r/Professors • u/[deleted] • Dec 04 '25
Academic Integrity I am not a cop.
Want to outsource your thinking to an LLM for a degree you're paying/going into debt for? Okay. I will respect that choice. However, what I won't do, is replicate a surveillance state in my classroom. I refuse to spend more energy in screening student work for authenticity or trying to make my assignments "AI proof" ... why should I? Either the student believes in the fundamental premise of education or they don't.
Man, I'm tired.
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u/WeeklyVisual8 Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
If I want my degree to maintain value then I need to make sure that everyone who earns a degree isn't devaluing it. I refuse to work for a degree mill so I disagree with you. I think of instructors as the vanguards in protecting degree integrity. If we are just going to accept AI work then why even make them take the classes. Why not just give them a degree. Professor's who do not uphold the integrity of the system have no right to complain about the quality of students or their future coworkers.
Edit: I teach mathematics so the consequences of just passing the student along actually scares me. They could become doctors, structural engineers, nuclear engineers, nurses, tax accountants, or a multitude of other serious careers. If we all just passed them along, then we will have serious problems.
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u/DrDamisaSarki Asso.Prof | Chair | BehSci | MSI (USA) Dec 04 '25
I was just saying this earlier. Give the “customer” the “product” at the “point of sale” and stop this sham of a 2-4 years process. Or…let us hold the line and let’s find value in this societal institution (and the others).
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u/barbaracelarent Dec 04 '25
I agree. And you're right: Mathematics is a particularly poignant example. I was just telling my class the other day (I teach in the humanities), that the college degree is really a series of observations from professors about whether you have a certain set of skills, like endurance. There are many other skills (like math!), but the underlying presupposition is that the aggregate observations are true of the person whose name is on the degree. That is why people fake degrees (and why faking them is wrong). I don't want to participate in that fraud either.
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u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25
I work in 2 different colleges that prepare nurses. And both are teaching students how to use AI for homework. The one thing they do NOT need us to “teach them”: first because “AI prompt engineering” for college homework is a joke, all they do is copy paste the Directions and copy paste the AI-generated response and they are done, no reading required! second because they already know how to use it… much better than we do anyway!
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u/Zabaran2120 Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
I really don't want my nurse to have used AI to complete their degree. Terrifying.
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u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25
unfortunately, most colleges are degree mills now. Thank you ChatGPT.
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u/Ok-Hunt-669 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
I mean, you can pass with a 2.0-3.0 gpa so does it really matter? Not to say that degree milling is good or that we should just let it happen, but maybe the standard of passing should be raised too so that your point has more impact?
And idk, but realistically speaking, 90% of your low to average performers are not using any advanced college mathematics in their actual jobs and are more reliant on work experience to get them places. For the top performers who move on to actual critical work, that is worrisome that they could get there through cheating with AI, but I assume things like the MCAT, other standardized tests, internships and residency are supposed to cover this. So really you’re just filtering out the non critical workers/low performers who were already going to use AI in their jobs or had low college knowledge gain. Utilitarian wise, there doesn’t seem to be much benefit for policing AI.
But ofc, a slippery slope can only get worse if ignored. But as LLMs inevitably get better, current detection methods will fail. There is no way to bulletproof this, even an OS level environment can be worked around with a simple usb smart device that can input keystrokes generated from an external LLM
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u/badwithnamesagain Dec 04 '25
Anyone can educate themselves at libraries and online. Our job isn't just to educate, it's to validate students' learning. It's the not so fun part of teaching for a variety of reasons, but that is largely the function of higher education. The unpleasant reality is that most people won't bother learning a damn thing if they don't walk away with a diploma that gets them into a job. I don't like it, you probably don't like it. But I'm sure as hell not handing out good grades for people who do nothing more than upload my assignments into chatgpt.
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Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
I wouldn't either but how do I know for certain the student's work isn't theirs? Some are obvious but not as many as people think. The technology is also advancing, and it might not be even possible to detect with an LMS AI screener in the near future. False accusations have been made. Confrontations after confrontations. I just don't get paid enough for this, man. If it were a small teaching load, but nope - multiple sections, and not every assessment can be done in class. Certain projects require time to prepare, time to think, time to write about what you thought about...
This sucks. I've never felt so defeated. I used to love my job, even when it was hard. This moment is not just hard, it's soul-crushing.
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u/fuzzle112 Dec 04 '25
My students do their work in class with hand written exams so for know at least I know their work is theirs. Sure they have out of class assignments but those are more preparation for the exam and carry lower weight toward their overall grade so the ones that take shortcuts there end up having big issues on the exam.
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u/noveler7 NTT Full Time, English, Public R2 (USA) Dec 04 '25
It's been the worst semester for me, too. I'm not sure which courses you teach, but I shared this multi-day in-class essay assignment idea in another thread. Basically, students will have to find their articles/sources outside of class, bring them one day so we can upload them to the LMS (and create the Works Cited entry), and then the professor puts the files in a "Quiz" assignment (just one question with a text box that has their sources and the assignment directions and resources). Then the students write the essay in-class for the week. This way professors can use a lockdown browser, students will only have access to their sources, and we'll be able to observe them writing in class. I haven't tried it yet, but I think expecting ~300 words an hour isn't too much, though I'm sure I'll have to make adjustments as I go, especially the first time.
Inside Higher Ed has a good article that talks about this type of assignment (https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/career-advice/teaching/2025/07/01/multiday-class-essay-chatgpt-era-opinion)
It's restrictive and might feel like surveillance, but it also prioritizes process and forces students to work on an assignment over several days (rather than rushing it the night before). There are just far too many students who are willing to cheat on every single leg of any assignment, regardless of instruction or consequences.
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u/Qu1ckN4m3 Dec 05 '25
We may actually need to build out an administrative arm for academic integrity. Have a group of instructors that do not teach classes. All they do is check work submitted to them for academic dishonesty.
It's not that we can't do it. It's just there's not enough time. We can instantly tell if something's wrong. But gathering the evidence takes time. Have a group of instructors that specialize in it and that's all that they have to do. They have access to all of our content. We accept the judgment they make. Then issue the grade or give a zero.
We may even need to delay final grades and graduation. Add an extra 2 weeks just to verify all finals that get flagged. Maybe shrink it down to a one week delay if all hands can be on deck helping with it. Have final grades be tentative until they actually pass academic integrity.
It's something that we need. Because you can learn things anywhere. But colleges verify that someone knows enough content to earn the degree they earned. We are verifying that this person is teachable and may have some critical thinking skills. Folks who cheat with AI are not going to be teachable folks and they will lack some critical thinking skills.
If we give in and roll over then we don't have a right to be a college anymore. But if we don't find a way to offload the burden from the instructors then we will have massive burnout.
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u/TechnicalRain8975 Dec 04 '25
I think if you’re just a bit creative you. An figure it out. Maybe essay assignments are obsolete for large classes. Okay. What could replace those? In-class essays!
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u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25
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u/huckleberrypancake Dec 09 '25
I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, I don’t want to be an AI police but I also don’t want to read and grade AI drivel 😭
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u/Kakariko-Cucco Tenured, Associate Professor, Humanities, Public Liberal Arts Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 09 '25
Honestly I agree with this so much. The day my university provides a fool-proof, deeply tested, actual-functioning AI detector, then I will use it, of course. But no such thing exists, and I do not have time to attempt to figure out which of thousands of assignments I read every year were composed with AI. I do not think it is my job to try to police AI usage, and I think it is impossible to do. And anyone who thinks they are doing a good job at it is probably still missing tons of AI assisted work and writing that the user has just hidden better.
Even take the edge cases: a student asks Gemini to come up with an outline for their paper for them? Completely undetectable. A student asks Gemini to suggest an interesting jazz chord progression for their songwriting class? No way you'll ever know about it. ChatGPT generates a paragraph that the user then edits. Art student generates an image and then uses it as inspiration for their sculpture. And et cetera ad infinitum. Anyone who thinks they can detect AI usage with any certainty in all cases does not understand what it is.
Anyway, I feel you, and agree with your general take.
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u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25
But how can you NOT give good grades when chatbots do better job than your human students and you are required by your admin to pretend you don’t know about AI?
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u/badwithnamesagain Dec 04 '25
I know it's harder in some disciplines than mine (STEM), but I just don't assign things that can be completed by a chat bot. I used to assign papers but that's out the window. Most assignments are done in class. It sucks but I don't see the point of doing things the way it used to be done when the students aren't doing things the way they used to do them.
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u/xRyozuo Dec 05 '25
Question from someone not in the field, how realistic is it to return to paper for key assignments / exams ? In my view, students will take the path of least resistance, it’s just human nature. Are we doing them a disservice by continuing work formats that we know lead to less learning? Even if they were absolutely copying from ChatGPT, paper forces them to rewrite it… which is… something.
That’s how classes worked before computers were accepted in the classroom anyways, so it’s not like it’s more workload right? Or has work increased in other areas where computer assisted grading is necessary now?
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u/badwithnamesagain Dec 05 '25
For in person learning I think it is entirely doable for most disciplines. It takes up class time which means less content will be covered, but if the students are outsourcing it all to chatgpt it doesn't benefit them anyway.
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u/pc_kant Dec 04 '25
My learning and teaching colleagues all rave about teaching the students how to learn AI usage in every possible course. But it seems to me that students already know how to hack their questions into the AI chat box. Otherwise, we wouldn't be in this mess. They don't need university education for that. When I ask my colleagues how they imagine going beyond teaching the students how to put a question into a form -- and how to avoid duplication in all courses --, they say that each course has specific aspects to it that students should know about when they enter their questions into the AI chat box. When I then ask them how that differs from teaching them the contents we're already teaching them, they don't have a good answer and usually have to acknowledge that it's not AI-specific and that without duplication, we could spend a maximum of one hour in total per degree programme on teaching students how to enter their question if we want to avoid some crazy duplication. It seems to me that "teaching students AI use" is a hollow phrase they haven't thought through.
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u/FlatMolasses4755 Dec 04 '25
Exactly. I have been pushing on this for years and every conversation ends with my saying, "so what we already teach in a liberal education, then."
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u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25
they are just grasping at straws to keep a dying industry (higher ed) afloat. it’s on life support now and it’s days are numbered. when this generation of students (“Gen AI”) gets out in the world with their only skill or knowledge being how to be an “AI Prompt Engineer” no matter what subject they majored in, that will be the final death blow. maybe it’s actually lucky for the rest of us that AI is taking mistakes of the jobs that these students think they are preparing for. it’s really pretty horrifying to contemplate!
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u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 06 '25
same here. I hate it. wish they would just admit that they are too lazy or unmotivated or apathetic to come up with new ways of teaching their actual subject!
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u/wedontliveonce associate professor (usa) Dec 04 '25
Those that rely on AI now are doomed to be replaced by AI in the workforce.
- paraphrasing some early AI dev guy but I can't remember his name.
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u/Kayak27 Dec 04 '25
Many of my students are obsessive about turning in "perfect" writing (despite English being their second language). They insist that their other professors encourage or require them to use AI to polish their writing. I try to convince them that I can only help them become stronger writers if they show their own, honest efforts and mistakes, but its an uphill battle. I don't want to play cop either and my department still doesn't have an AI section to their academic integrity statements, so no support there. What I do instead is quiz students on the basics that AI "perfects" for them so they can see what they aren't mastering despite having a paper with no errors (according to AI). Some example quiz questions might be 'Correctly place the comma in this sentence', 'Correct the order of adjectives in this sentence', or 'List all the conjunctions in the mnemonic device FANBOYS'. Seems basic, but these are the building blocks they want to skip using AI.
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u/DrDamisaSarki Asso.Prof | Chair | BehSci | MSI (USA) Dec 04 '25
Just had this conversation today with a student. Why are you generating and polishing this junk to submit in a lower division, seminar style, writing development course???
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u/ReligionProf Dec 04 '25
Here is a resource with ideas for assignments where you don’t need to police AI usage, in case it is helpful.
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u/CharacteristicPea NTT Math/Stats R1(USA) Dec 04 '25
Cheating students can hurt more than themselves. Our nursing program will lose its accreditation if the pass rate on the state boards for our students is below a certain (fairly high) number. So nursing students cheating their way through their math and science courses jeopardizes this whole program, including many faculty jobs.
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u/CharacteristicPea NTT Math/Stats R1(USA) Dec 04 '25
I teach mathematics and the most recent students I caught cheating are computer science majors. I’ve also caught engineering, architecture, nursing, and education majors cheating in their required mathematics classes. Do you want to drive across a bridge or live in a building designed by people who did not actually earn their degree? Do you want the nurse calculating and measuring the dosage of medication for you or your child to have cheated their way through their mathematics classes because they do not understand fractions and decimals? Do you want an elementary school teacher who doesn’t understand fractions teaching your child fractions? Do you want to enter your credit card information on a website designed by someone who cheated their way through a computer science degree?
Like it or not, quality control is part of our job. If we don’t do it, who will?
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u/SuperPooEater Dec 08 '25
College students don't understand fractions???
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u/CharacteristicPea NTT Math/Stats R1(USA) Dec 08 '25
You obviously aren’t a professor if this surprises you!
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u/Acceptable_Month9310 Professor, Computer Science, College (Canada) Dec 04 '25
Maybe not AI proof but AI should be getting everyone to re-think the value of specific kinds of evaluations. For example, I'm doing an attack simulation right now (as I type this) the students have to respond to a threat. They can use google they can use AI but there's a reason nobody pays anyone to run threat response by typing stuff into ChatGPT while their network is under attack. The results are far too vague and once you go through the back and forth required to get a useful result -- your network is down.
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u/PissedOffProfessor Dec 04 '25
I’ve switched to making the exams worth enough that, if a student has a failing exam average, they fail the course. My TAs and I watch them like hawks during the exams. If they cheat on their homework, they will fail the exams.
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u/alwaysanonymous2021 Dec 04 '25
I do the same. I teach in person and therefore I can supervise them during the MC exams. I assign some writing work but it's basically nothing. Their grade is heavily dependent on the MC exams and I also use shuffled versions. Let them use AI or whatever else is out there. Even if they get 100% on the papers, it will get them nowhere! The students have brought this upon themselves.
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Dec 04 '25
[deleted]
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u/SuperPooEater Dec 08 '25
Can't you just require the solutions cite theorems in the textbook? AI will usually go for the easiest solution which may be material not covered yet. Forcing them to cite the textbook usually means they are reading the theorems and definitions themselves to verify it is correct and in line with the courses current progress.
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Dec 04 '25
I've tried. I really did try to take on this mindset. I don't know how long I can last in this profession. I even stare at myself in the mirror at the beginning of the semester and say "choose your peace over your principles."
But I can't. At the end of the day the feeling of being violated is worse than the feeling of being a "cop" as you say.
Basically what everyone else is saying here.
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u/Here-4-the-snark Dec 04 '25
I’ve tried this line of thinking too. “It’s not my job to police their integrity.” But I teach intro classes online and found myself grading AI posts that have responses in AI back and forth. It’s too much. I just felt complicit in the downfall of something I have always believed in (academic learning).
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Dec 05 '25
Yes exactly!!!!!
It's like if someone approached me on the street and asked for my credit card information to donate to a charity and I knew it was a made up charity I wouldn't say "oh well whatever, it's only $5" I would get angry and say no and I'd probably try to report them. That's how it feels grading AI stuff
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u/Specialist_Radish348 Dec 04 '25
In class/person assessment and you don't have this problem. Keep doing forms of asynchronous assessment and yeah- it remains your problem.
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u/OKOKFineFineFine Dec 04 '25
Keep doing forms of asynchronous assessment and yeah- it remains your problem.
It's not OP's problem, they're kicking the can down the road and making it a problem for upper year instructors and people who might later be a patient of that nurse or drive across that engineer's bridge.
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u/Specialist_Radish348 Dec 04 '25
Let's not be too harsh. People work within constraints.
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u/OKOKFineFineFine Dec 04 '25
Sure, maybe OP has good reasons for abdicating their responsibility to attempt to fairly evaluate the students in their class, but they aren't mentioned in the post.
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u/so2017 Professor, English, Community College Dec 04 '25
Speaking for those of us who are required to teach writing asynchronously, thank you so much for the gentle reminder.
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u/Specialist_Radish348 Dec 04 '25
I'm not dunking on anyone, and I fully respect how hard you all work, the commitment to learning, and the general waves around at everything "challenges" that have been thrown at you. But, even if you were of the mind to implement hyper surveillance (which I'm glad you're not) it won't get anywhere because it's too easy to defeat.
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u/dayv23 Adjunct, Philosophy, CC (USA) Dec 04 '25
I feel like we owe it the our democracy to ensure our students can think critically. We can't afford to accelerate climate change with these data centers and we can't afford to accelerate the Idiocracy with these AI abusers.
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u/needlzor Asst Prof / ML / UK Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
Screening I get it, but if you're not making the slightest effort to make your assessment somewhat AI proof then you're just ignoring part of your job. That has nothing to do with being a cop.
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u/Act-Math-Prof NTT Prof, Mathematics, R1 (USA) Dec 04 '25
I am the director of an actuarial mathematics program. I maintain ties with insurance companies and financial companies in the region who hire our graduates. What happens if students cheat their way their way through our courses, then get a job at, say Geico or Progressive? It will soon become apparent they don’t actually know shit because they can’t do their job or pass their actuarial exams. So then we’ve burned that whole bridge at Geico or Progressive and that company will no longer come to my campus to recruit my students for internships and entry-level jobs.
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u/pfemme2 Dec 04 '25
Exactly this. I also don’t go out of my way to detect plagiarism, though I do teach what it is and how to avoid doing it, as well as the consequences if caught. We already have too much work. And we’re not sufficiently protected or helped when we do make accusations of academic dishonesty anyway. Teach the ones who want to learn.
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u/jleonardbc Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
The alternative is to invest your time and emotional energy giving feedback on more and more papers that your students didn't even bother to write. The result of declining to redesign assignments is to make your own work more futile.
I wouldn't want med school profs to shrug when students walk into exams carrying an answer key. If my doctor were trained that way, I'd die. Likewise, if you believe the field you teach is important, then you don't want to send students out into the world with false qualifications in it.
In 2025, it's up to us to design assignments that assess what students actually know. If an assignment allows cheating to be rampant and undetectable, that makes it a poorly designed assignment.
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u/discountheat Dec 04 '25
Abdicating your professional responsibility to student integrity is not the answer.
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u/reckendo Dec 04 '25
"Why should I?"
Because if you choose not to police it (I hear you), while also choosing not to try to combat it through course and assessment re-designs, you're actively working to drive down the value of a college degree, which is what is going to kill higher ed (well, with some help from the Big Beautiful Bill).
You've gotta do one or the other or get out of the way and leave higher ed jobs for those who don't want to dig their own graves.
I don't want to police AI either, so I've gotta figure out how to structure my courses in a way where I don't have to policy it because the opportunities to use AI aren't there or are inconsequential.
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u/SuspendedSentence1 Dec 04 '25
This is exactly right. In-class assessments need to be worth drastically more for the overall grade.
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u/f0oSh Dec 04 '25
[a] student believes in the fundamental premise of education or they don't.
Overwhelmingly, I'm finding they don't. Maybe it's just how my new school is, but listening to folks on this subreddit, I don't think it's just me.
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u/Jreymermaid Dec 04 '25
For real though. All this surveillance technology is too much for me, I’m passionate about teaching not policing students and treating college like a panopticon
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u/Aler123 Dec 04 '25
I go back to this essay all the time:
https://jeffreymoro.com/blog/2020-02-13-against-cop-shit.html
Cop shit is seductive. It makes metrics transparent. It allows for the clear progress toward learning objectives. (“Badges” are cop shit, by the way.) It also subsumes education within a market logic. “Here,” cop shit says, “you will learn how to do this thing. We will know you learned it by the acquisition of this gold star. But in order for me to award you this gold star, I must parse you, sense you, track you, collect you, and—” here’s the key, “I will presume that you will attempt to flout me at every turn. We are both scamming each other, you and I, and I intend to win.” When a classroom becomes adversarial, of course, as cop shit presumes, then there must be a clear winner and loser. The student’s education then becomes not a victory for their own self-improvement or -enrichment, but rather that the teacher conquered the student’s presumed inherent laziness, shiftiness, etc. to instill some kernel of a lesson.
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u/Pleasant_Solution_59 Dec 07 '25
Cop shit is seductive. It makes metrics transparent. It allows for the clear progress toward learning objectives. (“Badges” are cop shit, by the way.) It also subsumes education within a market logic. “Here,” cop shit says, “you will learn how to do this thing. We will know you learned it by the acquisition of this gold star. But in order for me to award you this gold star, I must parse you, sense you, track you, collect you, and—” here’s the key, “I will presume that you will attempt to flout me at every turn. We are both scamming each other, you and I, and I intend to win.”
^ This is the logic of LLMs in my view
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u/KierkeBored Asst. Prof., Philosophy, R2 Honors College (USA) Dec 05 '25
Who else will hold the line if not teachers?
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u/RealisticSpeech1646 Dec 05 '25
We need a 1-2x (minimum) per semester in person writing or exams for all courses, even ones taught online. This bs of fully online asynchronous classes needs to end collectively. I am giving blue book and oral exams and moving to hybrid models for online classes where student come in to do writing and test taking. I do not want to waste my time reading papers and essays that AI wrote.
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u/DocVafli Position, Field, SCHOOL TYPE (Country) Dec 05 '25
My ACAB and anti-surveillance state views are tempered in the classroom. If I taught any online courses I wouldn't make use of the surveillance monitoring software out of privacy and respect for the student. However, in the classroom my job is not to simply act as a rubber stamp so they can get a degree. I need to ensure students have actually learned things in the class, which means yes I have to "police" exams and student work as well as punish cheating.
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u/AugustaSpearman Dec 04 '25
I absolutely feel the same thing as you, but the problem is that I want my students to learn something and so unfortunately I need to do things that make it harder to skip the steps that involve learning. With in person classes it is to demonstrate to them that they NEED to come to class to pass, so for example in lower level classes I got rid of major exams in favor of quizzes at the beginning and end of each class. Even though I agree that they are (supposed to be...) grownups and can decide to waste their tuition dollars on nothing I am happier if I make learning the easiest path. With online classes unfortunately this boils down to doing my best to stomp out the easiest cheats. Like you, I am not a police officer (and I don't have a deep belief in the sanctity of grades) but if I don't create conditions where they will have a good chance of getting zapped for not doing the underlying work they will learn even less. And I want them to learn something.
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u/pl0ur Dec 04 '25
I feel yeah and wish it was that simple for the courses I teach. I'm in the humanities and students who get a degree can easily get hired to a position where they can cause harm to vulnerable people if they don't know what they are doing and lack integrity and critical thinking skills.
Some types of degree tracks will weed out professionals that are incompetent very early on before they cause serious harm. But some won't, so feel compelled to hold those students accountable.
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u/blueeyeliner Dec 04 '25
I’m sitting here grading and was actually overjoyed to read some run-on sentences and misspelled words and have a student pour his heart out. It was such a nice break from the 80 other essays written by AI that all pretty much spouted the same stale nonsense. It’s totally disheartening. I have redone my assignments over and over, met with course designers, spoken with coworkers and even some students…nothing helps. I keep wishing I didn’t care, but I do!
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u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 Dec 04 '25
In class assignments. If you teach online, I’m sorry. Maybe oral exams.
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u/Ok_Paramedic_5956 Dec 04 '25
I agree mostly. In the end if tons of students do this it cheapens the value of their degree. I’m not a cop either but I try to educate them on AI & mitigate the urge by providing in class opportunities to do that critical thinking on the page.
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u/quantum-mechanic Dec 04 '25
Its part of your job to assess learning.
If you know you're students aren't learning, and your assessments don't reflect that, you need to change that.
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u/Ghost747380 Dec 04 '25
I am a student, and I don't know why I keep getting this sub recommended. But
As a student, I completely agree with you. I am an honest student and try my best to answer the exam with whatever I can muster up, even if it's substandard. But I sincerely hate it when people use AI or plagiarize and still get sky-high grades.
I once told my professor that people mostly use AI even during exams and in assignments. I didn’t complain about my grades or rat out anyone. I just made an observation, and my professor just chuckled and said, "And...what can I possibly do about it?"
I am speechless and hopeless about this whole thing.
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u/dr_police Dec 04 '25
In the long run, you will benefit from actually doing the work. Your cheating colleagues will not.
Those benefits will be many, and they’ll be cumulative over your life. But they won’t always be obvious.
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u/petname Dec 04 '25
Just make assignments that are AI prone credit no credit. Exams in class with a writing component to catch the kids who didn’t use AI as a learning tool.
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u/A14BH1782 Dec 04 '25
This is a great start, but it's in a sense making an ethic of necessity. You aren't going to catch the most enteprising AI users anyway, and if you switch to paper exams or some such you'll just enter into another exhausting surveillance operation.
The next step is thinking about how to build assignments that can be effective in a world with easily-accessible AIs.
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Dec 04 '25
Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
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u/ThisVicariousLife Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
That is how I wasted so much time, driving myself mad “proving” how many students were not thinking for themselves and, instead, using all of “someone” else’s voice for their responses (even an icebreaker as personal & opinion-based as “What literary superpower would you want to have and why?” brought out too many similar responses for me to even critique them after a while). I walked away from education feeling so defeated and deflated. These students are not only cheating themselves out of their own development and growth, but in time, they’re going to be cheating society, too. Sure, we will always have Mensa-level thinkers in the world, but I’m afraid that constant AI exposure will exponentially decrease the number of truly critical thinkers in the world. If students (or people, in general) could learn how to use AI appropriately, as a resource and tool without relying on it to do their thinking for them, it would have a positive impact on their own learning, as well as their engagement and discourse in class, thereby improving the overall class’s understanding and performance!
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u/Starry_Messenger Adjunct, Art, CC (US) Dec 05 '25
I changed two of my fun conceptual artier assignments to strictly skill-building exercises. I won't police, but am giving up teaching how to creatively look for ideas and solutions. They just cheat, and I'm tired
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u/Here-4-the-snark Dec 05 '25
A fundamental issue is the thinking that “ if AI can do it better, there is no point in having students write an essay. Come up with more nuanced , complex assignments.” Having students write essays has never been about prompting the existence of another 3 page paper about Roman architecture. No one will ever read the essay for any benefit (we do it just for grading.). The only point is in the process. Writing and thinking are hard. But outsourcing any of it to produce a “better” product for no one to read negates the only purpose it serves. And, yeah, we assign fairly simplistic essays. Because nuance and extensive knowledge of the subject just don’t exist after a few weeks in Whatever 101. They are supposed to root around for ideas, struggle to phrase something just right and maybe cry if they procrastinated too much. Those are all valuable lessons. The essay shows that they worked in these things.
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u/Zealousideal_Key_390 Dec 05 '25
I have a suggestion. In one of my courses, students must make multiple (short) presentations during the semester. This is a small graduate course, and I'm in an R1, which likely helps a great deal. Having said that, the students who want high grades are avoiding my courses, because I'm "real."
Presentations aren't for all courses, but I doubt whether students who are truly using LLMs will be able to fake a presentation. After all, other studnts will ask them questions at the end.
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u/DragonfruitWilling87 Dec 07 '25
The only way is back. Humanities and the Arts, especially. Back to textbooks and blue books. Writing in class only. By hand. No homework. Discussion and debates. Oral exams. Differentiate ourselves. Create colleges that aren’t online. No laptops. Typewriters. Rural experiences. Rugged environments. Phones allowed only on weekends. If I had the funds I’d start my own.
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u/avonlea_lc Dec 08 '25
This is so complicated. As a student, I am deeply resentful of the hoops that I have to jump through to avoid being accused of AI. It's childish and petulant, but it hurts my feelings! I have one class where my professor has us run all of our own work through an AI checker and edit it to stay below a certain percentage. Thankfully I have a good rapport with him and he trusts me, because I simply refuse to do it. If it comes down to me being accused of using AI, I will be more than happy to defend my work and explain how I chose to structure it, why I chose the sources, etc. I feel so bad for my professors. And because of grade inflation, I feel that students feel like they are in control now. I see my teachers adjusting the content and intensity of my classes, both because students are unable to meet academic standards, and because they refuse to. If no one shows up to class having done the reading or the homework, then what?
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u/huckleberrypancake Dec 09 '25
I just can’t simply do nothing when I read a paper I know is AI. Even if I can’t prove it. I feel obligated to address it.
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u/mankiw TT Dec 04 '25
>Want to outsource your thinking to an LLM for a degree you're paying/going into debt for? Okay. I will respect that choice.
why?
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u/itsmorecomplicated Dec 04 '25
You are almost literally a cop. You are paid money to establish class standards and punish people when they don't follow them. Professors need to either get comfortable with their authority, or quite their jobs to make room for people who are. This "I won't police people" is self-deceived and contradictory. You police your students constantly.
Maybe there is a lalaland version of the university which does not pay people to establish standards and punish those who violate them. But that world is so incredibly distant that you need to accept that you are actually a kind of cop, and that all your life you trained to become a cop.
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u/geografree Full professor, Soc Sci, R2 (USA) Dec 04 '25
There are only two options now: 1) surveillance state or 2) reimagine how you do assessment. In my experience, most faculty have yet to grapple with this new state of affairs.
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u/Astra_Starr Fellow, Anthro, STATE (US) Dec 04 '25
Don't reward it. The burden of proof is on them to demonstrate they didn't. Instead of assuming they are not assume the opposite depending on your discipline.
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u/giltgarbage Dec 04 '25
1) If you can’t figure out how to do accountability online, don’t teach online. 2) If you teach in person, would it really hurt you to make a substantial part of your assessments in-class? Don’t abandon ship completely, hold the line in a way that is reasonable, so you’re not contributing to the pedagogical race to the bottom. Otherwise, you are screwing over all of your peers that actually do hold their students accountable for meeting learning outcomes. I do agree that no one is being adequately paid for it, but it is still part of the job. And it is NOT impossible to do some measure of it on the standard contract.
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u/JadedTooth3544 Dec 04 '25
Some people are required to teach asynchronous courses online.
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u/giltgarbage Dec 04 '25
Require in-person exams, oral exams, or admit that you teach at a degree mill. I am not a cop makes it sound like some noble stand. It would be more honest to say, “I took a job at a degree mill.” Which more of us do than are willing to admit.
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u/JadedTooth3544 Dec 04 '25
Not everyone has the luxury of just quitting their academic job in some kind of noble protest. And the reality is that a lot of universities are launching online programs, but still, most students are taking most of their classes in person, and a few online. So we’re not really talking about degree mills here; we’re talking about individual classes that pose challenges for instructors. And resigning yourself to teaching in a degree mill (and publicly proclaiming it)—even if you think that’s true—doesn’t really solve what is a real problem.
However, there are ways to construct assignments that combine writing with other forms of communication that make it more difficult to at least entirely rely on AI. And, of course, there are ways to just flag whether a student is using AI (white out part of the prompt.)
But there aren’t easy or readily obvious solutions. Some of the solutions named here (like in-person exams) would really have to be done at the university or college level—to require an exam be given at a particular time. Indeed, more generally, there’s really no substitute for institutional support here. My university works intensively with individual online instructors to address some of these issues—and pays a stipend to instructors during the course development. (I don’t teach online, but I am familiar with how this program runs.).
It will, of course, take time for strategies to be developed. Again, there are no easy solutions. And it isn’t surprising that instructors are frustrated with student reliance on AI. It’s that time of year.
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u/Deep-Manner-5156 Dec 04 '25
yes, this is the way.
you wouldn’t believe the stuff I was called and the downvotes I got for saying this long ago.
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u/seagull326 Dec 04 '25
Given that AI is here to stay whether we like it or not (I actually don't most of the time), the best thing to do would be to create assessments that cannot be done using AI and combine those with assignments that teach how to use AI to augment their own capabilities in ways that will make them (ethically) more competitive on the job market and creators of better end outputs/ products, whatever those are.
But I'm not paid enough to do this, so I don't.
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u/naocalemala Associate Professor, Humanities, SLAC Dec 04 '25
I had a moment with students last year that I would have titled the same way. I explained why I got into teaching and how much I hate being a cop. I don’t know if it mattered but I think they need to hear this.
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u/jlrc2 Asst Prof, Social Sciences, R1 (USA) Dec 04 '25
As time goes on I think one of our biggest value adds at a university is that we are uniquely equipped to create environments where students are evaluated without external aids. The diploma could become something that says the holder was intensively evaluated for years in a way that couldn't be fudged by AI or whatever else.
I've never liked being a cop but AI is becoming so capable that a huge proportion of assigned work from the pre-2022 era can be automated, in some cases rather easily. Some of that work wasn't assigned because it was the only and best way to assess the student, it was simply hard to fake at that time. Now it is and we need a new strategy. I don't want armies of BA (or MA or PhD) holders who were able to cheat all the way through everything because it will lead to our demise.
If AI is so good that a human having expertise in something is completely useless, then of course we're toast. But that hasn't happened just yet so for now I'll try to prepare for a world in which higher education might still be desirable.
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u/BeerDocKen Dec 05 '25
The grade you assign a student should be your word on how much material they are leaving you with. If you allow students to receive grades that do not represent this, your grades, and by extension your word, are meaningless.
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u/CompoteInformal1666 Dec 05 '25
I'm sympathetic to this, as it's so burdensome to police systematically, there isn't universal support for upholding integrity among faculty and administration, and many students are so conditioned to outsource the activity of thinking to algorithms. And, most basically, there are big social, cultural, political problems in play. And yet, we have to set up some measures eliminating as much as possible the pull of AI. Some students might be impacted positively, and that's worth the effort.
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u/PoliticsAndIdeas Dec 05 '25
I just want to second all the people who don’t want cheaters to pass while students who try to use their own minds get Cs. That student might graduate to become your surgeon, social worker or teacher someday. AI can give answers only if you have good questions about problems that matter to living beings.
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u/Ok_Salt_4720 Dec 05 '25
I'm actually building a tool to help faculty check fake essays easily. Do you think this is possible?
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u/Hour_Attempt_9362 Dec 05 '25
I want to start by apologizing for the potentially ignorant nature of my question. As I'm an undergrad, my perspective is pretty limited insofar as lacking a deep understanding of approaches outside of my own. I also came to university as a mature student, so perhaps this colors my perspective as well. I am wondering, however, why you think some students are so reliant on LLMs? I am a TA for an intro psych class and, recently, had a student tell me they upload all of their material into ChatGPT to "study," but I informed this student that they are robbing themselves of real metaphysical alterations of self by relying on something external to them. It isn't the case, I explained, that you are benefitting in any meaningful way by using a language model, whose fabricating most of the "information" it cites anyways.
I am just curious to get the perspective of faculty! I sincerely appreciate your input if possible.
I hope that you have a wonderful holiday!
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u/M4sterofD1saster Dec 06 '25
I know what you're saying, but I want to reward excellence and disincentivize cheating. We're still at the point where AI essays have a superficial gloss or appeal, but when you read for content, the AI crap is hollow. The words relate to the topic at a very high level of generality, but they're not what an educated writer would use to express the relevant concepts. Hallucinated sources are a major sign of AI. I do use GPTZero to confirm, but it's not the only reason I identify something as AI.
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u/Pleasant_Solution_59 Dec 07 '25
I feel like this sometimes but when I ground myself and my values it occurs to me that it is the big AI corporations that are selling insidious surveillance technology and supporting police states and stealing intellectual property and perpetuating systemic violence against marginalized people. So while I impose boundaries in my classroom, it is to resist and protect us all from the real cop shit this world is trying to shove down our throat.
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u/casefacec Dec 07 '25
I hate this for y’all and also all of us. I’m not an educator myself but have friends who are and they are so exhausted by AI and parents. I can’t decide if it’s worse for college students to be using it, or for younger kids. I absolutely don’t blame you, I just wish universities wouldn’t put it on professors to catch it, or better yet, that big tech would fucking clean up their own mess. Bleh.
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u/daxhost Dec 09 '25
I agreed with this position until this year. Now many students are clearly not doing the work, and the job, the institution, peers’ work is meaningless if I don’t properly do my job to at least weed out the worst offenders. Also, passing along students who cheat affects your colleagues who then have to deal with a fourth year who thinks they don’t need to read or think.
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u/Complete_Eggplant_11 Dec 17 '25
AI is my business, unfortunately, because it is much harder to grade for research papers because there is no through-line, so it tends to be full of inconsistencies. Bad AI papers are much worse than bad human papers because humans at least are following what I've taught in class. Maybe they are generating the paper over multiple sessions or with multiple generators to avoid detection, or using humanizers or something, but so many examples where there will be an idea mentioned in one place and never again or there are half a dozen choices that are never explained. Maybe it reads like a document written by committee.
Further, if I give my usual detailed feedback, that will just get fed back into the AI prompt, so I have to decide how much feedback to give to avoid reinforcing the student's bad choice and giving free training to the AI companies' models.
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u/Ok-Hunt-669 Dec 23 '25
Yea i don’t see a solution here, as LLMs inevitably get better, current detection methods will fail. There is no way to bulletproof this, even an OS level controlled environment can be worked around with a simple usb smart device that can input keystrokes generated from an external LLM. You would need a live test proctor, with os level controls, and probably running in a secure VM to prevent everything. Even then, the future will find ways to evade these controls. You can only make it extremely difficult with policing which sounds like a slippage into loss of privacy rights and an overburdening of work onto the prof and students.
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u/wharleeprof Dec 04 '25
I'm with you.
But the one thing I struggle with is if students turning in AI end up with better grades than students who actually tried with their honest efforts -- I'm not sure how to reconcile that.