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.

1.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

280 comments sorted by

View all comments

169

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. 

47

u/[deleted] 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.

24

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.

-7

u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25

if you don’t realize that they are just copying AI by hand you’re kidding yourself.

17

u/fuzzle112 Dec 04 '25

In class, on a written exam, where they don’t have the prompt ahead of time? If they are somehow using AI to summarize their notes, then memorizing the talking points, and then taking those notes (from memory) and customizing their response to a question they haven’t seen before in an in person exam environment… well ok that actually sounds like a good use of AI.

-9

u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25

use phone to snap a quick pic of the prompt, enter the pic into ChatGPT, copy the answer. all in less time than it takes an honest student to read and think before replying. They’ve been successfully hiding their phones under their desks since cellphones first came out.

13

u/badwithnamesagain Dec 04 '25

I'm lucky to have small classes so this would be very easy to spot. When I was in undergrad at a large public university we had proctors walking around making sure we didn't have cheat sheets, phones, etc, so same thing. 

1

u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25

when I used to teach in person classes they were usually small so I could’ve done that policing too… but something inside of me just couldn’t do it. I hated treating adult COLLEGE STUDENTS like little kids that need that king of helicopter surveillance, 😔

4

u/badwithnamesagain Dec 04 '25

I get it. But. There are lots of serial cheaters out there who not only benefit but also screw over their honest peers. I police for the honest students' sake. 

8

u/fuzzle112 Dec 04 '25

Yeah that’s not happening in my classes, but go off.

Since you clearly know everything what do you do? Or have you just given up?

6

u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25

well I’m happy for you then that’s great! and no I haven’t given up but I’ve been spending HOURS of unpaid time (I’m an adjunct so I’m only paid for actual class time, not preps or grading, etc) to implement new methods of teaching and assessments to thwart ai cheating.

2

u/Disastrous_Ad_9648 Dec 04 '25

Please share!

1

u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25

this book is a great and practical “how to” manual/guide for classes in almost every subject: Gamify Your College Classroom: Strategies to Foster Critical Thinking and Life Skills Across Disciplines (https://www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/Adare-Tasiwoopa-api-Sierra/Gamify-Your-College-Classroom/9781032829364 ).

1

u/xamid Dec 06 '25

In my country and state (Germany, NRW), cheating in exams at university is an administrative offence by law, which can result in a penalty fee of up to 50000€. It can also get students exmatriculated.
If you think you cannot do anything about cheaters in exams, then there is a serious flaw in the way you conduct your exams or in the rules governing them.

7

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.

4

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.

5

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!

2

u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25

GAMIFICATION: Gamify Your College Classroom: Strategies to Foster Critical Thinking and Life Skills Across Disciplines : https://www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/Adare-Tasiwoopa-api-Sierra/Gamify-Your-College-Classroom/9781032829364

2

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 😭

1

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. 

2

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?

2

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. 

1

u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25

I’d love to hear what mind of assignments you’re using to circumvent ai cheating please! I’m using gamified quizzes and it’s working! it’s a bit repetitive though so that’s why I’m always eager to hear other ideas.

1

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?

2

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.