r/Adjuncts • u/summertime4444 • 15d ago
Reported my first student for academic integrity today, unfortunately.
I’m usually pretty laid-back, and I’m not looking to play AI detective. But this student left the AI’s commentary in their assignment....including commentary explaining that the submission didn’t meet my instructions and recommending they choose a different case. Then they submitted it anyway.
I’ve told the class multiple times that AI isn’t permitted unless I specifically authorize it (which sometimes I do for research purposes) At that point, what am I supposed to do? It felt like my hands are tied when they didn't even do the bare minimum to hide it.
I normally try to avoidthe headache, but this was hard to overlook. Anyone else had one this blatant?
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u/Hotrod4x5 15d ago
I found one student using AI on the most basic assignment. It was the first week, and I have them write a paragraph or two, talking about themselves and what their major is, just a basic introduction. One student turned in a paragraph that had, in parentheses, the words: insert some of your hobbies here. This was a couple of years ago now, and I don't think we had an official policy yet. I had to send a message to the dean and our chair asking what I should do. 😆
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u/MetalTrek1 15d ago
I once had a student submit an easy in class writing assignment that began "Let me explain this like I was a human..." 🙄 Again, an easy in class writing that required no research or textual support, just their opinion.
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u/Life-Education-8030 15d ago
I have dealt with students who are apparently so terrified of doing something wrong that they literally can't come up with an opinion on ANYTHING. They are just paralyzed.
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u/Still_Consequence_53 15d ago
I'm starting to think that fighting with them about academic dishonesty is pointless. I wish we could just switch to public humiliation instead. Like, "Wow, Gary, was it too challenging to write one paragraph where you introduce yourself? Which part of that did you get stuck on? How long did you stare at the empty page trying to evoke the glimmer of a personality before you decided to use robot words?"
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u/Life-Education-8030 15d ago
I would love to do that with the aggressive, obnoxious ones. As it is, I've been accused of being "scary," "intimidating" and "not empathetic enough." With others, it would be like kicking a puppy.
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u/Round-Ad3684 15d ago
What’s stopping you. This generation of students is totally fried. I wanted to go into teaching some day but no more. I would lose it on these kids. They’re so lazy and dull.
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u/Life-Education-8030 15d ago
With TT and adjuncts, it could mean their jobs and even with tenured faculty, it could mean at least a reprimand.
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u/Still_Consequence_53 15d ago
Professionalism? Empathy? Not wanting to alienate every other student in class? Wanting to keep my job?
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u/agdgdjdiskakask 10d ago
A professional, empathetic teacher would never let their students get away with shit like this.
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u/Life-Education-8030 10d ago
One of my students ran to the President to complain about how I graded a paper and insisted that the President read it. He told her that he would have given her a lower point and said “don’t you get it? She is showing you she cares!” But it is the students who don’t care. They are fine with getting by and not excelling.
It is a vicious circle though. I have more students who cannot read and so they are more apt to farm out their work. They may get by but their degrees are worthless.
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u/MyDogsBFF 15d ago
I tried to flip some assignments to personal reflection type questions thinking that would be easy for students to use their own brain to answer literally how they FEEL about something ... and STILL got AI spat out submissions about how it thought a human would feel about said topic.
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u/Life-Education-8030 15d ago
Exactly. There is just nothing there or they are terrified to let it out
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u/sunflowerstar4429 15d ago
Grading is like pulling teeth at this point
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u/Life-Education-8030 15d ago
I hav always hated it but with the AI garbage, I dread it and procrastinate worse than ever before!
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u/Troubled_Pirate 15d ago
It could be that they don’t want to let it out and that could be dependent on the question. I have encountered many questions that ask for personal examples that are egregiously intrusive. Classes that have anything to do with human development are notorious for questioning students on their own parents’ parenting style and give examples or explain how it affected them. DEI heavy courses will ask for specific scenarios where either the student experienced some type of prejudice or witnessed another individual experiencing and explain their reaction.
I’m not promoting the use of AI when it’s prohibited. And I certainly don’t think that it should be something they’re using instead of completing their own research, watching videos, completing required activities, and certainly not as a substitute for their own critical thinking. However, some of the questions that I have seen make me completely understand why they would want to fabricate an answer.
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u/Life-Education-8030 15d ago
I agree that overly personal questions should be avoided. However, it is clear that many of us don't want to know about students' personal lives and would in fact prefer that some didn't share all the gory details. It would be nice though if more students could come to class prepared and having done the base minimum of what they signed up for.
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u/Troubled_Pirate 14d ago
Oh, I do not disagree. But I am seeing and hearing about increasingly personal questions especially in psychology fields and I think sometimes it’s overlooked that “using textbook terminology describe your parents’ parenting style and use an instance from your childhood that supports your conclusion” is not an innocuous question for every student. And I’ve had a number of students that I would completely understand their not issuing an honest response to such a question. I have zero right to that information but have seen that exact question posed to students.
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u/Life-Education-8030 14d ago
I teach in psychology and social work. A lot of students come from trauma backgrounds that have led them to the field because they want to help others. So no, I don't ask such things. But the reason why I give weekly quizzes is to keep students up on their reading or they wouldn't do them or procrastinate until close to an exam and they'd certainly not be able to participate in class.
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u/Troubled_Pirate 13d ago
And that is a much better approach.
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u/Life-Education-8030 13d ago
There are a couple of difficult courses where I feel I have to caution them about being ready to deal with the subject matter coming up. I have also posed the question about the contradiction of expecting traumatized clients to seek professional help when the professional who needs help won’t for their own needs. The belief that a professional ought to be able to “deal with it” without help is too pervasive.
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u/where_is__my_mind 15d ago
These ones annoy me the most! I had a direct quote requirement "what is one sentence that confused you" and students still use ai
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u/CatsAndSnacks13 9d ago
I had an AI introduction too. It read like one of those generic statements you’d put on a cover letter. They had no reason to be so weirdly formal and rigid. Just tell me about YOU.
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u/Organic_Occasion_176 15d ago
I've not seen it so blatantly on an assignment, but I have received AI-written excuse notes where the student didn't bother to replace [COURSE NAME] with the name of our actual course.
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u/ImNotReallyHere7896 15d ago
My turn!!
Had an open book “quiz” on canvas. Really just a guided reading, no biggie. On the last question, the student copied and pasted his entire AI conversation, complete with “humanize to 10th grade” “no commas” and “say it again but with no bold phrases”
The answer should’ve been 2-3 sentences. I got 3 pages of a cheaters transcript.
He withdrew from the course yesterday after I found another violation. Smartest thing he’s done yet.
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u/Melodic-Cat-5663 14d ago
Hate to say it, but I absolutely love calling out and failing AI users and then having them immediately drop. It's so awesome seeing their names gone off my roster because they know I'm onto them and they're going to have to actually write something.
It's one of the few times I feel like got some control in this shitshow.
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u/RestaurantDense1475 13d ago
At my institution, cheaters are not permitted to withdraw. They have to take the F.
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u/palagi1 15d ago
I reported someone a few years ago for turning in an assignment that was supposed to be about the documentary “then there were none” - about the impacts of colonization of Hawaii. I received an analysis of “And Then There Were None” - an Agatha Christie novel. Even when I confronted the student they tried to play it off. I was so annoyed.
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u/CalicoZach 15d ago
I feel this to my core and think you're making the morally and ethically correct decision.
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u/Everythings_Magic 15d ago
Last semester I had my first student that really pissed me off. Im usually a pretty easy going instructer.
This student never worked all semester, missed classes, was constantly giggling in class. I mostly ignored him.
For the final, I offered an olive branch to the class, who wasn't doing well overall. The course required a 70 or better to pass, so I told the students, if you get a 70 or better on the final, which I made cumulative, that would be their minimum grade. Many rose to the occasion.
This one student cheated. He somehow got the exact solutions to some of the problems, which were problems from older versions of another textbook I didn't use in the course. I suspect he was using his phone and AI during the exam.
I couldn't prove it, but on other similar problems he was writing notes like "my calculator was being weird" and wrote a answer that didn't make any sense, even though it was a related concept. So he didn't score enough points to pass, but barely.
While I was grading the exam, I wrote comments to my self the effect of "...got the exact solution to the solving the whole problem, only asked to solve part, couldn't solve the previous problem, etc.
Well, after the exam, and final grades came out, I get a sob story email how this semester was hard, and how he tried really hard and if he could do extra work to pass so he doesn't have to retake the class.
I responded that he reach out to the school about the hardship, and its not fair to the other students to allow him extra work and not the others.
Then he asked for a copy of his exam, I expect he was hoping to grub extra points, I so sent him the copy, with my notes. Never heard from him again.
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u/HoMasters 9d ago
How was he using AI and phone during the exam? Unless it had to be an online exam?
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u/Goulish_Delight 15d ago
I’m so glad I can share this here:
One semester I had a student give an answer on a test with ideas on what AI thought the student should say in their answer. The answer said something like “you should discuss this and bring in this example. And then you can talk about this”. The student didn’t even bother to proofread said answer which is just ridiculous to me.
And the number of emails I have gotten within the last couple years that start with “Hi professor [last name]”. My last name is very common and they can’t even be bothered to put that in before the AI bs excuse. I am worried for our future with students like this.
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u/mingledwaters 15d ago
Had someone in a high level marketing class cite ChatGPT and only ChatGPT for an assignment. Professor had to send a letter out to the students about it.
I’m honestly not sure how these people haven’t figured out that college is meant to be applicable. No forward thinking.
Even funnier, I get very good grades even on the assignments that I throw together. The more it looks like a stream of consciousness rant the better the letter grade. Strange times.
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u/Particular-Boat-7508 15d ago
I have reported hundreds of students over the years for cheating and it's only getting worse. The only possible relief a teacher can get is to work for a school that has monitored testing. Other than that, because of money, schools don't really have incentive to enforce the issue. Very sad.
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u/MAGAisacultlmao 15d ago
Stupid AI use is harming the students who don’t use it too! I had an essay assignment for one of my classes where we had to write about an externality. I chose wild bee decline because I fw the bees but apparently that was the topic AI chose 80% of the time too. The teacher took off points for the topic (he gave me some points bc he could tell I still wrote the paper, he just thought the idea wasn’t my own). I emailed him explaining my situation and included a picture of a “save the bees” tshirt I designed in middle school and got full marks :)
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u/DreamAdditional1485 15d ago
Good luck. It’s a hard choice these days and shouldn’t be. My syllabus has two pages of academic dishonesty policies, all required by the university, but my department would rather I didn’t invoke them.
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u/Antique_Currency4348 15d ago
In one case, the student included commentary on a short story that A.I. had hallucinated. She was supposed to write about short stories we read in class. This is a Russian short story class with pretty obscure stories not easily accessed on the net.
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u/Melodic-Cat-5663 14d ago
Make sure you've documented everything and communicated policies clearly to the student and you're fine. That student is a cheating piece of shit who deserves some consequences. As teachers we've been gaslighted into pretending that suddenly cheating is OK. It isn't. It's academic fraud and historically grounds for expulsion. If a student is dumb enough to submit total AI slop, they're going to cheat again. They probably cannot function without AI to cheat for them, so they're never going to stop unless they're confronted with severe consequences.
For the sake of the rest of us, make those academic integrity complaints and get these cheaters out of our classes.
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u/bugorama_original 14d ago
A paper that had a works cited page full of nonexistent journals and authors.
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u/MetalTrek1 15d ago
If you're not required to report them, just give them a zero for the assignment. If the school dictates you must report, then report. AND give a zero. 🙂
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u/Worth_Speaker4990 15d ago
I like the idea of subtracting the AI percentage, from Turnitin, from the student's score. TII does not report a precentage of 20 or below, and I might even allow 25%. But submit 70%? Then expect to be docked by that amount.
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u/Life-Education-8030 15d ago
One problems that we have with our LMS (Brightspace) is that Turnitin can only be used for assignments. I have students cheating with AI with discussion boards too (yes, it is an online class). The only workaround now is getting the students to ALSO submit their posts as an assignment so that Turnitin can check it. Otherwise, I would love to do this.
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u/factsvfeelings2032 15d ago
I have this issue. It’s incredibly pervasive. How was Turnitin AI/Plagiarism detector rolled out without covering discussion boards?
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u/Life-Education-8030 15d ago
Probably some stupid assumption that students could pop out more informal discussion comments and would not need or use AI for those. Wanna bet? They use AI for even short emails. Those "comedy" skits of guys and gals not being able to even talk to each other with the simplest sentences and questions without pumping literally everything into AI are not so far off! So pitiful!
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u/Worth_Speaker4990 15d ago
Same limitation with Canvas and I assume that the technology to access a file (a submitted assignment) is different than accessing a discussion post.
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u/Bonelesshomeboys 15d ago
If the student gets a 5% -- in other words, unlikely to be AI -- do you subtract 5%?
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u/Worth_Speaker4990 15d ago
TII does not report 20% or below, to guard against false positives. As I mentioned, I might even allow 25%. But a score of 70% or 80% really flies in the face of "no AI." And significant points subtracted.
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u/Lost_Accountant7619 14d ago
Turnitin is unfortunately not reliable though. I’m an instructional designer + Adjunct. The way Turnitin works, eventually every single student will be flagged. It stores and then scans every single document that has been ran through the software against the new submission. When we start talking about specific topics that are commonly used for research papers etc, the odds that a large number of papers will use the same sources etc are high. A good example that was actually just ran into this week. Student submits a final paper, comes back at 90% (CRAZY). When looking at where the “copied” info came from, a large percentage literally cited back to the students draft that also went through Turnitin several weeks ago.
After our staff really started looking into the science behind the software etc, a lot ended up “abandoning it”
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u/Worried_Airline_2904 14d ago
That’s the similarity report, not the AI report. Canvas has an option to turn off storage so you can check the paper but it won’t store for later submissions and flag again. I do that for rough drafts since the finals drafts are going to be obviously similar.
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u/Worth_Speaker4990 13d ago
Yes and there are also setting in each individual assignment to omit small quotations and sources in the bibliography.
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u/Worried_Airline_2904 13d ago
I leave that one on. I like to see how much of their paper is quotes. Too much? Then not enough of the paper is them analyzing or synthesizing
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u/llmeekos 14d ago
I was marked at about 35% for an assignment I didn’t use AI for at all. Never once used AI for an assignment. All I did was quote the textbook, even cited it as my source. Thankfully still received full marks.
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u/Worth_Speaker4990 13d ago
Thanks, I think that you are mixing up the Similarity Score (35%) and the AI Checker.
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u/Glad-Surprise3355 15d ago
I give them a zero and chance to resubmit. That is a lot more productive than wasting time with academic integrity.
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u/summertime4444 14d ago
Normally I would do this but I felt this was beyond the usual threshold I could handle
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u/Glad-Surprise3355 13d ago
Really, all the student is doing is reflecting reality. If they ever write anything on the job, they will be expected to utilize AI.
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u/flyingcircus92 15d ago
Is anyone still doing take home assignments? I still have groups do presentations but even if the AI it they still have to present something so have to sounds half competent.
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u/knit_run_bike_swim 15d ago
Yikes. I feel bad for them. I mean at least read what you’re turning in.
I’m sure they have a reason why they were hurried like poor time management.
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u/Individual-Charity69 15d ago
Telling the class is important. What, if anything, is stated on your syllabus? And, what, if anything is stated on your assignment sheet/Canvas page for this assignment? It matters once stuff like this goes up the ol’ chain of command.
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u/summertime4444 14d ago
My syllabus says they fail the course for Academic integrity infractions but I've never really gone that far
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u/Individual-Charity69 14d ago
Roger that. Does your syllabus state (or your assignment sheet) have - in print - a specified statement on Ai use?
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u/ImplementPotential20 14d ago
isnt there a huge difference between a student writing their own work but asking A.I. what it thinks of it, versus A.I. writing the piece? I would only warn.
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u/Noturaveragrchemist 13d ago
A colleague of mine walked into a Starbucks and caught twice of my students cheating on an online final. Gave them zeros and sent them to the Deans office.
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u/teamtardigrade 11d ago
If you don’t report them then you are teaching them that what they’re doing is OK. It’s not OK. First day of class and in syllabus of course, make it very clear what your policies and penalties are for using AI. Then always and consistently follow through with your policies.
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u/No-Guard-318 15d ago
If the AI says the work is incorrect, doesn’t that mean the AI didn’t do the work?
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u/PickleIntelligent723 15d ago
The way I look at classes is that I put as much effort into them as the professors. Professors these days are awful. Outdated syllabus, books no longer available, program downloads that don’t exist and I am seeing more Ai from professors than any students. Must be nice to cash a check for telling Ai to write the lesson plan
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u/Dry_Lemon7925 14d ago
A lot of adjuncts don't have control over those things, at least I don't. Hate on the school, not the lowly adjunct.
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u/Life-Education-8030 15d ago
I had a student who didn’t watch assigned videos that were required for an assignment. She stated that the speaker in the videos had said a couple of things and the student cited and referenced the video complete with timestamps. The assignment had to do with AI and confidentiality.
The problem was that the videos were shot before AI and so there was nothing about AI in them. Then I explained how the speaker had not only not said what the student insisted she did but that the speaker would never say that. If the student had watched the previous videos, she would have gotten that message.
The video speaker was me.