for students to cheat, it is inevitable that some will, and at this point the only way to hold integrity in my classes is to be fully sure that my students are doing their own work. My plan this fall is to include proctored timed writing essays as two of the four major papers my students write. This will allow me to see what they can actually do and to know when work comes in that they did not write themselves.
I would prefer students to do the work because they are engaged and intrinsically motivated to learn, but education has always relied on both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, and sometimes extrinsic motivations with the power of consequence and accountability are necessary to ensure students have done the work necessary to master the learning outcomes for the class.
I do not want to be in a situation where I am regularly wondering about whether a student is using AI. This is all, frankly, exhausting. I don’t see that I have a choice, and my fall online classes will include proctored writing assignments as a major part of the grade and curriculum.
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